Marriage and Career- You Can Have It All

collage  vintage pin up illustration and vintage housewife in kitchen

No need to draw the line between a career or marriage.

Contrary to yesterday’s post with its kooky quiz asking girls to choose  “What Are You Best Fitted For Love or a Career?” one mid-century miss proved the test wrong. Yes indeedy, you could have both.

“Why not,” she asked, “have it all?”

So taken with her tale, Crosley Refrigerator shared the successful career girl’s story with its readers in a full-page ad.

Patsy De Angelo, a talented illustrator didn’t draw the line when it came to love…she was engaged to be married in June and couldn’t be happier.

Many dreamed of being an artist but for Patsy it was no dream; the perky 23-year-old was now sharing in the glamorous world of commercial art.

Vintage advertisement  Crosley Refrigerator

Vintage advertisement Crosley Refrigerator

Confident in her career, she enjoyed the admiration of her friends. But she had a real case of the jitters when it came to meeting her fiance Fred’s mother. Her soon to be mother in law Sheila Shaw was suspicious of a working girls and didn’t believe that a career girl could also be a good housewife.

Moping at her drawing table littered with T squares, triangles and paint brushes, Patsy chewed her pencil nervously unable to concentrate on the drawing of the frolicking Christmas kittens that lay in front of her.

Vintage ad Art Draw me

Vintage ad for Art Instruction Inc. “If you like to draw or sketch you may have talent worth training. Enter this contest and win 2 years of free training for a fascinating career in art. Best part is, youngster or oldster, men or women all have equal opportunity to make it.”

Lighting a cigarette, she smiled gently glancing at the matches that lay in front of her. Thanks to an earlier matchbook cover’s challenge to draw a pretty girl, and the Art Instruction Home Study Course, she now had a fascinating and profitable art career as an illustrator.

Drawing on considerable talents, she knew she could create a lovely home for Fred and she, and she vowed to prove her future mother in law wrong.

In the end it was her kitchen that won over Sheila Shaw.

vintage illustration housewife kitchen Vintage advertisement  Crosley Refrigerator

Vintage advertisement Crosley Refrigerator

With her trained artists eye Patsy had designed the modern kitchen herself, choosing just the right wallpaper and smart linoleum. She knew how to make her kitchen say quality… start with a beautiful ultra modern Nairn inlaid linoleum floor… it’s the first step towards out of the ordinary smartness in any kitchen!

But it was the smart choice of appliances that bowled her mother in law over. Her wonderful Westinghouse electric range that let your meal planning dreams run riot that produced feather light cakes, superb roasts and foods broiled to a turn, certainly impressed Mrs. Shaw.

Vintage advertisement  Crosley Refrigerator

Vintage advertisement Crosley Refrigerator

But she really lit up with envy when she saw the smart beauty of the  Crosley Shelvadore refrigerator. Designed to give you everything you could want in a modern refrigerator, the designing woman won over her mother in law. , Whether career gals or happy homemakers, everyone knew that housewives in every home everywhere unanimously agreed “such conveniences cannot be imagined – you must try it to believe it!”

Sort of like having marriage and a career.

note: decades later this married illustrator proved Patsy was right.

(©) 20015 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

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4 comments

  1. Pingback: A Test of Gender | Envisioning The American Dream

  2. It’s interesting that Fred is still in uniform, which explains why his mother can’t get a new refrigerator until “they’re made again.” I guess Patsy designed her kitchen before the war? Or maybe she illustrated Shelvador ads and got to keep her “model.”

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Good observation. This ad did run soon after the end of the war, and Patsy was an especially clever gal decorating and designing such a swell kitchen with rationing and shortages! Yes, she may have worked for the Agency who did the Shelvador ads, but I suspect it was the fact that her Dad ran a radio repair shop and had an “in” with the folks at Crosley.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Hey, I am not proud. If she wants a career and make more money than me, I would love that. Then I could stay home and write that Great American Novel I’ve been meaning to write. I even have a title: Gatsby Wasn’t So Great.

    Liked by 1 person

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