This week’s blast from the past is a 9-minute educational film from 1947.  In Are You Popular?, we enter into the world of high school in the 1940s and we discover that our grandparents were amazingly judgmental teenagers.

We start out with a bunch of teenagers sitting in a cafeteria and debating why the new girl at school, Caroline, is so popular.  Then Ginny, the old girl at school, tries to sit at the table but no one’s willing to make room for her.  A stern-voiced narrator informs us that Ginny thinks that she’s popular because she goes “parking” with all the boys.  “No,” the narrator informs us, “girls who park in cars are not really popular…not even with the boys that they park with.”

Interestingly enough, none of the boys are condemned for all “parking” with the same girl.  No, instead, it’s all on Ginny.

Anyway, once Ginny has been properly shamed, the film becomes about the efforts of two boys to win a date with Caroline.  Caroline comes across like one of those girls in high school who would get upset whenever someone wore a short skirt.

Seriously, Ginny is too good for those losers….

Anyway, in the interest of providing a window into the deeply repressed and judgmental world that was 1947, here’s Are You Popular?