Best Practices

This 1943 article offering tips on how to manage female employees for business driven by WWII exigencies to expand their labor pool is pretty hilarious. Among other things, you've got to stay away from the skinny ones:

3. While there are exceptions, of course, to this rule, general experience indicates that "husky" girls – those who are just a little on the heavy side – are likely to be more even-tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.

It's always striking to be reminded that though the pace of change often feels frustrating slow when you're working for it, an incredibly amount of progress has actually been made thus far during the lifetimes of the older people alive today.

Comments

But Saul Bellow (or one of his characters) said never have a mistress with thin legs.

Posted by scott | February 5, 2008 2:29 PM

Well, um, when you say that it's "hilarious", do you mean "we would never believe that any more"-hilarious, or do you mean "so true, so true"-hilarious?

As far as I can tell, the advice is true: the skinny ones tend to get cranky from hunger.
[*Ducks wife throwing frying pan at him.*]

Posted by Al | February 5, 2008 2:31 PM

the pace of change often feels frustrating slow when you're working for it

Perhaps because you're eight?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | February 5, 2008 2:38 PM

Uh, OK, yeah. I think now people are much more eager to hire hot chicks. That's, uh, progress.

Posted by Sanjay | February 5, 2008 2:38 PM

Well, they're definitely easier to get in the sack.
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | February 5, 2008 2:39 PM

Fat guys are more even-tempered too.

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | February 5, 2008 2:47 PM

As the saying goes..."More cushin, less pushin".

Fat chicks rule!

Posted by Susan | February 5, 2008 2:47 PM

Forward, to the glorious future!

Posted by TLB | February 5, 2008 3:18 PM

You know, it applies to men, too:

"Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous."

- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Posted by Frank Bruno | February 5, 2008 3:23 PM

An obvious observation, as any fan of early 60s music knows: "Big girls don't cry..."

Posted by Traven | February 5, 2008 3:40 PM

On the next episode of The Table - husky even-temperment, no longer just for chicks?

Tune in as portly pundits probe porker productivity.

Posted by joejoejoe | February 5, 2008 3:41 PM

I thought we were fighting to make progress *toward* more acceptance of fat chicks. So we've regressed, right?

Posted by too many steves | February 5, 2008 3:51 PM

The biggest change is that America has slowly become a more bi-racial society having gone from all-white almost all the time; through the Black power days of whitey is a devil; to today where for the most part, as ML King sought 45 years ago, most are judged by the 'content of his (her) character.'

Back then JFK had to decide whether he should support letting African Americans into white schools; now we can decide whether to let them into the white house. That (as the Nutty Senator would say) "my friends" is what makes the USA great.

Posted by Matt | February 5, 2008 4:00 PM

I thought we were fighting to make progress *toward* more acceptance of fat chicks. So we've regressed, right?

Not sure about that. Gluttony and sloth have always been cool by me.

Posted by Fat dude Joe | February 5, 2008 4:06 PM

The article quite clearly endorses "husky" rather than "fat" chicks, even going so far as to specify the ideal weight. I'd say that doesn't do much for tolerance, just favors one particularly narrow subset of women over another.

Posted by gerontion | February 5, 2008 4:17 PM

I thought we were fighting to make progress *toward* more acceptance of fat chicks. So we've regressed, right?

That depends. Is this acceptance ... public?
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | February 5, 2008 4:23 PM

A more significant measure of progress: I'm in my early 50s, and I can remember when the help-wanted ads were divided into "Help Wanted - Men" and "Help Wanted - Women." Even in the 'liberal' Washington Post.

I think you can guess what sorts of jobs were in each section.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | February 5, 2008 4:24 PM

Back in 1943, there was more open appreciation of women with serious booty.

Posted by Chuchundra | February 5, 2008 4:40 PM

"Back in 1943, there was more open appreciation of women with serious booty."

Considering that about a third of the comments here are similar to this one, I think it's clear that things haven't changed very much. People are more reluctant to be explicitly sexist in some ways, but they're still willing to be explicitly sexist in others.

I'd like to see Obama or Hillary resurrect the ERA. *That* would be progress.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | February 5, 2008 5:19 PM

Along these lines, ever see "Mad Men"? It's an amazing depiction of life in a 1950s Madison Ave ad agency, where the new "girls" are counseled to stock up on birth control, aspirin, and their boss's favorite liquor. Watching the ad guys literally chase their secretaries around desks is enough to make one want to take to the streets...

But more seriously, when I described the show to an older relative the other day, she casually mentioned that that sort of thing was why her sister quit working as an art director back in the '50s -- telling me, "she had to make a choice between working and staying married."

Forget Second Sex -- if you want to raise a new crop of feminists, just get that show more widely watched.

Posted by Nancy Scola | February 5, 2008 5:24 PM

Appreciating serious booty isn't sexist; making judgements about character and work ability based on it is.

Posted by Adam Villani | February 6, 2008 12:00 AM

Right. It just took 65 years for everybody to become prejudiced against fat people.

Posted by Steve Sailer | February 6, 2008 5:27 AM