Class Signifiers of 1949

The April 1949 issue of LIFE magazine contained a chart that detailed the difference between highbrow and lowbrow tastes. The chart is actually two pages (only one is shown here), and it’s bigger and easier to read at Google Books.

Scroll up for an intro article about the chart, in which Russell Lynes calls highbrows snobs, and scroll down for a rebuttal from Winthrop Sergeant, who says if it were not for the few highbrows in America, the country would descend into Idiocracy (not a term used at the time, but it well describes his opinion). And in case you are wondering, I found an link to an explanation of unwashed salad bowls at Metafilter.

Times have changed, and a wise person knows that money, education, and taste are less useful as indicators of class (or at least classiness) than how one treats his fellow man. -via Nag on the Lake


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