Seduction of the Innocent by Wertham Frederic

Author:Wertham, Frederic [Wertham, Frederic]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Rinehart & Company
Published: 1954-04-18T16:00:00+00:00

One must al­ways re­mem­ber that an is­sue of such a com­ic book has an edi­tion of hun­dreds of thou­sands of copies. In such a large num­ber, a per­cent­age of un­for­tu­nate girls are bound to fall for it, wor­ry them­selves sick, keep their wor­ries a se­cret, and send for the ad­ver­tised mer­chan­dise.

Sup­pose a girl does not fall for these pho­tographs and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing text. Other ad­ver­tise­ments sug­gest a test even more apt to give her in­fe­ri­or­i­ty feel­ings and make her think she is not as oth­er girls. “BREASTS LOSING FIRMNESS?” screams an­oth­er ad (on the same page on which a doll is ad­ver­tised). This one promis­es to lift your breast “into a vi­tal-beau­ti­ful form.” It tries to per­suade the ado­les­cent girl that there are three kinds of in­fe­ri­or­i­ties: first, “those with nor­mal­ly firm bo­soms who want that added lift and sep­a­ra­tion that make the dif­fer­ence be­tween an or­di­nary ap­pear­ance and real fig­ure beau­ty”; sec­ond, those whose breasts lack “firm­ness”; third, girls with “PROBLEM BOSOMS” ($1.98).

But maybe even these pic­tures, their text and the “firm­ness test” do not make enough girls wor­ried. Then there are full-course lessons in hypochon­dri­a­sis. In a com­ic book with sto­ries of love’s frus­tra­tions there is a full-page ad­ver­tise­ment (found in many oth­er com­ic books, too) with sets of pho­tographs: “Be­fore” and “After.” The “Be­fore” look like av­er­age girls; the “After” have no­tice­ably pro­trud­ing breasts. Ac­com­pa­ny­ing these pic­tures are three sets of di­a­grams, each pur­port­ing to show pro­files of women’s bust lines. Any girl, of course, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter she has been alarmed by the text, can iden­ti­fy her­self with at least one of these di­a­grams and brood about the cor­re­spond­ing in­for­ma­tion: “SELF-CONSCIOUS ABOUT YOUR FLAT-LOOKING BUST LINE?” ($2.49). Some ad­ver­tise­ments are es­pe­cial­ly di­rect­ed to grow­ing girls whose busts are just start­ing to de­vel­op and lead off with scream­ers: “SMALL BUST.” They promise a “se­cret patent-pend­ing fea­ture” for “UNSHAPELY SMALL BUSTS.” Such ad­ver­tise­ments have caused in­fe­ri­or­i­ty feel­ings in count­less chil­dren, some of whom will car­ry this emo­tion­al bur­den with them through life.

The ul­tra­bo­somy girls de­pict­ed as ide­al in com­ic-book sto­ries and the count­less breast and fig­ure ad­ver­tise­ments make young girls gen­uine­ly wor­ried long be­fore the time of pu­ber­ty. Th­ese very young girls be­come en­trapped by the sex ap­peal of com­ic-book pic­tures and the “emo­tion­al ap­peal” of their ad­ver­tise­ments. Lau­ra’s case is a good ex­am­ple. One day her moth­er came home un­ex­pect­ed­ly. Lau­ra was nine years old at that time. As her moth­er told it to me, “she put tis­sue pa­per in­side of her dress so that she would have a bo­som. She must want to grow up too fast. She wants to grow up and be fixed up beau­ti­ful­ly.” I asked Lau­ra’s moth­er to tell me more about the girl. “There is noth­ing wrong with her,” she said. “She reads com­ic books all the time. She reads Jum­bo, Archie, Jeanie, Mil­lie the Model, also Nel­lie the Nurse. One day my hus­band picked up a com­ic book. He said, ‘Who the h— reads this?’ I said, ‘Lau­ra does.’ He said,

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