Age-old advice: How to attract the boys of 1941

We mine the Free Press archives for advice that still applies today (...or doesn’t)

Advertisement

Advertise with us

Read this article for free:


or

Already have an account? Log in here »

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Subscribe and receive a limited-edition Free Press branded hat or tote.

Digital Subscription

One year of digital access for only $205*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles

*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional

$1 for the first 4 weeks*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles
Start now

*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/09/2019 (2545 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Oct. 1, 1941: Some School-Days Advice for Teen-Agers

Boy Tells Girl by George Antheil

Don't spoil your daintiness; use Lux.
Don't spoil your daintiness; use Lux.

School has opened and you teenagers who attend want to have fun this year, don’t you? Well, line up and let your Uncle George give you a few lessons on how to attain it.

First impressions, of course, count a lot. So don’t go to school all dolled up in satin and lace and frizzy hair. Go to school looking like a wholesome schoolgirl. See that your grooming is perfect, that your clothes fit just right — not too loose or too tight, but sort of streamlined.

I know you are going to yell that you can’t afford good clothing. But the lovely lady at my house who knows about things says so. All you need, she says, is an immaculate blouse, a sweater, perhaps a skirt that has an even hem and sensible-looking shoes. You don’t need a lot of ruffles and gadgets, and if your hair is clean, you really don’t have to have a hairdo.

Don’t go in for exotic makeup and do go in for everything under control.

Then practise walking with a book on your head so you will get that nice schoolgirl walk — straight spine and head erect. Boys are attracted by grace of movement.

Then get a gay light in your eye. Gone is the day of the downcast eye and the nervous shyness. Don’t be bold, but let every male who sees you think of you as a swell girl he would like to meet because he bets you would be fun and good company.

Don’t sneer at the boys as something you don’t want to know or get that over-eager look of hunting boys. Boys don’t like that. Don’t scream and giggle and rush around or they will look after you and dub you “just another one of those silly girls” and pass you up.

Don’t gush over the other girls. Boys hate that, too. Don’t simper and don’t stride around as though you had masculine leanings. Just be a fair and sweet girl who is happy to be at school with other young people and who is frankly interested in everything that is going on in the young crowd.

Then when your class convenes, get busy and concentrate. The day is also past when boys go for the stupid, dumb girls. Be a 1941 modern schoolgirl and have plenty of fun because these are your halcyon days — if you only knew it. 

Report Error Submit a Tip

More Stories

Finding fulfilment as canines’ companion

AV Kitching 9 minute read Preview

Finding fulfilment as canines’ companion

AV Kitching 9 minute read 6:00 AM CDT

Tim Campbell loves dogs. He loves them so much that as soon he retired from his job at Panasonic Canada in early 2024 he began volunteering in earnest at the Winnipeg Humane Society (WHS).

He’d started his voluntary career five years prior with another local dog rescue organization. The work was rewarding, he says but the call-outs were unpredictable.

He was looking for a voluntary role which had a bit more structure to it, something he could build a routine around, while spending time with the animals he truly adores.

“In the summer, I’m there two mornings a week, and when the weather turns a little colder, I’m there anywhere from three to four mornings, depending on what’s going on,” Campbell, 59, explains.

Read
6:00 AM CDT

‘Kind and gentle giant’: man, 21, killed in animal attack on Manitoba First Nation

Chris Kitching 4 minute read Preview

‘Kind and gentle giant’: man, 21, killed in animal attack on Manitoba First Nation

Chris Kitching 4 minute read Updated: 2:43 PM CDT

The family of a 21-year-old man who was fatally attacked by an animal in western Manitoba is waiting for answers, after investigators ruled out a bear attack based on their preliminary findings.

Moses Campeau was walking on a road to a friend’s house in Sapotaweyak Cree Nation, about 600 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, when he was fatally injured Sept. 9, his mother, Paula Campeau, said Monday.

“Moses was a kind and gentle giant,” she said. “He was a person who (people) would ask to come and help them, and he would go without even hesitating.”

Manitoba RCMP said officers from the Swan River detachment found the man on a community road after receiving a report of a suspicious death at about 3:10 a.m. The scene was held and the RCMP’s major crime services took over the investigation.

Read
Updated: 2:43 PM CDT

Winnipeg venues saying no to AI-made advertisements

Sheldon Birnie 8 minute read Preview

Winnipeg venues saying no to AI-made advertisements

Sheldon Birnie 8 minute read Updated: 10:22 AM CDT

Although the days when telephone poles and notice boards across the city were thick with gig posters, either slopped up with wheat paste or wrapped tight with packing tape, are behind us, the art of making an appealing visual ad for live music events is still a vital part of the local creative scene.

However, a widespread backlash against a new kind of slop — the use of generative AI images — has been building, especially among creatives when it comes to promoting live music.

“Live music is and always has been a DIY type of scene, especially locally,” says Evan Simpson, who has been working as a graphic designer for nearly a decade.

“For years people have been making their own flyers, or if they have the budget, hiring a designer or artist to come up with some artwork for their flyers. It’s a whole ecosystem, a scene supporting itself. If you take away the visual side of it, the spark, individuality and uniqueness of each gig poster is lost. What a sad world it would be if all art were made by AI.”

Read
Updated: 10:22 AM CDT

Nothing wrong with planting trees, but it won’t get province very far on path to net zero

Dan Lett 5 minute read Preview

Nothing wrong with planting trees, but it won’t get province very far on path to net zero

Dan Lett 5 minute read 2:39 PM CDT

Manitoba’s new plan to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 is a lot of things. It’s detailed. It’s certainly comprehensive in scope. But when it is all said and done, it is still very much a work in progress.

Read
2:39 PM CDT

Don’t deny kids a bedtime bond with Gran

Maureen Scurfield 5 minute read 2:00 AM CDT

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My mother is coming to visit and our little kids want her to sleep in their bedroom, where there’s a double bed and a single. My husband thinks this idea is ridiculous and says grandma needs her sleep, but I disagree.

I remember sleeping with my grandma — who’s now with the angels — and she told us grandkids (two girls) some wonderful bedtime stories she made up herself. She even put our names into them, making us the stars of the stories.

The best part was getting into our pyjamas with our grandmother, who showed us the magic cord from the little thing that ran from her near-deaf ear down to the secret battery pocket hidden in the bra of her slip. It made her hear us better in the daytime. We thought, “Wow!”

Not surprisingly my own mother has inherited her mom’s fantastic storytelling talent and who knows what else she has to teach the kids when she’s alone with them? I want them to be close.

Menstruation, consent move up in sex-ed lesson plan

Maggie Macintosh 5 minute read Preview

Menstruation, consent move up in sex-ed lesson plan

Maggie Macintosh 5 minute read 6:00 AM CDT

Manitoba’s newest curriculum introduces the menstrual cycle earlier and repeatedly calls for explicit lessons on how students can give, seek, and decline to provide their consent.

The education department has released its sweeping proposal to overhaul how exercise, nutrition and sexuality are taught between kindergarten and Grade 12.

Grade 5 has long served as a key turning point for “the talk,” said J Fiedler, a sexual and reproductive health educator who provided input on the new curriculum.

“There’s no ‘the talk’ anymore. Now, there’s continuations of multiple ‘talks,’ which can hopefully reduce stress for students and stigma that people experience talking about sexuality.”

Read
6:00 AM CDT