Childcraft Book on Gender

Do you ever glance at books that have been around forever just to see what they hold? I laughed at the obvious generation gap that showed up in a Childcraft book on my parents' shelves. Just look at this page:





"It's fun to be a girl and wear a gay costume. It's good to be a mother and sew. Such companionship makes a girl want to be like Mom."

Wow. So many levels of discomfort for someone of my generation and feminist leanings (not to mention the use of a word which was so great for rhyming but which now has a very different meaning). Being a girl is all about being fun, huh? And girls should all be interested in dressing up? What about mothers--is it bad to be a mother and not sew? Does that mean girls won't have companionship with their mothers? What if they don't want to be just like Mom? How do you like that capitalized "Mom"? We could do a close reading just on that . . .

And man, that poor mother looks like she's at least fifty years older than her daughter. Sad.

Last question: is it just me, or does that girl's profile kind of look like mine?