I found the old magazines section of the Butler Library stacks. Oh boy. If you suspected that after taking this photo I got absorbed in old 1945 issues of Ladies’ Home Journal for an embarrassingly long time, you would be right.

I was looking for this:

I also found this:

It’s a feature where they got somewhat famous people to write what they’d do differently if they were the other sex. Here’s a sampling.

If I were a woman …

“I wouldn’t wear slacks when I was built for a bustle. I’d never wear snoods, because I hate snoods on women, and I’d leave off those club-footed wedgies – they sound like breakfast food anyway.”  Humphrey Bogart

“I wouldn’t try to live and function by masculine values, as so many modern American women do.” Clifford Odets

“I wouldn’t allow a man to see me right after I’d been to the hairdresser. A woman before her hair is combed out is a pretty grim sight. Those tight, wet, sticky curls anchored down with pins make her look like some mechanical monster. Her head looks too small for her body, her features look too sharp, and there is very little softness. I’ve seen women shopping and lunching, completely oblivious of how unattractive they appear to men. Maybe they don’t care. But they should. If I were a woman I shouldn’t give a man a chance to see me at anything but my best.” Dennis Morgan

“I wouldn’t wear an obviously unbecoming hat just because it was the latest decree of fashion. I would wear smart footgear without ruining my metatarsals. I would keep from getting fat without always talking about it, and I would not have a magpie’s nest for a handbag.” William Rose Benet

“I wouldn’t ever expose my ears. I wouldn’t color my nails dark red. Old Ira Cobb said, ‘ It looks as if they’d been killing ticks.’ I certainly would leave off those large brass octopi they pin on their chests. I wouldn’t chew gum anywhere. And I wouldn’t wait until I was middle-aged to recognize that I was allowing myself to get fat and ugly and then in a panic try to reduce the easiest – the dangerous way – with drugs.” James Montgomery Flagg

“I’d never admit to myself that man is my superior in anything except boasting and killing, and I’d vote consistently against the male candidate for political office who seemed likely to promote the world’s worst psychosis, warmaking. I’d use lipstick somewhere near the color of human lips and I’d never use lipstick that made my lips taste like grease when some man kissed me.” David Brockman (conductor)

If I were a man …

“I wouldn’t take a woman all done up in her prettiest to dinner in a restaurant, then look too hard and too long at another woman across the room.” Mignon G. Eberhart

“I wouldn’t smoke cigars or ever call my wife ‘the little woman.’” Mary Martin

“I wouldn’t pride myself complacently on the accidental fact of being born male. I’d not consider ability to grow chin whiskers a sign of superior enlightenment. … No, if I belonged to the gender which shaves every morning and runs political conventions, I wouldn’t brag about it or condescend to the alleged frailer sex. For everyone knows it’s a man’s world – and just look what they’ve done to it!” Phyllis McGinley

“I wouldn’t walk around the house in my shorts.” Barbara Stanwyck

“I wouldn’t applaud the equality of the sexes during the day while my wife holds a full-time job, but assume the privileges of the male in the evening while my wife does the ‘woman’s work’ of preparing dinner, washing dishes and cleaning the home.” Sgt. Agnes J. Cashman