How To Dress For Success And Get A Man


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There were lots of hits and misses in the 1960s. Hits? John F. Kennedy, the Black Panther Party, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Equal Pay Act, and hippie culture. Misses? The War in Vietnam, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, Richard Nixon, and hippie culture.

Adding to the long list of 1960s cultural misses is Edith Head’s 1967 self-help pamphlet, titled, How to Dress for Success and Get A Man, distributed for heterosexual, middle/upper-class, white, single ladies. The pamphlet was eventually novelized.

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Meet the Author

Edith Head was a world-renowned Hollywood designer. She is perhaps best known for her work as a costume designer for the 1949 film The Heiress, and The Sting in 1973. Head also styled Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Doris Day, and Jane Fonda in a number of big-budget films.

While Head is lauded in the history of Hollywood fashion design, her How to Dress for Success pamphlet is memorable in an entirely different (and not so great) way. The pamphlet goes on for pages, detailing Heads’ tips for what girls should wear to impress, date, and keep an eligible bachelor.

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Some Good Advice

There’s some valid feminist rhetoric in the first section. For example, Head advises women to establish an agency on their quest towards success:

“Do you live near a university? Take some night courses. Do you play cards? Join a card club. Do you like dancing? Take lessons. Do you like sport? Indulge your interest by participating actively.”

On the other hand, “success” after the second paragraph is loosely defined as finding the right outfit to attract a boy.

How to Be Sexist in 10 Quotes

The rest of the pamphlet is unsurprisingly sexist, generalizing the most obnoxious elements of the gender binary spectrum.

Here are the 10 best lines of unabashedly sexist rhetoric for analysis of your next feminist reading group:

  1. “You’ll learn a lot about [men] simply by listening.”
  2. “Rugged sportsmen can’t stand competitive women.”
  3. “He’s one of the strong men who likes his women weak.”
  4. “Too many pointed questions might scare him away.”
  5. “Don’t giggle. Sit up straight and be on time.”
  6. “Obvious…actions, conversations, or clothes will send him scurrying back to all the blessings of bachelorhood.”
  7. “Man is a possessive animal.”
  8. “Few women are sensationally beautiful.”
  9. “Know what kinds of fashion pleases him.”
  10. “If your cooking is reasonably good, he’ll propose.”

More below. Specifically, here’s what you can do to capture that zexy “shy conservative.” Have fun.

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