When it opened within the Malibu mountains in 1962, the ‘Teen-Age Magnificence Farm’ – a mix spa, allure college, weight-loss clinic, and summer time camp – was billed as ‘the one place on the planet devoted to creating the teen-ager extra stunning’. It attracted nationwide information protection for its revolutionary weight loss plan and health regime, which was concurrently retrograde and a long time forward of its time. The very idea of a ‘teen-ager’ was newsworthy in 1962. Whereas the phrase had been used because the Nineteen Thirties, it sometimes utilized solely to the youthful teenage years. However the postwar Child Growth had created a ‘Youthquake’, as Vogue editor Diana Vreeland known as it in 1965. By the mid-Nineteen Sixties roughly 40 per cent of Individuals had been below the age of 25. An enormous ecosystem of teen-oriented magazines, style traces, magnificence pageants, movies, and bands sprang as much as have a good time (and capitalise on) the brand new era’s cultural and financial energy.
‘They’re chargeable for so lots of our purchases’, Cosmopolitan marvelled in 1957. ‘They encourage so many kinds and institute so many fads, that it’s attainable to treat them as an unlimited, decided band of blue-jeaned storm troopers, forcing us all to do precisely as they dictate.’
New, too, was the idea of a vacation spot spa. The Magnificence Farm’s programme – and price ticket of $400 per two-week session – drew comparisons to 2 adults-only luxurious getaways: the Golden Door in Escondido, opened in 1958 by wellness guru Deborah Szekely, and Elizabeth Arden’s Maine Probability. Maine Probability had opened as a spa in Mt. Vernon, Maine, in 1934. An article within the Brooklyn Eagle in 1936 described it as for ‘solely a handfull’ and ‘these lots capable of pay’. Whereas the primary spas had been sometimes medical clinics for these looking for ‘relaxation cures’, after the battle the business went mainstream and shed its medical associations. Arden opened a second Maine Probability in Arizona in 1947, and he or she launched a magnificence and weight-loss programme for faculty college students on the Maine location in 1950. In 1955 the proprietor of the Smithtown Spa in Lengthy Island, which opened on the finish of the battle, instructed Newsday that ‘girls who come to the Spa are on no account all rich or celebrities, however many are enterprise and profession girls, and even housewives who’ve determined to go away their cares behind them and get that raise which comes from a great bodily overhaul and sweetness therapies’ – a mean of 25,000 girls from all over the world per yr.
The Magnificence Farm was an offshoot of a cowboy-themed summer time camp, the Calamigos Star C Ranch. Based by Grant and Helen Gerson in 1947, the spa was an improve from the country ranch, with its tents and bunk homes. The Lengthy Seashore Press-Telegram described the ‘Allure Farm for Teeners’ as a ‘two-week velvet life’, full with magnificence therapies, luxurious lodging, and ‘leisure machines’ – automated therapeutic massage tables. There have been lessons in yoga, archery, flower arranging, trendy dance, modelling, make-up, and hair, taught by a rotating forged of movie star counsellors. Facilities included a pool, a gymnasium, an natural backyard, horseback rides, hikes, and seaside excursions.
Not all the ladies aimed to drop extra pounds – or ‘cut back’, in modern parlance. Interviews with visitors reveal that some merely hoped to enhance their posture, pores and skin, and self-confidence. Others simply wished to loosen up. However the Magnificence Farm’s ads promised ‘a svelte whistle inspiring determine’. One aspect impact of America’s postwar prosperity was a style for sugary processed meals. One 15-year-old visitor confessed that she’d misplaced her determine attributable to a ‘Coke binge’. One other signed up for an entire summer time with the purpose of dropping 75 kilos.
The Magnificence Farm’s visitors relied on then-new dietary fashions and train methods to drop extra pounds – as much as seven kilos per week, the Gersons claimed. They preached a holistic strategy, heavy on psychology and self-actualisation. The ladies, Helen stated, ‘achieve an perception to their issues’, which means the underlying psychological or emotional points that led to overeating, and develop ‘strategies and manners that may stand them in good stead all their lives’. The farm-to-table menu was excessive in protein and low in carbohydrates, sugar, and salt. Many visitors received their first style of unique elements resembling soybeans, avocados, and alfalfa sprouts.
The unstated purpose of all this self-improvement was touchdown a husband. After spiking throughout the Second World Battle, the typical age of American brides dipped to twenty within the Nineteen Fifties as girls outnumbered males for the primary time. Bodily attractiveness was thought of a prerequisite for matrimony. As one visitor, 15-year-old Becky Voelz, instructed a reporter: ‘A woman could be a common drip – I imply she could be sullen and silly and have a rotten persona – but when she’s received a great determine, she will get loads of dates.’
By its second yr, the Magnificence Farm was booked to capability, attracting visitors from as far-off as Idaho, Texas, and Montana, however its success was shortlived. Attitudes in direction of weight-reduction plan and look modified in 1965, when a examine of juvenile dietary knowledge by the Division of Agriculture, led by nutritionist Dr Evelyn Spindler, concluded that six out of ten teenage women had been undernourished, and 4 out of ten boys. The examine attributed the excessive variety of women to ‘the nationwide concern of fats’, particularly milk; skipping breakfast (as a result of they had been too busy getting dressed); and consuming junk meals slightly than vitamins. It famous that boys ate higher as a result of bodily health was extra vital to them they usually weren’t as weight-conscious as women. The examine acquired numerous consideration within the press and plenty of neighborhood teams began teen vitamin programmes in response.
The Magnificence Farm closed within the late Nineteen Sixties. Its demise can in all probability be attributed to a number of components; the Division of Agriculture report and altering attitudes in direction of teen weight-reduction plan mixed with the tip of the postwar financial growth and the nascent free-love, anti-marriage counterculture to decrease demand for what the Farm provided.
Whether or not or not it succeeded in getting its visitors to the altar, the Magnificence Farm was a stepping stone to establishing Malibu as a wellness vacation spot and the US ‘well being spa business’ as what United Press Worldwide described in 1975 as ‘a $350 million annual gross sales enterprise that has mushroomed since World Battle II’. Right this moment, the Gersons’ grandsons function the positioning as a luxurious resort, spa, company occasion centre – and wedding ceremony venue.
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell is a style historian primarily based in Los Angeles.