Lots of fun has been going on over on the Dinner is Served 1972 Facebook fan page. Yesterday I featured the covers to Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl and subsequent cookbook.
Today, I went to the absolute other end of the female self-help spectrum and posted the cover of Marabel Morgan’s Handbook for Kitchen Survival: The Total Woman Cookbook. It was an exciting internet find for me because I forgot that she had a cookbook. And look at that cover! But those beverages. What the hell are those? Mylanta springs to mind. Although I don’t know why. Is Mylanta blue?
Anyway, I became familiar with Marabel back in 2008 when I found myself single after a four-year relationship. I have no idea exactly how I came across The Total Woman–I assume that it was probably linked-to or referenced in some sort of break-up/why your relationship went wrong/this is how you messed up/everything is your fault website–but I became fascinated by Marabel and her books and her self-help seminars. So I read a lot about her and her dogma–which is basically centered around the idea that the man is the head of the household therefore you must put his needs before your own. And take care of the children. And the house. And cook. But then also be an impeccably groomed sex kitten. Simple!
It inspired me to write.
I told you that I’d be occasionally sharing poetry. And how fitting that I already wrote about the lady of the hour so many years ago! Click through to check it out.
The Total Woman
“A Total Woman caters to her man’s special quirks,
whether it be in salads, sex, or sports.”
-Marabel Morgan
Submissive in Saran Wrap,
I shuffle like a geisha to the front door
with his slippers and a Sidecar.
I ask him how his day was,
then nod in enthused interest.
The children are soundly sleeping,
I think he’d like a foot massage.
After Chinese chicken salad
he chases me ‘round the dining room.
I eagerly suck him off
while SportCenter’s on mute.
Erma Bombeck had a chapter in one of her books in which she confused and kind of pissed off her husband trying the advice in a book called The Sub-Total Woman. It was simultaneously amusing and kind of sad.
Oh my. I’d forgotten about the Saran Wrap. Or at least I just blocked it out.
Oh god, now you’ve gone and posted that picture, and I’m going to be spending the long holiday weekend trying to figure out how to master her roller-set. I rather like the Delft blue kitchen as well. I think Milk of Magnesia was the blue one, “Your true blue friend.”
I’d better invest in the industrial sized can of Aqua-Net. No one’s hair does that without Aqua-Net.
I have the giant can of Aqua-Net in my arsenal. It’s the only hairspray I use.
I only found your blog recently, but it’s clearly an act of Providence that I found it in time to witness that poetry. Also, I just watched The Stepford Wives (the one from the 70s, not the remake) last night. So it’s all coming together, basically.