THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 16, 1995 TAG: 9509150047
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Comment
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHTERTY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
BETTY CROCKER is getting a new mug.
It's actually her eighth makeover. And she's lucky to have a face at all.
In fact, when some public relations wonk at General Mills dreamed her up in 1921, she didn't have a face. She was just a signature. Throughout the Great Depression, steady Betty gained national prominence with her signed epistles advising American women how to prepare food from relief rations.
General Mills finally commissioned a portrait of the fictitious happy homemaker in 1936.
Surveys over the years showed that most Americans knew who she was, and many believed she was real. In April 1945, Fortune Magazine reported that Betty Crocker was the second best-known woman in America - after First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
Over the years she changed with the times. Softened somewhat, looking less and less like a stern hausfrau. Becoming younger and more professional looking with each metapmorphosis.
Yet that face has always been so WASP. So Junior League. So Mid-Western. With the slightly constipated countenance of a woman who's just feasted on her own hot dog casserole - fashioned by standing the dogs on end in a sea of instant mashed potatoes so that the whole dish looks like a ``mock crown roast.''
The new and improved Betty celebrates her 75th year in business and will be based on a computer composite of the faces of 75 women - winners of a nationwide contest.
Maybe she'll lose that boring helmet of chestnut hair. Those baby blue eyes. Her trademark prim white blouse and sincere red suit.
Maybe she'll be black.
``She'll definitely have a suntan,'' quips Barry Wegener, one of three General Mills public relations types fielding Betty Crocker calls this week. ``But she'll look like a cousin of the old Betty.''
All of America it seems, is wondering what she will look like. How to create a female who doesn't flinch in the face of food coloring, frankfurters and frozen corn.
A lady who stoically feeds her family miniature marshmallows, canned pineapple and packages of flavored gelatin demands a special look.
My vote goes for a blend of the best of Martha Stewart and Roseanne.
Sure, I mock her. But on my kitchen shelf, sandwiched between pristine books by Julia Child and Paul Prudhomme, is a 22-year-old battered and grease-stained copy of ``Betty Crocker's Cookbook'' presented to me one Christmas by a woman who mistakingly thought I was going to marry her son.
Big Red. That's what the General Mills folks call these five-ring cookbooks with their blazing red covers.
Betty's books tell you simply how to make a good flaky pie crust. How to choose the right cut of meat. How to make gravy. And pies. And casseroles. Using ingredients that don't have to be flown in from Tierra Del Fuego.
Paul Prudhomme demands I hunt down andouille sausage, poblano peppers and crawfish.
For Betty I need only a can of tuna, cream of mushroom soup and a stalk of celery.
``We are constantly getting calls from someone who's lost her Big Red in a house fire,'' Wegener says. ``She can replace everything else but that. And she doesn't want the 1995 edition with the healthful meals, low salt, low fat. She wants an old one.''
Then the bad news.
``It's too bad, but we don't carry back copies,'' he says.
Prudhomme will guide you through an intricate etouffe but don't ask him something so pedestrian as how to roast a chicken.
Julia Child will walk you through a foie gras en brioche, but she's useless when it comes to the formula needed to calculate the cooking time of your Thanksgiving turkey.
Who else but Betty Crocker will help you delight your guests with hot dog toasties, dipsy devil dip and mock creme brulee?
Ah, Betty - the lady who believes in a balanced diet from the five basic food groups: hot dogs, paprika, marshmallows, canned soups and American cheese.
On her 75th birthday I will raise a glass of her famous raspberry shrub and drink a toast to the creator of mock crown roast.
I don't care what she looks like. For me, Betty Crocker will always be the 1972 incarnation who regally graces my tattered copy of Big Red. ILLUSTRATION: [Photo illustration of Betty Crocker from 1936 - 1996]
by CNB