Back in the 1950s Associated Press writer Dorothy Roe made a series of predictions for the fantastic future of what she thought women and gender equality would be like 50 years later in the year 2000. Among her prognostications about greater gender parity was the belief that women of the future would evolve into Amazonian Superwomen.
Below is part of the text written by Dorothy Roe:
The woman of the year 2000 will be an outsize Diana, anthropologists and beauty experts predict. She will be more than six feet tall, wear a size 11 shoe, have shoulders like a wrestler and muscles like a truck driver.
Chances are she will be doing a man's job, and for this reason will dress to fit her role.
Her hair will be cropped short, so as not to get in the way. She probably will wear the most functional clothes in the daytime, go frilly only after dark.
Slacks probably will be her usual workaday costume. These will be of synthetic fiber, treated to keep her warm in winter and cool in summer, admit the beneficial ultra-violet rays and keep out the burning ones. They will be light weight and equipped with pockets for food capsules, which she will eat instead of meat and potatoes.
According to 1950s futurists, women of the year 2000 would be giantesses. Her proportions will be perfect, though Amazonian, because science will have perfected a balanced ration of vitamins, proteins and minerals that will produce the maximum bodily efficiency, the minimum of fat.
She will go in for all kinds of sports – probably will compete with men athletes in football, baseball, prizefighting and wrestling.
She'll be in on all the high-level groups of finance, business and government.
She may even be president.
So they would be Amazonian giantessses who like to go "frilly only after dark".
Wow. I wish such a turn of events had come true.
such a magnificent turn of phrase — it sounds like the Victorian equivalent of Skinemax, which would consist solely of a salacious sousaphone solo.
The illustration above is from a December 24, 1949 Associated Press piece by weight-loss entrepreneur Ann Delafield. In this similar article, Delafield cited sunshine as a catalyst for women becoming Amazons. Except for two problems. As a biochemist I know that sunshine makes almost no difference on growth patterns, and two, even if that was true modern women spend way more time indoors than any previous generation.
The difference between 1900 and 1950 was largely due to better food and healthier conditions. The difference between now and 1950 also has other factors like rising rates of anorexia, obesity and the fact that women are still loath to enter male dominated fields.
Despite the 60 years that have passed since the 1950s Wonder Woman is still running around in her tight clothes and showing lots of skin. Some things never change apparently.
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