In the early 1950s, Associated Press writer Dorothy Roe weighed in on her predictions for the fantastic faraway year of 2000 AD. Among her on-point prognostications about greater gender parity was the belief that future ladies would evolve into Amazonian superwomen. Here's her verdict, courtesy of Paleofuture's Matt Novak:

The woman of the year 2000 will be an outsize Diana, anthropologists and beauty experts predict. She will be more than six feet tall, wear a size 11 shoe, have shoulders like a wrestler and muscles like a truck driver. Chances are she will be doing a man's job, and for this reason will dress to fit her role. Her hair will be cropped short, so as not to get in the way. She probably will wear the most functional clothes in the daytime, go frilly only after dark. Slacks probably will be her usual workaday costume. These will be of synthetic fiber, treated to keep her warm in winter and cool in summer, admit the beneficial ultra-violet rays and keep out the burning ones. They will be light weight and equipped with pockets for food capsules, which she will eat instead of meat and potatoes.


Her proportions will be perfect, though Amazonian, because science will have perfected a balanced ration of vitamins, proteins and minerals that will produce the maximum bodily efficiency, the minimum of fat. She will go in for all kinds of sports – probably will compete with men athletes in football, baseball, prizefighting and wrestling. She'll be in on all the high-level groups of finance, business and government. She may even be president.

"Frilly after dark," such a magnificent turn of phrase — it sounds like the Victorian equivalent of Skinemax, which would consist solely of a salacious sousaphone solo.


The illustration at left is from a December 24, 1949 Associated Press piece by weight-loss entrepreneur Ann Delafield. In this similar article, Delafield cited sunshine as a catalyst for this new race of Brobdingnagian females: