Respectfully tell the Ladies “Get Plump”
I came across the first advertising poster on BFDBlog last year so when I found the second one I thought it would be fun to post them together for a bit of nostalgia.
Remember when ladies were encouraged to gain weight in order to improve both their health and their attractiveness? Remember those nights by the fire playing charades, sitting around the spinet singing songs and reciting poetry to each other…while eating tape worms?
No? Well, neither do I. I did find both posters a little hard to read (I was squinting even with my glasses on) so I enlarged the images and copied out the text in their entirety to make it easier for you. The second one was really hard to read but that’s mostly because of subject…ewwww.
Click on the pic to view full size.
Ritter & Co. Dealers in Fine General Merchandise
Respectfully tell the Ladies
Get PlumpWith Professor Williams’ Famed “Fat-Ten-U” Foods
Why suffer tortures with interior mechanical devices that artificially fatten? Don’t look like the poor unfortunate on the left who, shorn of her artificial inflationary devices & pads, must, in the confines of her bedroom, through shame, try to cover her poor thin figure from the gaze of her beloved spouse.
A Testimonial
The accompanying portrait is that of Sarah MacHenry, Philadelphia, posing with her two sisters, who writes: “In four weeks Professor William’s famed FAT-TEN-U FOODS increased my weight 39 pounds, gave me new womanly vigor & developed me finely. My two sisters also use FAT-TEN-U and have gained much needed fleshiness. Because of our newly found vigor we have taken up Grecian Dancing and have leading roles in all local productions.”
End Despair
These foods cure nerve and brain exhaustion, which you know as general debility. They make pale folks pink and thin folks plump and weak folks well and despairing folks happy. They will make you young all your life. You know it is better to be a young old woman than an old young woman!
No tonics, nerviness, sarsaparillas, or other medicines are necessary when FAT-TEN-U FOODS are taken. $1.00 a bottle at RITTER AND CO.
Professor William’s “Fat-Ten-U” Foods are guaranteed to make
The Thin PLUM & ROSY with Honest Fleshiness of Form.
I would very much like to know where I can go to learn Grecian Dancing and hopefully have a leading role in a local production. ED
Eat! Eat! Eat! & Always Stay Thin
No Danger
No Diet
No Baths
No ExerciseFAT the ENEMY that is shortening your life BANISHED!
How? With Sanitized Tape Worms
Jar PackedEasy to Swallow!
No Ill Effects!
Well thank goodness they are SANITIZED!
I know the second is not a fake, but what about the first? Judging from the art style in the second, these should only be about 25 years apart.
What the hell changed in Western society to cause such a polar shift in perspective in less than a quarter century?
Can I haz tapeworm flavored donut plz? ; D
The “Get Plump” poster says it is available in 1891, but does anyone have a year on the tapeworm poster?
Sigh. Those were the days.
It amazes me that the “before” picture is of the thin woman and the “after” picture is of the curvy woman. Because today, on numerous weight loss commercials, the exact opposite is shown.
“Don’t look like this fat person! Look like this thin and tan person!”
Maybe some day we will revert back to those days when it was considered beautiful and admirable to be plump and pale? I hope so.
I would settle for beauty being allowable in any shape or form, plump and pale, thin and tanned, or anywhere in between.
I get what you mean, though.
I don’t know the year of the first poster. I did try to find it but could only find a year association for the second one. Yeah – the different viewpoints between the two…it’s kinda crazy.
Ah, the days when being plump was desired!
Today it is very rare to find anything like this, when the women you see in commercials and ads are size 0′s who in real life, most likely think they are fat.
The media pushes and pushes that “thin is in’ and ‘being skinny makes you beautiful’.
But I say: Even the size 0′s die someday, and before I’m going to die, I’m going to live. And living involves chocolate!
I have the “Get Plump” poster hanging in my cubicle at work. I love it.
Thanks so much for this post! I’ve been looking for the first poster for a while
The date on the first poster is 1891, the fin-de-siecle heyday of the very curvy woman. Most of the great beauties of the period were tall and extremely curvy, especially after corseting.
By the 1920s women were expected to be thin, with almost boyish figures. Women bound down their breasts and started starving themselves to look good in the mostly corsetless clothing of the flapper era. It all changed very quickly.