Aaron Bossig: Care of the Skin (1949)

Did you ever wonder why older people think kids will do anything they see on TV? It’s because apparently, in the 50s, parents and teachers believed kids couldn’t learn anything unless their lesson was the subject of a crappy educational film. A fine example of this is Care of the Skin, next in our series of useless educational shorts. Apparently, Encyclopedia Britannica films was under the impression that elementary schools were full of kids who couldn’t bathe properly. Such naiveness is characteristic of the 50s… today, we’re well aware that dirty, smelly people tend to migrate toward airplanes, where they inevitably sit next to you. In this film, we get a glimpse into the lives of three children—Virginia, Billy, and Fred—who live in a giant mansion, dress in silk pajamas, and sleep in gargantuan beds. These obviously wealthy seven-year-olds have no parents to speak of, but that doesn’t bother them too much. Somehow, they’ve managed to make a functioning household. Their only concern in life seems to be their evening wash-up time, which easily takes three or four hours for each kid. Care of the Skin documents every soaping and sudsing these already clean children put themselves through on a daily basis.