"Mad Men” Metamorphosis

“Mad Men” Metamorphosis

A how-to lifestyle guide for stripping away the layers of our morally self-righteous, vegan way of life, in favor of Tom Collins’ and the casual encounters of the swingin’ 60’s

Exercise Ingenuity
Let’s abandon the oppressive, sweat-smelling wasteland of fitness we call the gym. In the 1960’s, working out was so easy! All you had to do was stand, sit or lie down and let the machine do the rest. Workout fads of the 1960’s included hot pants sauna suits and the ever-popular belt massager that jiggles stubborn fat into oblivion. Another fat-blasting machine was the twist board, which allows you to swivel back and forth imitating the dance craze “the twist” while minimizing your waistline. Magazine ads from this era show perfectly coiffed housewives, melting away the pounds while wearing heels and pearls. These antiquated weight-loss strategies sound more like first-rate party games than the hard-core boot camp-style workout classes that are popular today and they don’t include a drill sergeant.

Curves Ahead
Until Twiggy hit the scene in the late 1960’s, women’s curves were not only acknowledged, they were celebrated. That’s right: it was fashionable to have breasts. This concept may be hard to grasp for the current generation of young adults who grew up as “heroin chic” was dominating fashion runways and magazines of the 90’s (followed closely by the Britney Spears pop revolution of bare teenaged midriffs), however, appearing both emaciated and pre-pubescent has not always been the rule of beauty. Both the clothing and undergarments of the 1960’s (including the Bullet Bra!) were made, not to hide a woman’s physique but to show it off and accentuate it.

Cocktails at noon…
Forget Health Canada’s recommended alcohol intake. In the 1960’s, cocktail hour was more like cocktail day! Mixed drinks of hard, dark alcohol clinking against ice and glass were simply the 1960’s prelude to impending creative genius. In the AMC hit show “Madmen”, Madison Avenue advertising executives at Sterling Cooper Draper Price do their best brainstorming with a glass or three of whisky down the hatch. Children of the organic food generation, take heed – they don’t call it a social lubricant for nothing! You may be missing out on your very best creative ideas and lucrative opportunities to improve both coworker and client relationships due to your concerns of cirrhosis and stroke! Sidle up to a dimly lit bar for lunch, order yourself an Old Fashioned and let the ideas flow like whisky.

…and women for dessert!
It seems the 1960’s were also a time when affairs (especially those that included your secretary) occurred in lieu of the contemporary “after work jog”. There might be something truly brilliant about this approach considering that stress is able to cause serous health problems including heart disease and Canadians reported a 30% increase in stress levels in 2009 from the previous year, according to the Canadian Mental Health Association. Rather than slog through the dreary Toronto weather in order to improve your mood, you could be participating in a much more pleasurable means of keeping fit! What better way to end a day of drinking, smoking and challenging each other’s ego’s, than to indulge in some harmless affairs of the flesh where marital rules need not apply?