Here's a morale-booster with staying power. What a thing to say to your potential customers: "You Have A Beautiful Face. But Your Nose?"Yes, what about it? That nose looks all right to me. Not perfect, but all right. Not worth putting it into that contraption, anyway. And remolding the cartilege sounds very dubious.
Trilety plays on the timeless worry about beauty leading to success in life - and the lack thereof leading to failure. Since success is "your ultimate destiny" (naturally) you need to purchase one of these nose-shapers. That will lead to Mr. Trilety's financial success in life, in any case.
The ad on the left is from 1916, and the ad below at right is from 1932. So Mr. Trilety of Binghamton, New York, "Pioneer Nose Shaping Specialist," was onto something. Play on people's vanity and vulnerability, and you will sell all sorts of strange things (that's still true today, as we all know).
Were you supposed to wear these at night? Surely Mr. Trilety did not mean for people to go outside in the little nose-holders, did he?
This Nose-Shaper was patented in 1907 by Ignatius Nathaniel Soares of Framingham, Massachusetts, and you can see the patent here. Anna D. Rostow of Summit, New Jersey "improved" it in 1921, but it looks more like something out of Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch, really.
Thanks to jbcurio at Flickr for the advertisement with the man and woman; the man on his own is from Popular Mechanics, March 1932, over at Google Books.
Elizabeth Haiken writes about the Trilety Nose Shaper with reference to Michael Jackson's facial evolution, here, in an excerpt from Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery (Johns Hopkins, 1999).
The story of the mysterious Dr. Gouraud - he of Oriental Cream fame - is coming soon, I am just sorting out some of his legal issues as reported in the New York Times. And he was rather hard to hunt down in the census, since - and I'm giving away secret #1 here - that wasn't even his real name.
11 comments:
lol I wondered if Jacko would come into this post somewhere- he's who I thought of first when I read the title! great post:)
Probably not any weirder than some of the stuff they try to sell us today - if it sounds even remotely plausible, our vanity will do the rest!
The real question is: Does it work?
:-D
Hava
http://nonfictionlover.today.com
Reminds me of the punk song by The Monks - Nice Legs, Shame About The Face.
Aaaahhhh! That reminds me of Hannibal Lecter.
Thyme2dream - I thought of him too, but I didn't want to go there in the post, the article I linked does though!
Keely - You are so right!
Hava - Don't think it does.
Thomas - If Trilety was doing commercials, that could be his little theme song.
Daisy - You're right, now that I think of it! Oh dear.
Hey, I think Wally Cleaver sent away for one of these once!
I'd kill to get my hands on one of these. I'd love to wear one here at work, just for fun. And act like nothing is amiss when folks come in my office.
mincognita - Really? I want to see that episode!
Bill - That would be great, maybe you can find one on EBay.
Lidian - Yep, someone told him he had a "pug" nose. So he secretly sent away for this contraption.
But naturally the Beav found it, showed June, who told Ward......
You know, just like every other episode. LOL
mincognita - Thank you! I am going to have to catch up on Leave It To Beaver - I only ever watched a couple, i don't know why we didn't watch it but there you go...
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