Last edition:
Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts
Friday, June 13, 2025
Saturday, June 7, 2025
Tuesday, June 7, 1910. Suppressing a rebellion, incorporating a town, birth of a famous photographer.
Mexican troops were dispatched to suppress an uprising by the Maya Indians in Yucatán.
Byron Wyoming was incorporated.
Farm Security Administration Marion Post Wolcott was born in New Jersey.
Last edition:
Sunday, June 5, 1910. Death of O. Henry.
Thursday, June 5, 2025
Tuesday, June 5, 1945. The Berlin Declaration.
The Berlin Declaration was signed by the United States, USSR, Britain and France, confirming the complete legal dissolution of the German state.
Declaration regarding the defeat of Germany and the assumption of supreme authority with respect to Germany by the Governments of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the Provisional Government of the French Republic.
The German armed forces on land, at sea and in the air have been completely defeated and have surrendered unconditionally and Germany, which bears responsibility for the war, is no longer capable of resisting the will of the victorious Powers. The unconditional surrender of Germany has thereby been effected, and Germany has become subject to such requirements as may now or hereafter be imposed upon her.
There is no central Government or authority in Germany capable of accepting responsibility for the maintenance of order, the administration of the country and compliance with the requirements of the victorious Powers.
It is in these circumstances necessary, without prejudice to any subsequent decisions that may be taken respecting Germany, to make provision for the cessation of any further hostilities on the part of the German armed forces, for the maintenance of order in Germany and for the administration of the country, and to announce the immediate requirements with which Germany must comply.
The Representatives of the Supreme Commands of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the French Republic, hereinafter called the "Allied Representatives," acting by authority of their respective Governments and in the interests of the United Nations, accordingly make the following Declaration:
The Governments of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United Kingdom, and the Provisional Government of the French Republic, hereby assume supreme authority with respect to Germany, including all the powers possessed by the German Government, the High Command and any state, municipal, or local government or authority. The assumption, for the purposes stated above, of the said authority and powers does not affect the annexation of Germany.
The Governments of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United Kingdom, and the Provisional Government of the French Republic, will hereafter determine the boundaries of Germany or any part thereof and the status of Germany or of any area at present being part of German territory.
In virtue of the supreme authority and powers thus assumed by the four Governments, the Allied Representatives announce the following requirements arising from the complete defeat and unconditional surrender of Germany with which Germany must comply:
ARTICLE 1
Germany, and all German military, naval and air authorities and all forces under German control shall immediately cease hostilities in all theatres of war against the forces of the United Nations on land, at sea and in the air.
ARTICLE 2
(a) All armed forces of Germany or under German control, wherever they may be situated, including land, air, anti-aircraft and naval forces, the S.S., S.A. and Gestapo, and all other forces of auxiliary organisations equipped with weapons, shall be completely disarmed, handing over their weapons and equipment to local Allied Commanders or to officers designated by the Allied Representatives
(b) The personnel of the formations and units of all the forces referred to in paragraph (a) above shall, at the discretion of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Allied State concerned, be declared to be prisoners of war, pending further decisions, and shall be subject to such conditions and directions as may be prescribed by the respective Allied Representatives.
(c) All forces referred to in paragraph (a) above, wherever they may be, will remain in their present positions pending instructions from the Allied Representatives.
(d) Evacuation by the said forces of all territories outside the frontiers of Germany as they existed on the 31st December, 1937, will proceed according to instructions to be given by the Allied Representatives.
(e) Detachments of civil police to be armed with small arms only, for the maintenance of order and for guard duties, will be designated by the Allied Representatives.
ARTICLE 3
(a) All aircraft of any kind or nationality in Germany or German-occupied or controlled territories or waters, military, naval or civil, other than aircraft in the service of the Allies, will remain on the ground, on the water or aboard ships pending further instructions.
(b) All German or German-controlled aircraft in or over territories or waters not occupied or controlled by Germany will proceed to Germany or to such other place or places as may be specified by the Allied Representatives.
ARTICLE 4
(a) All German or German-controlled naval vessels, surface and submarine, auxiliary naval craft, and merchant and other shipping, wherever such vessels may be at the time of this Declaration, and all other merchant ships of whatever nationality in German ports, will remain in or proceed immediately to ports and bases as specified by the Allied Representatives. The crews of such vessels will remain on board pending further instructions.
(b) All ships and vessels of the United Nations, whether or not title has been transferred as the result of prize court or other proceedings, which are at the disposal of Germany or under German control at the time of this Declaration, will proceed at the dates and to the ports or bases specified by the Allied Representatives.
ARTICLE 5
(a) All or any of the following articles in the possession of the German armed forces or under German control or at German disposal will be held intact and in good condition at the disposal of the Allied Representatives, for such purposes and at such times and places as they may prescribe:
(i) all arms, ammunition, explosives, military equipment, stores and supplies and other implements of war of all kinds and all other war materials;
(ii) all naval vessels of all classes, both surface and submarine, auxiliary naval craft and all merchant shipping, whether afloat, under repair or construction, built or building;
(iii) all aircraft of all kinds, aviation and anti-aircraft equipment and devices;
(iv) all transportation and communications facilities and equipment, by land, water or air;
(v) all military installations and establishments, including airfields, seaplane bases, ports and naval bases, storage depots, permanent and temporary land and coast fortifications, fortresses and other fortified areas, together with plans and drawings of all such fortifications, installations and establishments;
(vi) all factories, plants, shops, research institutions, laboratories, testing stations, technical data, patents, plans, drawings and inventions, designed or intended to produce or to facilitate the production or use of the articles, materials, and facilities referred to in sub-paragraphs (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and (v) above or otherwise to further the conduct of war.
(b) At the demand of the Allied Representatives the following will be furnished:
(i) the labour, services and plant required for the maintenance or operation of any of the six categories mentioned in paragraph (a) above; and
(ii) any information or records that may be required by the Allied Representatives in connection with the same.
(c) At the demand of the Allied Representatives all facilities will be provided for the movement of Allied troops and agencies, their equipment and supplies, on the railways, roads and other land communications or by sea, river or air. All means of transportation will be maintained in good order and repair, and the labour, services and plant necessary therefor will be furnished.
ARTICLE 6
(a) The German authorities will release to the Allied Representatives, in accordance with the procedure to be laid down by them, all prisoners of war at present in their power, belonging to the forces of the United Nations, and will furnish full lists of these persons, indicating the places of their detention in Germany or territory occupied by Germany. Pending the release of such prisoners of war, the German authorities and people will protect them in their persons and property and provide them with adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical attention and money in accordance with their rank or official position.
(b) The German authorities and people will in like manner provide for and release all other nationals of the United Nations who are confined, interned or otherwise under restraint, and all other persons who may be confined, interned or otherwise under restraint for political reasons or as a result of any Nazi action, law or regulation which discriminates on the ground of race, colour, creed or political belief.
(c) The German authorities will, at the demand of the Allied Representatives, hand over control of places of detention to such officers as may be designated for the purpose by the Allied Representatives.
ARTICLE 7
The German authorities concerned will furnish to the Allied Representatives:
(a) full information regarding the forces referred to in Article 2 (a), and, in particular, will furnish forthwith all information which the Allied Representatives may require concerning the numbers, locations and dispositions of such forces, whether located inside or outside Germany;
(b) complete and detailed information concerning mines, minefields and other obstacles to movement by land, sea or air, and the safety lanes in connection therewith. All such safety lanes will be kept open and clearly marked; all mines, minefields and other dangerous obstacles will as far as possible be rendered safe, and all aids to navigation will be reinstated. Unarmed German military and civilian personnel with the necessary equipment will be made available and utilized for the above purposes and for the removal of mines, minefields and other obstacles as directed by the Allied Representatives.
ARTICLE 8
There shall be no destruction, removal, concealment, transfer or scuttling of, or damage to, any military, naval, air, shipping, port, industrial and other like property and facilities and all records and archives, wherever they may be situated, except as may be directed by the Allied Representatives.
ARTICLE 9
Pending the institution of control by the Allied Representatives over all means of communication, all radio and telecommunication installations and other forms of wire or wireless communications, whether ashore or afloat, under German control, will cease transmission except as directed by the Allied Representatives.
ARTICLE 10
The forces, ships, aircraft, military equipment, and other property in Germany or in German control or service or at German disposal, of any other country at war with any of the Allies, will be subject to the provisions of this Declaration and of any proclamations, orders, ordinances or instructions issued thereunder.
ARTICLE 11
(a) The principal Nazi leaders as specified by the Allied Representatives, and all persons from time to time named or designated by rank, office or employment by the Allied Representatives as being suspected of having committed, ordered or abetted war crimes or analogous offences, will be apprehended and surrendered to the Allied Representatives.
(b) The same will apply in the case of any national of any of the United Nations who is alleged to have committed an offence against his national law, and who may at any time be named or designated by rank, office or employment by the Allied Representatives.
(c) The German authorities and people will comply with any instructions given by the Allied Representatives for the apprehension and surrender of such persons.
ARTICLE 12
The Allied Representatives will station forces and civil agencies in any or all parts of Germany as they may determine.
ARTICLE 13
(a) In the exercise of the supreme authority with respect to Germany assumed by the Governments of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United Kingdom, and the Provisional Government of the French Republic, the four Allied Governments will take such steps, including the complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany, as they deem requisite for future peace and security.
(b) The Allied Representatives will impose on Germany additional political, administrative, economic, financial, military and other requirements arising from the complete defeat of Germany. The Allied Representatives, or persons or agencies duly designated to act on their authority, will issue proclamations, orders, ordinances and instructions for the purpose of laying down such additional requirements, and of giving effect to the other provisions of this Declaration. All German authorities and the German people shall carry out unconditionally the requirements of the Allied Representatives, and shall fully comply with all such proclamations, orders, ordinances and instructions.
ARTICLE 14
This Declaration enters into force and effect at the date and hour set forth below. In the event of failure on the part of the German authorities or people promptly and completely to fulfill their obligations hereby or hereafter imposed, the Allied Representatives will take whatever action may be deemed by them to be appropriate under the circumstances.
ARTICLE 15
This Declaration is drawn up in the English, Russian, French and German languages. The English, Russian and French are the only authentic texts.
BERLIN, GERMANY, June 5, 1945.
Signed at 1800 hours, Berlin time, by
Dwight D. Eisenhower,
General of the Army USA;
Zhukov,
Marshal of the Soviet Union;
B. L. Montgomery,
Field Marshal, Great Britain;
De Lattre de Tassisny,
French Provisional Government.
The U.S. Army Air Force dropped 3,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Kobe, Japan.
The 37th Infantry Division occupied Aritao on Luzon.
More hard fighting on Okinawa occurred and a sudden typhoon damaged 4 battleships, 8 aircraft carriers, 7 cruisers, 14 destroyers, 2 tankers, and and ammunition transport ship, of the US 3rd Fleet.
A Kamikaze attack crippled the USS Mississippi and the heavy cruiser USS Louisville.
Esquire magazines second class mailing privileges were restored by a US appellate court after having been suspended due to the feature of Vargas Girl pinups, which foreshadowed Playboy Playmates. The decision was appealed to the United States Supreme Court which upheld the decision, unfortunately, in 1946.
This demonstrates that the widespread public acceptance of pornography was already occurring in advance of the 1953 introduction of Playboy, so the trend we've discussed here in other threads was already underway with the Courts frustrating efforts to restrict the development. This also, we'd note, runs a bit counter to the heavy attribution we've attached to Hefner's rag, because, as noted, the trend was underway, although Esquire's depictions were illustrations, rather than photographs. To a certain degree, the U.S. Army publication Yank had headed in the same direction, with its centerfolds, although they were always full clothed.
It wasn't a good trend.
Last edition:
Monday, June 4, 1945. Marines land on the Oroku Peninsula on Okinawa.
Saturday, June 5, 1915. German forces retook Przemyśl.
German forces retook the lost Austro Hungarian fortress of Przemyśl.
British forces repulsed a major Ottoman counter attack at Gallipoli.
Women obtained the franchise in Denmark and Iceland.
The U-14 was sunk in the North Sea by the HMT Oceanic II.
The HMS E-11 slipped back through the Dardanelles.
Last edition:
Friday, June 4, 1915. Bring Your Horses.
Labels: 1910s, 1915, Animals, British Army, Equine Transportation, French Army, Gallipoli, Indian Army, Ottoman Army, World War One, Wyoming
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Wednesday, May 27, 1925. Finding the right girl.
Saturday, May 24, 2025
The Best Post of the Week of May 18, 2025.
It was quite a week.
We started the week off with a look at the Vietnamese Diaspora
A Sunday Morning look at the Vietnamese Diaspora.
And we delved into local politicians betraying local values.
The occupant of the Oval Office was on display again.
I posed a query to our readers, but received no response.
We noted a momentous anniversary for Christianity.
Republicans were all atwitter about alleged coverups of Joe Biden's decline, while they're covering up Donald Trump's.
Some depressing news in the age of science denialism.
Women were on the blog a lot.
We considered authenticity.
The U.S. took a giant step towards economic disaster.
Governor Gordon called Chuck Gray out on the carpet.
Appearance. Shape and being in shape and women (men will come next).
Donna Reed as a Yank centerfold. Reed was well known actress by this time, and is perhaps best known for her role in The Best Years Of Our Lives. Her actual last name was Mullenger but as she started acting during World War Two, her studio changed it to Reed over her objection. She became a peace activist during the Vietnam War.
Some time ago we received a comment here from a reader, and the reader emailed me after the recent item on fashion, and reminded me that I said I'd do a threat on the topic.
So here it is.
The threads were these ones:
The comment was this one:
I read this, and your other post on Fran Camuglia. Wow, what a sad life.
I have an observation that I wonder if you would comment on that your post seems to illustrate. The pretty girls of the 50s and 60s looked different than they do now. They were beautiful, but softer, and more natural looking. Even the real dolls like Camuglia, with their exaggerated features, were softer and prettier. Think Marilyn Monroe.
I don't know what's changed it, but maybe the emphasis on "working out" has. Seems like you have really fit girls, and then really out of shape girls, and not much in between.
My replies were:
Thanks for your comment. Her life was tragic.
On your observation, people do indeed look different at different ages in the past, but I haven't really thought of it in this context. Having thought of it now, a little, I think there's something to your observation. As a minor personal observation, "working out" was not really a thing, as you note, in the 70s when I was growing up. Thinking back to high school I can't really think of any overweight kids at all. I'm sure there were some, but it must have been really rare. It seems to me that high schoolers now look older than we did when we were there, but oddly kids of my fathers vintage, who graduated high school in the 40s, looked much more mature. Nobody looked bulked up, or "ripped", or whatever.
This might be worth a post on the site, after I ponder it a bit.By the way, while I've already noted it in these posts, her life being tragic isn't unique in terms of Playboy centerfolds. Quite a few of their stories are pretty grim, and Playboy contributed to that. In this case, quite frankly, she was off to a really bad start as it was, as she was married absurdly young, divorced very rapidly, and objectified forever when still in her teens.
I noted that it might be worth a post at the time, and then I went on to other things. The email reminded me of it.
Well, in thinking about it, and I have no real scientific way to discuss this, my observational comment is, on this question, while I think there are some morphological changes we can observe in women, there aren't really that many.
That's probably surprising.
Let's start off with a couple of things, the first being that the first part of our discussion necessarily references young women. That's important, I think, for reasons that will become clear.
The second observation is that time period and method of illustration matters. We're not really going to get, for example, very accurate depictions of women, or men, at a certain point in our past.
Let's start with that.
A lot of comments like this, and I've seen them before, are based on photographs. I.e., in this case, somebody is looking at a photograph of a Playboy model from 1967 and drawing conclusions from that. But can we?
Probably not.
Most early photography was in the category of portraiture. Old portraits give us a much more realistic idea of what people looked like than "published" photographs do. And certainly better than pornography does. Indeed, that's one of the fundamental destructive aspects of pornography, which we'll get into later.
Anyhow, cameras had to develop for quite some time before snapshots or the like appeared. In the meantime, illustration really developed and that gives us a pretty good idea of what standards of beauty were up to at least 1920. Illustration made use of models, who were chosen for their physical appearance, but they rarely strayed massively from the mean. The first real "standard" was Florence Evelyn Nesbit, who became the Gibson Girl. She was pretty, to be sure, but didn't depart from the mean in a massive fashion
This was equally true of lesser known models, and indeed, it was mostly true for early movie stars as well.
Movies began to take over from illustrations as the bearers of standards in the 1920s and certainly had by the 1930s. Female movie stars began to be more and more chosen for their beauty as well as their acting talents by the late 1930ss, which did result in an exaggerated standard in the sense that not every woman you meet is going to look like a movie start.
Teenage girls with cameras in the 1930s.
Actress Susan Hayword as a Yank centerfold.
But, nonetheless, while they were pretty, only in very rare instances were they somebody whom you might not meet, appearance wise, at the Piggly Wiggly.
Lauren Bacall as a teenager.
It wasn't until the 1950s that this really began to change.
Starting in the 1950s, and I'll place the date as 1953 when the first issue of Playboy came out, the beauty standard became emphasized and highly exaggerated in terms of physical features. The first Playboy centerfold was Marilyn Monroe, against her will, and her features in some ways became the standard.
Or rather her imagined features.
Playboy emphaszied the supposed "girl next store" with teh concept htat she'd lost her moral compass, was sterile, stupid, and very top heavy. Marilyn Monroe's early movies, indeed the bulk of them, portrayed characters just like that. The funny thing is that Monroe's own early modeling photographs didn't depict her in taht fashion at all
The photos above, from the 1940s, show a young Monroe as an actual sort of girl next door. Her physical features were no doubt the same as they were in her earliest movies, but they weren't being emphasized. Soon after these photographs they would be, and in movies like Gentlemen Prefer Blonds, they were on display.
Playboy,. as noted, arrived in 1953. The 1950s gave us a host of actress that were Monroe knockoffs, some with even more exaggerated features. By the early 1960s a wave of Italian and other European actresses hit, all of whom were very topheavy, although they weren't portrayed as dumb. Playboy and its followers kept on keeping on and if anything exaggerated things more. Camuglia comes from that era.
Indeed, it was so notable, it made up one of the comedic lines in 1963's It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World:
J. Algernon Hawthorne: I must say, if I had the grievous misfortune to be a citizen of this benighted country, I should be the most hesitant at offering any criticism whatever of any other.J. Russell Finch: Wait a minute, are you knocking this country? Are you saying something against America?J. Algernon Hawthorne: Against it? I should be positively astounded to hear of anything that could be said FOR it. Why, the whole bloody place is the most unspeakable matriarchy in the whole history of civilization! Look at yourself, and the way your wife and her strumpet of a mother push you through the hoop! As far as I can see, American men have been totally emasculated. They're like slaves! They die like flies from coronary thrombosis, while their women sit under hairdryers, eating chocolates and arranging for every second Tuesday to be some sort of Mother's Day! And this positively infantile preoccupation with bosoms. In all my time in this wretched, godforsaken country, the one thing that has appalled me most of all is this preposterous preoccupation with bosoms. Don't you realize they have become the dominant theme in American culture: in literature, advertising and all fields of entertainment and everything. I'll wager you anything you like: if American women stopped wearing brassieres, your whole national economy would collapse overnight.
In a lot of ways, we're still in it. It's what's given us plastic surgery and a host of other horrors.
So, overall, what I'm saying is that actual physical appearance didn't change that much, but rather the publicized standards did, to women's detriment.
So what about the gym?
When Camuglia appeared in Playboy in the early 1960s "working out" wasn't a term. Indeed, gymnasiums were around, but their atmosphere wasn't quite what it is today. In a lot of places the gym was the YMCA. Indeed, in this locality, it was for years, before, some time in the 1970s, private gyms began to appear.
Early gyms really had all the features of moder nones, they were just less used and sort of used by a clas sof urban people who was unusually into physical fitness, save for weight lifters, who are a different class entirely.
Having said all of that, women have been involved in athletics, if not working out per se, for decades.
Australian female Olympic swimmers, 1932. These women look pretty darned fit.
Girls basketball team, 1907. Playing basketball while dressed like this must have been a huge pain.
Indeed, nobody was "working out", really, until the 1960s. There wasn't much of a need to.
That doesn't mean that people weren't physically active, however. Women were involved in Olympic sports right from the onset, for example. And as late as the 1970s, at least, an incredible number of women engaged in some sports, such as tennis and golf. My mother, who grew up in the 1930s and 40s, was an avid golfer at one time, and a real fan of tennis. She also constantly rode a bicycle, and she swam nearly daily up until her final decline. Yes, she's an unusual example, but not that unusual.
Her mother, I'd note, was also a tennis player.
There's sports, of course, but there's physical work. And everyone engaged in a lot more physical activity by necessity.
Which catches us back up, sort of, to the 1950s. As we've discussed here before, domestic machinery really came in after World War Two, and with that, a decline in physical activity. This meant more women went into office work.
The 1950s also brought the country the "cheap food" policy, and we still live in that era, and that's where things really begin to change. This was noted the other day on Twitter in a post by O.W. Root
O.W. Root@NecktieSalvageCurrently there are two extremes that didn't really exist en masse before.1 - Extreme obesity2 - Extreme gym cultureMaybe one day those extremes will fade and a more traditional historic norm will replace them.
That pretty much nails it in a way, other than to say lots of people are neither part of a gym culture or obese.
A lot of people are taller, however. That's been well noted. It's a nutritional thing, but here's one area where people, including women, have a different morphology than they once typically did. Contrary to what people tend to think, however, its flatted out since the late 1970s after having really gotten ramped up, around the globe, in the 1890s.
Now, here's one more thing that's changed. Women in particular used to at one time very much "age" once they hit their 40s.
Contrary to what people think, people don't "live longer" than they once did. Rather, premature mortality has dropped way off. But people did "age" more quickly. If you look at photographs of married couples the appearance of women over 40 is often shocking in comparison to now. Now, for various reasons, women in their 40s are not regarded as old or even middle aged, but often if you go back to mid century they'll have a much older appearance. I"ve seen photographs of women in their 40s whom you would easily guess were in their 60s.
That's probably all due to the stress of life and hard work.
So, all in all, I don't think the evidence supports the assertion there's been much of a change at all. I do think that an emphasis on a certain look, or a series of appearances, has changed over time, but more recently its broadened back out, which is a good thing.
Iceland girl delivering milk.
Mexican women in festive dress
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Mid Week At Work
"Palmer, Alfred T.,, photographer. Learning how to determine latitude by using a sextant is Senta Osoling, student at Polytechnic High School, Los Angeles, Calif. Navigation classes are part of the school's program for training its students for specific contributions to the war effort 1942 Sept. 1 transparency : color. Notes: Title from FSA or OWI agency caption. Transfer from U.S. Office of War Information, 1944. Subjects: Los Angeles Polytechnic High School Schools Vocational education Navigation World War, 1939-1945 United States--California--Los Angeles Format: Transparencies--Color Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication. Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print Part Of: Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Collection 12002-40 (DLC) 93845501 General information about the FSA/OWI Color Photographs is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.fsac Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsac.1a35363 Call Number: LC-USW36-282"
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