Ephemeral Beauty, Al Parker and the American Women’s Magazine, 1940-1960
Beauty and the Blonde.
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
Through January 28
RAC Blogger: Debra Kokorudz

Beauty. It’s a funny word if you just say it, isn’t it? The word itself doesn’t really sound very pretty. BE-UUUUU-TEEE. Sounds like the call of a jungle animal or the horn on an old antique Ford. But it is what how we all aspire to be described and it is the center of two exhibits currently at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, located on the campus of Washington University.  Ephemeral Beauty, Al Parker and the American Women’s Magazine, 1940-1960, features illustrations from women’s magazines that represented the ideal of housewife style in the mid 1900’s. Beauty and the Blonde., quite conveniently for me, carries the idea of this ideal into the 1960’s and beyond.

I had planned my visit in the hopes of relating one exhibit to another and I was not disappointed. Ephemeral Beauty serves as the back story for the modern advertising ideal of the everyday American woman, and Al Parker was the master of her creation. Upon walking into the galleries I was met by a wall full of 36 “Mother and Daughter Covers” from the Ladies Home Journal featuring a very perfect, very blonde woman and her equally perfectly blonde daughter engaging in all sorts of heartwarming activities together, because daddy was off fighting the war. They were sewing, fixing up the yard, skiing, ice-skating, working on the car and hanging up the laundry. All while looking fresh-faced and immaculately coiffed. Is this what American women of the time truly aspired to be?

Although there were a few women editors, these magazines were primarily run by men, and the subject of employment was not a topic discussed within their pages. Gertrude Lane, editor of the Women’s Home Companion, described her readers as women who are “intelligent and clear-headed” and “forever seeking new ideas”.  I wonder what she really thought about them, and they her. Did she think they weren’t allowed to reach their full potential in life?  Did her readers see her as someone who was sadly missing out on a family life, or someone they longed to be? (And if you really want an understanding of male domination of the publishing world, see the link on Gertrude's name to her obituary in Time Magazine in 1941.) I do think that Al Parker thought about the aspirations of these women and how they felt about themselves. When he drew men in these illustrations they are often hapless and helpless, unable to do so much as vacuum the floor properly, and unworthy of adding interesting comments to polite conversation, as if to say, “Oh those poor men! They couldn’t get along without their women!”

By the time these ideals had been ingrained in American society, women were beginning to become more intellectually influential and more powerful in their sexuality. This is where Beauty and the Blonde. picks up the story. The exhibit is divided into three parts: The Iconic Blonde; Deconstructing the Blonde; and Transforming the Blonde; and features artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Cindy Sherman. We begin with countless magazine covers, movie posters and advertisements featuring the sexy blonde woman in all stages of empowerment, from Marilyn Monroe in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” to Mel Ramos’ depictions of naked blondes with all sorts of consumable products from cigarettes to candy bars. So, does this iconic imagery now represent the power of women in society at the time, or only the power of blonde women? As we move on to Deconstructing the Blonde, it seems as if one woman begins to turn on the other, in some ways, in an effort to tear down the stereotype of the “ideal woman.” The artist Lynn Hersman Leeson created the character of Roberta Breitmore, living as she would have and documenting the performance for four years. In the photo Construction Chart #1, she diagrams the face of Roberta, from her lipstick to her blonde wig. And although she represented the visual ideal, Roberta was described as “psychologically vulnerable, insecure, and scarred.”

And quite honestly, although I enjoyed the work presented in the Transforming the Blonde section of the exhibition, I didn’t see the difference in the message. It ALL seemed like deconstruction to me. Nikki S. Lee, a Korean-born artist, dyed her hair blonde and was photographed on the hood of a muscle car outside of a trailer. This piece may transform my perception of Nikki, but it still portrays the stereotype of a trashy blonde, it didn’t transform the “blonde” herself. Maybe I was taking the title too literally.  

To me, what has happened to the blonde in society is that we love to hate her. She represents everything we want and what we think we can’t have, so we must attack her. Why are there no stereotypes about brunettes being stupid? Why is it always the “dumb blonde?” Why isn’t this an exhibit about the influence of redheads on American ideals? And I suppose these descriptions come with their own set of stereotypes. If there was transformation, it would have to equal acceptance and a completely new set of values, in my mind. It would mean that other women and society as a whole had moved past this narrow view of the ideal. That we had all moved into an era where stereotypes were no longer the norm and we could truly accept one another for who we are. Or that we were at least trying to…