From the 1934 Ladies’ Home Journal comes this not-so-subtle message that if you don’t immediately purchase Djer-Kiss perfume, the only lovin’ you’ll get is when you kiss yourself in the mirror. Then again, if a fella catches you doing this, you can also kiss your dating life good-bye.

Or maybe (after a third read of the text below), the message is, “Buy this perfume and you’ll be so irresistible, you won’t be able to resist your own beautiful self.”

Not sure which message is more disturbing…

This photo appeared in the advertising section of the 1898 Ladies’ Home Journal. Presumably, it’s an remarkable photo of two little boys, but the term street urchins might be more apropos. However, if you look past their tattered appearance and look into their eyes, these two boys are a little unnerving.

I’m not sure how or why this was considered “good” photography 110 years ago.

Today, it’d just be classified as “heartbreaking.”

Little scary children

Being an intelligent woman in the late 1800s and early 1900s must have been pretty unpleasant. There were few opportunities for smart females to exercise their intellectual prowess, and even fewer thought-provoking diversions. Most women were confined to the kitchen for hours and hours each day. The literature of the day states that the average woman spends 3/4ths of her day in the kitchen.

Now that’s just scary.

The Comfort Swing (shown below) was perhaps a woman’s only solace during such a harried day. If you look at the woman’s face, it also looks like she helped herself to a double-scoop of laudanum before settling into her swing.  (1898 Ladies’ Homes Journal.)

Just a'swinging

Thanks to Palmolive’s beauty soap, “Youth is being retained.” Or so promises the ad in this Ladies Home Journal from 1926.

“Modern mothers” (who use these products) compete with their “daughters of debutante age.”

Uh huh.

Studies show that when we read so-called “women’s magazines,” our self-esteem plummets several percentage points. Which is good if you’re an advertiser, because that opens the door to the multi-billion dollar “cures” for ugly. Even more disturbing is the allusion here that age = unattractiveness.

In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf writes that women’s magazines make their money by selling women on the idea that they’re suffering from a disease of “terminal ugliness.”

While scanning the pages of these early 20th Century women’s magazines, I was aghast to learn that manufacturers of so-called beauty products have been selling “terminal ugliness” for more than 80 years now.

The saddest part is, we keep buying into it.

“Glorious music reproduced, as you have never heard it before!”

So reads the advertisement in the August 1926 Ladies’ Home Journal. The item being pitched is the latest and greatest from Victrola: The Othorphonic Record Player (with Tungstone needle!).

This must have been a pricey little affair, for the ad reads that an electric motor would increase the Victrola’s price by a hefty $35. However the “hidden electric motor” meant there was nothing to wind!

To my surprise and delight, the word “orthophonic” can be found in the dictionary. It means, “accurate reproduction of sound.”

This ad is quite interesting. Before there was television, apparently families sat around and stared at the radio.

Victorola Orthophonic

This ad is from a 1905 Ladies’ Home Journal, and in the early 1900s, x-rays and radiation was perceived to be scientific and modern and wonderful. I’ve no idea what this advertisement is suggesting, but it sounds like “X-Ray Polish” is a potent little chemical.

I guess this graphic answers the question, how many demons can dance on the head of a stove? I’m not sure. And I don’t know about the one at the bottom, pulling up the banner that reads, “Cut that out.”

Perhaps the devil is in the details.

According to historian Paul Frame, Radium was a newly discovered, valuable commodity in the early 1900s, and was perhaps even more valuable than gold.

Frame writes, “The term ‘Radium’ was incorporated into the brand names of any number of products even when these products didn’t actually contain radium. The same was true for the term X-ray.”

Learn more at his website here.

I'm not really sure what they're selling here

Okay, so it’s from a February 1911 Ladies Home Journal, but still, it sounds so intriguing.

At first glance, I assumed that this fireproof house was 90% asbestos content, but upon reading the full article, I saw that I was wrong. It’s made of poured concrete and has lots of hollow tile, plaster (applied over metal lath), ceramic tile and block. Even the floors are poured concrete. Ater all that concrete is dried, the wooden forms are removed.

Very interesting idea for a house, and it’s nice-looking, too but good luck hanging up any pictures on the walls. Small price to pay for a fireproof house - I suppose.

A picture of the Fireproof House (from 1911 LHJ)

Back in the day, Ladies’ Home Journal was (get ready), a magazine devoted to improving the lot of women who wanted to be homeowners, or women who had achieved that high goal of homeownership.  Today, the magazine is heavy on diet tips and light on home related topics, but it wasn’t always that way.

This 1911 issue of LHJ devoted an entire section to fixing up old houses. The photos (and their captions) tell the whole story. One caption reads, “The foundation and timbers [of these old houses] are often better than are found in the houses built today.”

For the two images below, the caption reads:

It seems almost impossible to realize that the hospitable-looking house on the bottom (see second house below) was once the gloomy, desolate house on the top (see first house below), and the changes which transformed it were not great. First of all, the dull color of the old house and the overgrown condition of the ground in front of it are most forbidding. A comparison of the two pictures shows how much a little careful planting and fresh paint will do toward changing the whole atmosphere of the house. More rooms were added at the rear and a gambrel roof was built and into this were let two good-sized dormer windows. A large porch, which was extended into a porte-chochere was built, and the latter forms a nice balance to the right wing of the house.

Here's the "before" photo

And here's the "after" photo

More photos are below!

Take a moment and read the caption - and remember - this is from 1911!

Another photo pair from the 1911 Ladies' Home Journal