What Guidance Did Vintage Teen Advice Books Offer?

We take the web without any consideration typically, and I say this as somebody who had entry to the web for many of my teen years. I grew up earlier than social media, for which I’m deeply grateful, however I nonetheless had entry to Immediate Messenger, to talk rooms, to burgeoning web sites with boards from my favourite teen magazines, and to message boards galore. These had been great sources for getting recommendation and perception about any and all the things, from tips on how to write paper or speech, to tips on how to navigate a difficult friendship/romantic connection, to attending to know my anatomy, and a lot extra.

Now, that info is much more considerable. Not all of it’s nice or correct, after all. However there are additionally extra safeguards in place and extra professionals working to vet these sources for the strongest and most correct recommendation and perception.

However what did youngsters do earlier than the appearance of the web? Actually, they talked with each other — I believe, like me, younger folks obtained their details about what sure slang phrases meant from extra worldly associates. In addition they in all probability talked to folks or different trusted adults. However there are some subjects that aren’t simple to hunt recommendation about from these sources.

In researching the historical past of Maureen Daly’s Seventeenth Summer season, one of many issues that caught with me was how Daly had a strong profession as an recommendation columnist for youngsters. She wrote “On The Stable Facet” for The Chicago Tribune, which was syndicated throughout the nation. It supplied recommendation on all the things from romance to navigating arguments with mother and father and extra. The columns coated all the things from what occurs should you inform an off-color joke (see picture), tips on how to shed extra pounds should you’re slightly too droopy (directed, after all, at younger feminine readers), and why it’s necessary to not get up a date (ghosting just isn’t a brand new phenomenon). Columns like Daly’s, in addition to her traditionally necessary books for teenagers, had been necessary as a result of they had been foundational in acknowledging youngsters, and particularly white center class cisgender youngsters, as a demographic socially, culturally, and economically.

It’s not a shock teen recommendation e book had been among the many first nonfiction titles written, marketed, and offered to teenagers — an early forerunner of YA nonfiction extra broadly. They sought to encourage white center class cis teenagers to be their greatest selves and to evolve to social requirements that will guarantee their place in “correct” white society as they aged into maturity. Many, together with the lately revisited and re-popularized Glamour Information for Teenagers by Betty Cornell, featured or had been influenced by the teenager celebrities or recommendation supplied in magazines geared to youngsters on the time.

However what had been a few of these books? How have they aged? What have they got to say concerning the time and context during which they had been written?

Cornell’s e book, printed in 1951, supplied recommendation on magnificence, well being, style, manners, and extra, all courtesy of Betty Cornell, who was a teen mannequin of the Forties. She was well-known for having been extraordinarily skinny — the Toledo Blade in 1947 famous her 19 inch waist — however, as she shares to start with of Glamour Information, she didn’t begin out that means and certainly, needed to work arduous to alter from “tubby teen” to her svelte determine.

If Cornell’s title or e book sound acquainted, you could be remembering that her e book was used as inspiration for 2014’s award-winning YA nonfiction memoir Common: Classic Knowledge for a Trendy Geek by Maya van Wagenen. Van Wagenen’s father discovered a replica of Cornell’s e book and acquired it for her, and he or she adopted the recommendation within the e book as she navigated center college.

“Lovely hair is without doubt one of the most necessary issues a woman has,” writes Cornell in her e book. “Whether or not it’s blond, brunette or purple, fairly hair can all the time overcome the handicap of a not-so-pretty face.” To ensure that hair to be wholesome, she continues within the e book’s fourth chapter, it begins with weight-reduction plan and train, the central subjects of the primary three chapters of the e book. Ever puzzled concerning the knowledge of brushing one’s hair 100 instances earlier than mattress (see this iconic scene in Now and Then — Chrissy’s mother would have grown up on Glamour Information); you’ll be able to thank Cornell for codifying it in her recommendation e book.

Although not essential to match, do notice that when deciding on nail polish, it ought to harmonize with no matter lipstick you put on continuously. The most effective methodology for strolling to seem swish and model-like is transferring your leg in a singular movement from the hip, working to keep away from bending your knees as a lot as potential. Ensure you all the time scent good, too, as probably the greatest compliments an individual can obtain is simply that. Likewise, underarms are sleeker and extra dainty once they’ve been shaved.

However what of conduct? Of courting? Cornell covers these subjects, too.

Cash is, after all, a teen concern, and mother and pa can’t all the time present sufficient for one’s busy life. Cornell suggests teenagers suppose arduous about discovering a gentle job however not on the expense of faculty and courting. She lays out a pattern schedule for babysitting, saying, “there may be nothing to forestall you from making up an inventory of purchasers and retaining in contact with them.” That schedule not solely contains nights of the week and households of which you’d babysit, but in addition area for a free Thursday night, free Friday night, and Saturday night time, “free for dates.” One other nice job thought? Cooking. It’s so simple as with the ability to “canvas your block and notify everybody that you’ll make muffins, cookies, scorching rolls, and many others., for any events they’re planning.”

Don’t have a whole lot of associates or celebration invitations? It may very well be your individual persona being a drag and it’s time to get actual about it. Likable folks keep away from bigotry, they usually additionally keep away from blackballing, “a nasty phrase [. . . that] even tastes unhealthy on the tongue.” And if recognition is on the thoughts, by no means worry: one of the simplest ways to turn into fashionable is to be your self, be sort, and be a frontrunner. You’ll do this by trying good and feeling good, too, and Cornell supplies some very fundamental bodily actions instantly after the chapter on recognition that will help you alongside the best way.

Cornell’s e book has been fascinating for therefore many readers for therefore a few years. Its depiction of a “purer” time when a woman had little extra to fret about than being fairly and favored and that there’s a useful information for fixing this points is perhaps a giant motive. However nostalgia overlooks the extra essential function these books performed: they created and maintained white, center class norms, passing down applicable methods to be and to behave that had been crafted for center class white readers — notice the fashions within the e book had been all white, and with regards to discussions of magnificence, there is no such thing as a white default, as white is the solely choice. Is there consolation, possibly, in considering that culturally, we’re a bit broader? That recommendation books like these have higher embraced a multicultural world?

Perhaps, possibly not. If something, we see what stood as “feminist” on the time has actually turn into much more cringe-worthy than empowering. That might even be mentioned of van Wagenen could view the e book now, eight years after its publication and put up–highschool commencement, as (white) younger adults have turn into extra attuned to their privileged standing.

There’s additionally the ever-broadening web, which has allowed these of the worldwide majority to talk up extra, to deconstruct white tradition and its assumed function as “norm,” and given alternative to create extra areas for younger folks to find their true selves and embrace it — nail shades in a coordinating lipstick or not. 

Cornell’s books, which included a number of extra recommendation titles, weren’t the one midcentury titles reaching and creating a particular model of white center class attitudes and behaviors. 

Let’s step again for a second to a well-recognized title. 

In 1946, simply 4 years after the publication of her sister’s fashionable Seventeenth Summer season, Sheila John Daly printed a teen recommendation e book as a teen herself. Older sister Maureen, who’d discovered success with “On The Stable Facet,” handed down the column to Sheila. She had the voice and know-how, after all, being the goal demographic herself.

Sheila printed Character Plus solely a few years after “teen-ager” grew to become a typical time period used to explain adolescents (and Maureen’s e book probably had a hand in making that time period fashionable). It’s not condescending nor pandering, and there’s simply sufficient snark and humor in its pages to offer it an genuine really feel. In interesting to its readership, Daly peppers the e book with references to present popular culture stars and teenage idols. Although there’s not a full textual content accessible to peruse on-line, you’ll be able to learn some nice strains right here, and know that the e book should have executed properly, as Sheila wrote a number of extra teen recommendation books, together with What’s Your P.Q. (Character Quotient), Social gathering Enjoyable, and Fairly, Please. 

Perhaps it’s not shocking that movie star helped encourage — or sought to emulate — the success of adlescent recommendation books. Cornell, as famous, was a mannequin. However she wasn’t the one star writing knowledge for teenagers. So, too, did Dick Clark in his 1959 Your Happiest Years. Sure, that Dick Clark. 

It’s not recognized whether or not Clark penned the recommendation or not, however given the recognition of American Bandstand, which debuted in 1957, his title was sufficient. 

“Teenager,” popularized within the decade earlier than, exploded in use and within the consciousness after World Conflict II, particularly in America. Jon Savage wrote about this extensively in his e book Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875–1945, and one of many themes he explores is the usage of the time period much less as an understanding of a particular age group (like “adolescence”) and extra as a advertising and marketing class. Clark’s e book? It suits immediately into this concept, on condition that youngsters had been capable of spend their very own cash (earned by their babysitting or cooking jobs and even these uncommon “part-time” jobs Cornell cites) and accomplish that on gadgets that met their calls for and pursuits. We see this teenager-as-marketing-idea play out nonetheless at this time, with even how younger grownup books are categorized and the talk round whether or not it’s an precise class of books or just a solution to promote sure tales.

Regardless of the title, Clark’s recommendation within the e book was something however blissful. The place Cornell praised the usage of make-up for teenagers, Clark warned in opposition to it. However extra, it supplied a preview of what teen readers would see echoed within the YA downside novels of the following a long time. In a single anecdote, Clark recollects the time a woman he knew crashed his automobile and have become injured as a result of she determined to remain the night time at a pal’s home with out informing him. A boy who had a historical past of sickness didn’t adhere to curfew and got here down with tuberculosis. 

Women ought to observe how their moms deal with their fathers after an extended, arduous day at work — put together the meal, after all — and boys must be cautious to not spend their cash frivolously in order to make sure they come up with the money for courting sooner or later. 

Even a serious affect on teenagers knew his job was to bolster white, center class, heteronormative requirements. 

If we take Savage’s argument that teenager was a advertising and marketing time period, it’s unimaginable to not then have a look at one more teen recommendation e book of the mid-Nineteen Sixties: Ideas for Teenagers from Carnation. Carnation, as within the Nestle model greatest recognized for its condensed milk. 

“A bored woman isn’t a reasonably woman. Chances are high she’s doleful, droopy, boring, and drearily uninteresting and little or no enjoyable,” reads a paragraph from the part on breakfast concepts. Ostensibly a cookbook shilling Carnation merchandise, the information is way greater than that. It, too, gives white cis het norms to teenagers with the intention to not solely educate them to evolve, however to additionally eat and that consumption is vital to being the very best model of your self potential. 

Who might be boring when you possibly can be shopping for condensed (white) milk?

These will not be, after all, the one teen recommendation books from this Forties to late Nineteen Sixties period which might be worthy of exploring and deconstructing. However they every spotlight what drove their recognition and the way it’s we’ve discovered much more extensive ranging teen recommendation books and web sites at this time. Now not are some of these books solely serving one objective. They will’t — and although there actually are books for teenagers that prescribe white norms, they’re in small, specialised markets (together with these which might be, no shock, funding a few of at this time’s largest e book challenges throughout the nation). 

Try a few of the following for much more curious, humorous, and cringe-worthy recommendation. Many could also be accessible within the public area or by way of Google Books and the Web Archive, as they are often powerful to trace down by way of conventional retailers (and enjoyable truth: the rise in recognition of Cornell’s Glamour Information following the publication of Common led to resellers and vintage e book collectors and sellers attempting to determine what, precisely, was inflicting these books to turn into excessive demand): 

• Appeal is Not Sufficient by Mary Younger (…marry younger?)
• The Co-Ed E book of Appeal and Magnificence by the Co-Ed editors (Co-Ed was a house economics centered journal printed by Scholastic for younger folks)
• Etiquette for Younger Moderns by Homosexual Head
• For Each Younger Coronary heart by Connie Francis (she was concerned in American Bandstand, too)
• Hello There, Excessive Faculty by Homosexual Head
• As soon as Upon a Dream: A Private Chat with All Youngsters by Patti Web page
• The Seventeen E book of Younger Residing by Enid Haupt
• She-Manners by Robert H. Loeb Jr. (ladies, don’t ever put on shorts…)
• Teen Speak by Marion Glendining
• That Freshman Feeling by Judith Unger Scott
• Your Manners Are Exhibiting by Betty Betz

Need one other deep dive into classic teen reads? Dig into this have a look at Fifties teen pulp comics.