Want To Be A Model?

Despite the fact that the book itself is still in print today even on Kindle, this 1940's ad that was featured in comics was trying to pull at the heartstrings of young ladies that were already dealing with body-type issues on top of having a second World War on the rise. Better Than Beauty was written in 1938 by Alice Thompson and Helen Valentine as a "guide to charm", but the comics ad was endorsed by well-known model Helen Fraser who was director of the Barbizon School Of Modeling. The other Helen acted as a speaker to the book for girls that were desperate to be a model, or at least look like one when she pushed it for the Herald Publishing Company which also sold it with a copy of their Handbook Of Figure Symmetry. All this could be yours for the price of a single dollar that was knocked down from two bucks in this special offer. The book itself was a guide to personal grooming and social interaction with obnoxious drunk men at parties, which is a strange thing to advertise in a comic book meant for preteen girls. Hard to say if the ad was targeting insecure young females who wanted to be more charming and popular like the ad boasts, or if it was to scare the poor saps into shelling out for their book through body shaming. Its acceptably fine to try changing your appearance, or even consider a career as a professional model, but the ad seems more to attack girls' inner vanity programming them into the belief that looking better than other women was a substitute for giving the general public some basic human dignity. This was to young women what the Charles Atlas ads were for skinny boys tired of getting beaten up at the beach.