High-Brows vs. Low-Brows in 1949

Americans have gotten less refined over the last 76 years.

Americans seemed to have been more refined in 1949:

Here’s an illustration from Life magazine in 1949. (Note that the use of green for the left half and red for the right half of the chart is purely aesthetic and not intended to convey information about Brow-ness.)

By its own rather rigorous standards, Life would likely be a Lower Middle-Brow “mass circulation” magazine along with the Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest, Ladies Home Journal, and Cosmopolitan (before Helen Gurley Brown’s titanic impact), below the Upper Middle-Brow “quality” magazines like New Yorker, Harper’s, and Vogue.

I’d say the Low-Brows had the comfiest chair (“mail order overstuffed”), and their country clothes (“old Army clothes”) seem by far the most practical for doing outdoor chores.

The Salads column is pretty interesting. High-Brow salads feature “greens, olive oil, wine vinegar, ground salt, ground pepper, garlic, unwashed salad bowl.”

Unwashed salad bowl?

Paywall here.