JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post Part of the Zoomology series.
It would be easy to rhapsodize on the "quieter" or "simpler" lifestyles and demands of society from 90 years ago, especially when you compare this bathing beauty image (below) to the pupal-pulsating extravaganzas of the modern image-formulating beauty fairs. For people who were alive in this photo in 1925 I have no doubt that their life was just as complexified as any life situations as they exist today. One thing that has changed are the speeds at which societal inputs can be responded to--we can certainly achieve more-or-less instant satisfaction addressing a problem today than could have ever been dreampt of in 1925. The fluidity of thought and communication that are a given in 2012 were not even a scientific fiction possibility in 1925--as a matter of lexicograph record, the term "science fiction" didn't even exist in 1925, much less be a bucket for collecting rumblings of future possibilities. There were certainly fewer levels of things to deal with in 1925, but the time it took to deal with the dealables would have been far greater than today's timetables of answers, so perhaps the issue of the simple vs. the complex would be a wash/trade off so far as the actual amount of time was concerned in the global addressing of combined complexities. Anyway, that horrible sentence out of the way, the idea of the "simpler life" is highly relative, and relational.
That said, here is the line-up of contestants for a beauty contest at Huntington Beach, California, in 1925.
Everything seems interesting in this photo--the women themselves, their bathing attire, the men standing behind them, the footwear on the beach, and of course the girls peeking out through the legs of the contestants.
All images are found at the Library of Congress, here. All image are also greatly expandable.
Library of Congress, here.
And this lovely image from Atlantic City in 1926:
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