That's just the same ol' stinky lawn mower with a plexiglass box that will be a nightmare to get the grass off from since it's sticking through static...
The lawnmower has a five foot diameter plastic sphere in which the rider sits on an air foam cushioned seat. It has its own electric generating system for operating running lights, a radio telephone, air conditioning and even a cooling system to provide a chilled drink on a hot day. It can be used for many purposes. It can mow the lawn, weed it, feed it, seed it, spray for insects, plow snow and haul equipment. It can even be used as a golf cart.
When my grandparents got married, it was the traditional roles, my grandfather working and taking care of the outside of the house, my grandmother taking care of the inside; he did finances and stuff, and she did household planning, etc.
That was the theory, anyway. Long afterward, decades after the divorce (in a time when divorce wasn't overly common), she said that when they started out, he was thrilled with doing his part in the division of labor, but that he grew progressively less enchanted with adulting. So every so often, there'd be a task that he'd just decide that he didn't want to do anymore. So he'd find a time and say, "Hey, let's sit down and I'll show you how to balance a checkbook, just so you know how to do it." And then eventually it would become 'her job' to do the finances, etc. She said it happened with every single 'responsibility' he was supposed to be doing, it would eventually end up 'her job'.
And then one day, about twelve, thirteen years into the marriage, he was like, "Hey, let me show you how to mow the lawn!" And she absolutely refused. He tried again and again, wheedled as best he could, but she just. Absolutely. Refused. She told me that she just knew that if she "learned" this, it would become just one more thing for her to do, and she was already doing the full 1950's housewife thing, plus his 'home' responsibilities, plus raising a special needs child (whom she did an excellent job with, btw), and working a full-time job, and she just. Did. Not. Want this one more thing that was going to be foisted on to her, so she kept refusing.
Turns out, after a few months of her continuing to refuse, he took his daughters (he didn't have any sons) outside and told them, "Hey, kids, it's time for you to learn how to mow the lawn!", and two weeks later it was the daughters' "special job" to mow the lawn.
They ended up getting divorced a couple years later, I can't imagine why ...
Anyway, this picture reminded me of her story: there he is, happily lounging on a chair, smoking a pipe, drink in his hand, 'directing' his under-dressed wife on how to mow the lawn while he relaxes and 'supervises'. Fuck that guy.
That is an interesting story and I appreciate that OP’s picture reminded you of it but I don’t think that person is ‘under-dressed’ even though I’d agree that some odd gender coding is going on in the image.
He's sitting there in the full heat of the day, wearing a long sleeved shirt and full-length trousers and tall socks, perfectly comfortable in the sun.
She's sitting in an air conditioned bubble, wearing mid-arm sleeves, and mid-thigh shorts, at a time when Capri pants were considered fashionable yet still a bit scandalous.
If he's comfortable with full-length everything in the sun, she's definitely under-dressed in her air-conditioned bubble.
No, because (like so many other 1950's advertisements) this image is from the male viewpoint: he's relaxed in his lounger, perfectly content smoking a pipe and having a drink, while his wife is literally on display in front of him, cheerfully smiling and happy while she does the work and he stretches out watching her. In images like this, the male is assumed to be perfectly comfortable, and the comfort of the woman isn't considered much at all. [Why, yes, honey, I was perfectly happy wrangling the kids and their homework this afternoon, getting them and the house pristine for you coming home from work. I even had time to cook a full dinner from scratch, clean the kitchen, take a shower, do my hair and makeup and put on jewelry! Here, have a drink while I take your coat and briefcase and help you on with your slippers!]
I am not OP, but this is a great time to remind people that debris from a mower can be very dangerous. Wear steel toe boots and long jeans. Don’t let children play near a mower.
The “Power Mower of the Future” is demonstrated in Port Washington, Wis., Oct 14, 1957. The lawnmower has a five foot diameter plastic sphere in which the rider sits on an air foam cushioned seat. It has its own electric generating system for operating running lights, a radio telephone, air conditioning and even a cooling system to provide a chilled drink on a hot day. It can be used for many purposes. It can mow the lawn, weed it, feed it, seed it, spray for insects, plow snow and haul equipment. It can even be used as a golf cart.
It’s so EASY to operate even a WOMAN can do it! BUY the POWER MOWER OF THE FUTURE and you’ll have more time for YOU to drink BEER, SMOKE and beat the KIDS!
Oh, I wasn’t trying to invalidate your point. Personally I’m into Star Trek style meritocracy. If your wife is a bodybuilder she isn’t going to need to ask you to open the jar lid for her.
The Dutch drive to put water in its place knows no limits. It's like they heard the story of King Cnut and the tide and thought "get that weak shit out of here let me show you how it's done"
I think it’s one of those early color photographs. Basically, a photographer would take three photographs, each with a different color filter. Those photographs were black-and-white, where the value corresponded to the saturation of one of the filter’s colors. They were then projected onto a final image using collotype printing with a different dye for each black-and-white photograph. This process can give you all sorts of colors by mixing three primary colors of dyes, but it’s tricky to make photographs align perfectly. As you can see, there are stripes of cyan, green, and red on the contour of those people, as well as some blur, and that’s because it’s hard to stand still between photographs, or a wind could make your clothes move a little, etc.
1910 Russia... That was about as good as it was going to get for about a decade, and even then life was likely shit for them. It was just going to get so much worse.
The revolution actually improved the lives of most Russians, at the expense of making the lives of non-Russians quite a bit worse.
Then Stalin came to power and promoted the "science" of a guy named Trofim Lysenko. Millions starved to death, and then the Soviets exported the flawed science to China in what had to have been a psyop, and millions more starved.
Which just lends more weight to the theory that the Soviets, and Stalin in particular, were fond of weaponizing famine, because it happened again and again, always at the expense of people who were not ethnically Russian.
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