What it is about today’s society that gives fathers so much disrespect, especially around Father’s Day? On Mother’s Day, our opposite numbers get flowers and jewelry and candy and sentiment, but on our day we dads get shirts that don’t fit, underwear, gag gifts and goofy cards. It’s those attempts at humor that really hurt, mainly because they’re usually true. I present to you a case in point: Richard Jarman’s Smooth Operators: The Secrets Behind Their Success, a look at men’s fashions of the 1970s and ’80s, told with an almost straight face. Jarman’s motivation is not to humiliate every man who lived through those decades (though he’s wildly successful in this), but to come to terms with the way his newly divorced father acted and dressed during that time. Evidence abounds in the advertising of those years; the scary part, for me, is that I know these guys heck, I was trying to be these guys! This droll little book illustrates our decades-long fashion faux pas, and as someone who lived through that time and who committed some of the same fashion atrocities (polyester, mutton-chops, platform shoes), I find this book downright embarrassing! So will your dad.
Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
