All In Color For A Nickel

I'm a half-assed collector: driven to pack-rat impulses, I tend towards bursts of this anal retentive behavior often followed by a puzzled, "What the hell was I thinking?" Occasionally, however, my collecting impulses have more staying power. Some examples: underground comix, early rock 'n' roll, and fat postcards.

I have Karl Niedershuh to thank for that last addiction. A few years back, Karl wrote two short pieces for Dimensions on comic postcards from the first half of the century, and the specimens he reprinted so intrigued me that I began scouting for cards of my own. Old postcards are a wonderful collectible (for one thing, they're remarkably easy to store), but they don't seem to get a lot of respect in antique circles. Many antique malls eschew them altogether: perhaps because the profit margin for so many of 'em is small. I've bought comic postcards ranging in price from twenty-five cents to three bucks - pretty paltry when compared to the overprice you can get for a Fiesta ware plate, for instance.

A better source for postcards are the stamp and postcard shows. Fortunately for me, there's an annual show in my area every November. This year, I bought a dozen comic cards, plus a reprint sideshow fat lady picture. A pretty good haul.

I tend toward comic postcards with a positive image of size: they're a lot more plentiful than you might initially expect. Illustrated images of fat beauties in bathing suits, on park benches and other old-time romantic settings; these appear with happy frequency. Remnants of an era when the desirability of fat women was a comic - but not inconceivable - idea, the cards offer a refreshing counterpoint to the often insulting view of size in modern pop culture. These aren't homely caricatures but comely visions of smiling, full-figured womanhood

Occasionally, I've even come across a period postcard that's written to an insult punchline but is so nicely drawn (the gag writer and artist working from different perspectives, perhaps) that I'm tempted to get it, anyway. I've purchased a few of these, but, generally, I've tried to take the high road.

Karl Niedershuh, the guy who first lead me down the road to p.c. mania, is currently overseeing a page on Dimensions devoted to fat-positive postcards. Looking at the first batch of cards on his page, I find I'm familiar with about half of 'em and most intrigued by the earliest cards. The women in these examples, from the first two decades of the twentieth century, are larger than their later counterparts and at the same time more convincingly drawn. Makes you wonder how many of these artists were fat admirers.

Of all my bad habits, postcard collecting is probably one of my most innocuous. Even my wife finds it amusing; when I recently scanned a set of them to make a fat-positive screen saver for the home PC, she was as entertained as I. At this writing the screen saver's novelty still hasn't worn off.

Wish I could find some fresh cards to add to the gallery, though. . .





Wilson Barbers

January, 1998