This post started out innocently enough: June is National Dairy Month, so I went digging through our stash of dairy-related pamphlets to find some fun features. My first great find is the 1973 treat yourself nicely pamphlet from Carnation.

This pamphlet has some great 70’s graphics and is full of era-appropriate advice for teenagers (“Be one of the crowd with longer hair and jeans, but use a few family manners along the way.”) and tips for “growing up nicely” mixed in with a few fun recipes like pizzaburgers and salads on a stick (where salad includes marshmallows and ginger ale, of course.)

I was considering this pamphlet a lighthearted history lesson until I read the introductory paragraph:

You have a big future that’s coming closer every day! Who knows, you might grow up to see a woman President. Or you might have the opportunity to explore our American horizons or those of far-off countries that you’ve read about or seen on travelogues or news telecasts. (Exploring it would be much more fun than just keeping your nose in a geography book!) Or you might find a cleaner world for biking, surfing, swimming, skating or camping because in your future, parks, streams lakesides, oceans and our atmosphere will be cleaner and more sparkling.

And then I hung my head in shame for our lack of female presidents and sparkling atmospheres. My apologies, children of the 1970s, but there’s still time, right?