What in the world is "boudoir cheesecake"?!
Hello!
For the past several weeks, I’ve had my head down in research about “Imposter Syndrome” – the label that is used to describe the “self-doubt of intellect, skills or accomplishment in high-achieving individuals.”
The term bugs me (for a lot of reasons), and I wanted to find out the history of the concept for a new workshop I was creating:
It turns out that the concept of “Imposter Syndrome” originated with two psychologists who interviewed a group of smart young women in the Midwest US in the 1970s.
As part of my research, I wanted to find out what it was like to be a smart woman living in the Midwest US during that time.
Luckily, I’m related to two smart women who fit that description — and my mom and Aunt Sally were generous sharing their experiences with me.
After one of these conversations, my mom sent me an email with an anecdote that REALLY got my attention:
“The Indy Star had a column by Dr. Crane called the ‘Worry Clinic,” she wrote.
“He used to advise women to use ‘boudoir cheesecake’ to entice their husbands to be more responsive.”
I’m sorry – boudoir cheesecake?!
Who is Dr. Crane and what is boudoir cheesecake?
I was curious…
Hearing “Dr. Crane” instantly made my pop culture mind think of Frasier, but this Dr. Crane was George Crane, a trained psychologist from Chicago, who was born in 1901.
He earned a Ph.D. in psychology and a medical degree from Northwestern University, where he also taught.
In addition to teaching, he lectured extensively, and regularly appeared on both radio and television.
He even wrote speeches for President Calvin Coolidge.
But most of his writing energy focused on his syndicated newspaper columns – Horse Sense and The Worry Clinic.
To say Crane was conservative feels like a gross understatement.
He once wrote an article titled, “Why Men are Superior to Women” and supported his position by noting there weren’t any “women shepherds.”
But relationships between husbands and wives were clearly an area of great interest for Crane, as he developed “Tests for Husbands and Wives” in 1939, where men and women could score their partners on various qualities, assigning merits and demerits.
She who dresses for breakfast, has meals on time, and lets her husband sleep late on Sundays would score points.
She who puts her cold feet on husband at night to warm them, fails to sew on buttons or darn socks regularly, or WEARS RED NAIL POLISH would lose points.
The man who belched without apology, left dresser drawers open, or snored would lose points.
And the man who gave his wife an ample allowance, was courteous to her friends, and remembered her birthday would earn points.
And Crane doled out plenty of relationship advice in The Worry Clinic.
The column ran six days a week, and was, as the name implied, devoted to readers’ worries.
Crane focused two days each week to worries about love and marriage, and the other four days to worries about business, childcare, personality development, and what he called “mental hygiene.”
The Worry Clinic was published for decades, and at its peak was carried by 250 newspapers across the US.
And perhaps no term appeared in The Worry Clinic more than Crane’s creation – “boudoir cheesecake.”
In his column, Crane wrote that most marital conflicts were due to a lack of what he called “boudoir cheesecake.”
“Men crave boudoir cheesecake!” he exclaimed in a 1973 column.
Crane’s boudoir cheesecake had “no calories” and was the “ideal insurance against straying husbands and divorce.”
One reader in 1976 was eager to obtain Crane’s “famous recipe” for boudoir cheesecake, not realizing that the term was a euphemism for sex.
Crane told the reader that despite rape cases appearing on Page 1 of a newspaper, the word “sex” was often blue-pencilled by editors as being “salacious and too frank!”
Crane’s “recipe” for boudoir cheesecake called for “a little wifely pornography”, as it was “a woman’s role to excite the man until he can function.”
Even if women were tired, Crane urged them to “turn on a seductive ‘act’ for 10 minutes.”
After all, he told his readers, “most divorces start in the bedroom!” and 10 million husbandless women are “eagerly waiting to steal your mates!”
But how could a married woman ensure her boudoir cheesecake would keep her husband away from the “tempting sirens” Crane referred to?
Crane advised wives to adopt an “amorous type” of perfume, be seductively kittenish, and “wear a diaphanous nightie and shun hair curlers!”
Oh, and don’t forget to “slenderize, for a fat woman suggests a good old motherly soul but not an exciting paramour!”
And for those wives who needed to lose weight to serve more “enticing boudoir cheesecake,” Crane offered his famous “dehydration drugless diet.”
In a 1974 column, a woman named Dora wrote how she followed Crane’s liquids-only diet and lost 10 pounds in 10 days.
“I’m now more interested in ice water than food!” she wrote, adding that Crane’s diet helped her lose weight AND get her husband’s attention.
“Now he often stays at the kitchen table to read the paper instead of going back to the living room,” she added.
Success!
When a reader asked Dr. Crane why he blamed women for their cheating husbands, he replied that a straying husband was a sign of “a wife’s failure to satisfy her mate’s hunger for erotic calories.”
Boudoir cheesecake skills were even more important than skills in the kitchen, Crane wrote, as some of the “sirens” pulling men away from their wives weren’t “even able to perk coffee!”
But clearly, they used a “far more enticing recipe for boudoir cheesecake than those dutiful wives!”
Crane had his critics, acknowledging that “many fat stodgy wives” would rather write an “irate letter to the editor” than “acknowledge their blubber” and “lose 25 to 50 pounds via dieting!”
He also claimed some “prudish editors” canceled his column because of his assertion that most divorces started in the bedroom.
Even in the 1980s, Crane was still writing that “God made men to be 200-400% more hungry for boudoir cheesecake than their wives,” and that women who “feign ardor” for boudoir cheesecake “seldom worry about divorce!”
Though little is written about Dr. Crane’s own marriage, he did pass his conservative views on to his children, and his sons Phil and Daniel served as Republican congressmen from Illinois.
While Phil Crane served in Congress for more than 30 years, Daniel’s political career was short-lived.
Father of six Daniel had campaigned as a “family man,” but his affair with a 17-year-old Congressional aide was later revealed as part of the Congressional sex scandal in 1983.1
Despite apologizing publicly with wife Judy and young daughter by his side, Daniel Crane was still censured by Congress, and failed to get re-elected in 1985.
Interestingly, one of the Congressmen throwing stones at Crane was Newt Gingrich, who would later have his own boudoir cheesecake scandals.
Dr. Crane defended his son during the scandal, and blamed Washington, the “Sodom and Gomorrah of today.”
And after that, Dr. Crane continued giving readers things to worry about —up until his death in 1995.
*Sadly, I found no information on Dr. Crane’s view of actual cheesecake.
*Though I found much of Dr. Crane’s writing shocking, the exclamation marks in today’s columns are Dr. Crane’s, not mine. The man loved to talk about boudoir cheesecake — and end a sentence with an exclamation point!
Thank you, Mom and Aunt Sally for your help!
One more thing…
Dr Crane also doled out advice for twenty cents in various mail order pamphlets, including Sex Differences Between Men and Women & Nagging Wives and Sex Problems in Marriage.
While I could not obtain a physical copy of this guide, you can read some of its gems here.
Who knew an alkaline douche of a teaspoonful of ordinary baking soda to a quart of warm water, before each intercourse, could help produce pregnancy?
Another gem I found in my research was Crane’s advice for avoiding rape.
“Girls, if you can keep your escort talking, you can ward off assault, even by a vicious rapist! So ply him with questions! Keep him talking! Praise some of his good points but always fade out of your part of the dialogue with a question mark!”
“A man cannot engage in gay conversation and meanwhile be sexually passionate! For these are opposing actions!” Crane explained.
To keep the “gay conversation” going, a woman should follow the H-E-L-P formula, and quiz a potential assailant about their Hobbies, Entertainment, Literature, and Politics, in that order.
Spare a thought for Daniel Crane’s wife Judy. Imagine your father-in-law lecturing you about boudoir cheesecake — and blaming your husband’s affair on you for not serving him enough erotic calories!
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Until next time, Stay Curious!
-Beth
This is so gross. I kinda wanted to like the term (it is objectively funny), but he's so repugnant I just can't.
I can’t even