{"id":80171,"date":"2014-11-26T15:52:17","date_gmt":"2014-11-26T20:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=80171"},"modified":"2014-11-26T16:16:16","modified_gmt":"2014-11-26T21:16:16","slug":"dressing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/26\/dressing\/","title":{"rendered":"Dressing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"vintageturkey\"<\/a>

\u201cBoys, I feel I\u2019m going to a change of climate.\u201d A vintage Thanksgiving card.<\/p><\/div>\n

As fans of holiday ephemera know, there are several primary genres of weird, old-timey Thanksgiving cards. There is the Greedy Child<\/a>. There is the Doomed Turkey<\/a>. There is the Turkey in Vehicle<\/a>, which is sometimes a corncob car<\/a>. There is the Anthropomorphic Root Vegetable<\/a>. It hardly needs saying that Thanksgiving pinups are a thing unto themselves. Sexy Pilgrims<\/a>, under-dressed squaws<\/a>, and women cooking in lingerie and filmy cocktail aprons<\/a> are all fairly ubiquitous.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By far, my favorite subgenre is that of the Urbane Turkey. This foppish specimen is usually in evening dress, so as to indicate his couth. Needless to say, he sports a top hat<\/a>. Sometimes a monocle<\/a>\u00a0or a cigarette<\/a>. All in all, he has the trappings of a big-screen, rich nincompoop, which I suppose added a certain glee to his consumption.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Urbane Turkey is not always complacent. Sometimes he\u2019s a sharp. He\u2019s in the know. This Urbane Turkey is the turkey who knows where to find the best feed and the keenest peahens. As befits his man-of-the-world air, he\u00a0smokes a cigar<\/a>;\u00a0and his citified duds are less Union Club than pool hall. This tom doesn\u2019t take any wooden nickels; he sees the way the wind\u2019s blowing and he\u2019ll be out on the next train<\/a>,\u00a0before the axe is even sharpened. He doesn\u2019t need pardoning; he makes his own luck<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t need me to point out how alienated we are from our food sources, to general detriment. Certainly, there couldn\u2019t be anything less urbane than the case of shrink-wrapped butterballs (or even free-range heritage birds) that greets us come late November. I guess it would be easy to say that as a result, we have less respect for our food. But on the other hand, we also don\u2019t dress it in outfits and mock it.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As fans of holiday ephemera know, there are several primary genres of weird, old-timey Thanksgiving cards. There is the Greedy Child. There is the Doomed Turkey. There is the Turkey in Vehicle, which is sometimes a corncob car. There is the Anthropomorphic Root Vegetable. It hardly needs saying that Thanksgiving pinups are a thing unto […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[16204,16201,14130,9149,16203,1428,9252,16202],"class_list":["post-80171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-butterballs","tag-greeting-cards","tag-mascots","tag-pilgrims","tag-representations-of-holidays","tag-thanksgiving","tag-turkeys","tag-turkeys-in-art"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Urbane Turkey<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on the holiday ephemera of Weird, Old-Timey Thanksgiving Cards.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/26\/dressing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dressing by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"November 26, 2014 \u2013 As fans of holiday ephemera know, there are several primary genres of weird, old-timey Thanksgiving cards. 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