Too Much Turkey?

Feeling guilty about all that turkey stuffing you stuffed yourself with? Well, you're not alone. On your left is the first of a recurring theme the Bolles girl had with the issue of weight control. This cover from 1927 shows our flapper contentedly posing on a scale, but only two years later and presumably a few ounces more there clearly is some alarm about the issue of weight. Not that she seems to have anything to worry about. Bolles' girls were among the slimmest of any pretty girl (again I am resorting to the standard term applied during this era) artist, aside from John Held Jr.'s stick figures.

The dictum emerging here is calories-in calories-out. By the mid 1930s Bolles girls were typically less active and spent more time indoors posing placidly than their outdoorsy counterparts from a decade earlier, hence the need for the dulling daily dozen (though with an assist from a slimming machine). A lot has been written about how magazine and advertising imagery contributed to a preoccupation with physical appearance, but what is unclear is whether Bolles was reacting to and commenting on this phenomenon or actually contributing to it.