If you’d like to make a cake (or in the above example, “low-fat fudge brownies”), it’s as simple as buying a box of Betty Crocker cake mix, putting in some pretty basic ingredients — water, vegetable oil, and an egg — mixing, and baking. Some amount of time later — about 30 to 40 minutes — you’ll have dessert, hot from the oven. It’s a pretty cool deal, and it’s what helped make Betty Crocker a household name.

And it’s also based on a pair of lies.

Betty Crocker was born in 1921 in Minnesota — kind of. The Washburn Crosby Company — a predecessor to food giant General Mills — ran a contest in which anyone who completed a jigsaw puzzle depicting a scene from one of their mills (vaguely designed to look like a flour sack when put together) could write in to win a pincushion. (Yes, a pincushion.) Despite the humdrum prize, the giveaway proved popular, and Washburn Crosby had a good problem on their hands: people, typically women, were not only writing in to claim their pincushion, but also for baking advice. Seeing these letter-writers as likely customers for their Gold Medal brand flour, Washburn Crosby’s fledgling customer service department replied with baking tips. And to make the tips seem more genuine, the company decided to sign the letters “Betty Crocker” — Betty, because per Wikipedia, it “was viewed as a cheery, all-American name” and Crocker, after the name of one of the company’s board members. But Betty Crocker never existed.

Shortly thereafter, the fake letter author would gain a voice. Washburn Crosby purchased a local, failing radio station in 1924, and one of the first shows the company introduced was the “Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air,” hosted by none other than Betty Crocker (as far as listeners knew). The show, despite the lie, did very well, and other stations wanted the show. Washburn Crosby — which likely saw the show as great marketing — decided to distribute the show in a low-cost way. The company, per its own corporate history, sent scripts to radio stations who were to, in turn, record the audio themselves, using local talent. Perhaps as an unintended side effect, depending on where one listened to the “Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air,” Betty could have a different accent — making her sound like someone who could be in your neighborhood.

But what Betty sounded like wasn’t the only thing that changed. Here’s a collection of images showing what Betty Crocker looked like over the years, and you’ll note that she’s (a) ageless and (b) updated to remain somewhat contemporary (if not reserved) every few years: