I can’t resist a good personality quiz. Women’s magazines know that there are many of us, and so their pages are full of quick tests that promise to sort us into types. The point, of course, is to tell us what to buy to be our authentic selves. For my early teenage self, the quizzes in Seventeen were an important way to answer the burning question, “What kind of girl am I?”
Sometimes I found quizzes in ads, sometimes in editorial features, but the categories were remarkably consistent. A two-page luggage ad in 1961 offered these options:
All-American (with a model wearing a solid color sweater and plaid skirt)
Feminine (floral sweater, hair bow)
Outdoor type (short hair, wearing a boxy Loden coat)
Intellectual (a classic one-piece dress. Elegant is used twice in her description)
The same year, an editorial feature sorted us into these types:
Patrician (elegant, classic)
Feminine (generous features, pinup figure, blond) “Generous features? What’s that?”
Girl Next Door (casual clothes, easy-to-care-for hair styles, minimal makeup)
Gigi (girlish, polished informality)
The careful reader might notice that some of the characteristics were physical features, not personality traits. I did not. So when feminine styles were recommended for a girl with a “pinup figure” like mine, and my height suggested the more classic “intellectual” and “patrician”, I was confused. Even worse, I usually liked the casual “all-American, girl next door” looks best, which were modeled by athletic-looking girls with flat chests and slim hips. Could my body be one type and my “authentic self” another?
A companion piece in the same issue promised “How to find your fashion personality” noting that “Fashion is moving in the individualist’s direction.” Apparently this new individualism meant adding a fifth type: “Offbeat”, a girl wearing “interesting colors, textures, patterns”.
Here are the categories from shoe ad, a year later:
Individualist: nonconformist, kooky
Gamin: “half-child, half-woman”
Continental: sophisticated, strong
Romantic: feminine, soft “never tell him you can change a flat”
Did I notice that the offbeat, kooky girl had replaced the casual, active “girl next door”? I did not.
The winner of the “silliest” quiz goes to the Lady Ronson ad for electric shavers, “How do your legs rate?” Using actress/model Tina Louise (later “Ginger” in “Gilligan’s Island”) as the hypothetical ideal, we were invited to compare our legs to hers, using the following formula:
Ankle = 1 1/4 x wrist, calf = 2 1/4 x wrist, knee = 2 1/2 x wrist, thigh = 3 1/2 x wrist.
How shaving my legs would help, I haven’t a clue.
Next week:
The case of the disappearing tomboy
The last quiz has too much math!
Looks like good magazine article!