You’ve come a long way, Betty Crocker!
They say Tilda Swinton is the female chameleon, but look how much our national - nay, world - baking treasure has morphed over the years! Her crimson blazer has gone through more changes than you can shake a box of colour safe bleach at, and bygod, how her brunette mid length hair shines in its many different styles of mid lengthery. You wouldn’t want a long-haired Betty getting her nasty hair in your Fudgy Brownies. Not even in the swinging 60s, when women started burning their cupcakes.
And even though she spends all her time baking (powder, eggs, oil, REPEAT THIS LABOUR OF LOVE) she’s managed to get younger. That frumpy old grey haired prune in ‘36 can’t hold a birthday cake candle to the sassy, modern 96er who likes the Lemonheads and smudged eyeliner.
She does seem to have taken a sudden several-centuries-backwards jump in 1986 in order to dress like the American forefathers, but the 80s were a confusing time for economics and baking. Also, in 1955 she thought she was Liz Taylor and she wasn’t fooling anybody.
I don’t know what happened to Betty after 1996, but since I graduated high school that year, really, it doesn’t matter. Everything sort of stopped since those were the best years of my life. I like to think they were hers, too.
BTW Betty in the UK is a little bit more abstract, and she has something in her eye (maybe frosting?):
But I agree: Love Betty. We do, Betty. We do. Keep baking.