When it opened in the Malibu mountains in 1962, the ‘Teen-Age Beauty Farm’ – a combination spa, charm school, weight-loss clinic, and summer camp – was billed as ‘the only place in the world dedicated to making the teen-ager more beautiful’. It attracted national news coverage for its innovative diet and fitness regime, which was simultaneously retrograde and decades ahead of its time. The very concept of a ‘teen-ager’ was newsworthy in 1962. While the word had been used since the 1930s, it typically applied only to the younger teenage years. But the postwar Baby Boom had created a ‘Youthquake’, as Vogue editor Diana Vreeland called it in 1965. By the mid-1960s roughly 40 per cent of Americans were under the age of 25. A vast ecosystem of teen-oriented magazines, fashion lines, beauty pageants, films, and bands sprang up to celebrate (and capitalise on) the new generation’s cultural and economic power.
‘They are responsible for so many of our purchases’, Cosmopolitan marvelled in 1957. ‘They inspire so many styles and institute so many fads, that it is possible to regard them as a vast, determined band of blue-jeaned storm troopers, forcing us all to do exactly as they dictate.’
New, too, was the concept of a destination spa. The Beauty Farm’s programme – and price tag of $400 per two-week session – drew comparisons to two adults-only luxury getaways: the Golden Door in Escondido, opened in 1958 by wellness guru Deborah Szekely, and Elizabeth Arden’s Maine Chance. Maine Chance had opened as a spa in Mt. Vernon, Maine, in 1934. An article in the Brooklyn Eagle in 1936 described it as for ‘only a handfull’ and ‘those plenty able to pay’. While the first spas were typically medical clinics for those seeking ‘rest cures’, after the war the industry went mainstream and shed its medical associations. Arden opened a second Maine Chance in Arizona in 1947, and she introduced a beauty and weight-loss programme for college students at the Maine location in 1950. In 1955 the owner of the Smithtown Spa in Long Island, which opened at the end of the war, told Newsday that ‘women who come to the Spa are by no means all wealthy or celebrities, but many are business and career women, and even housewives who have decided to leave their cares behind them and get that lift which comes from a good physical overhaul and beauty treatments’ – an average of 25,000 women from around the world per year.
The Beauty Farm was an offshoot of a cowboy-themed summer camp, the Calamigos Star C Ranch. Founded by Grant and Helen Gerson in 1947, the spa was an upgrade from the rustic ranch, with its tents and bunk houses. The Long Beach Press-Telegram described the ‘Charm Farm for Teeners’ as a ‘two-week velvet life’, complete with beauty treatments, luxury accommodations, and ‘relaxation machines’ – automated massage tables. There were classes in yoga, archery, flower arranging, modern dance, modelling, makeup, and hair, taught by a rotating cast of celebrity counsellors. Amenities included a pool, a gymnasium, an organic garden, horseback rides, hikes, and beach excursions.
Not all the girls aimed to lose weight – or ‘reduce’, in contemporary parlance. Interviews with guests reveal that some simply hoped to improve their posture, skin, and self-confidence. Others just wanted to relax. But the Beauty Farm’s advertisements promised ‘a svelte whistle inspiring figure’. One side effect of America’s postwar prosperity was a taste for sugary processed foods. One 15-year-old guest confessed that she’d lost her figure due to a ‘Coke binge’. Another signed up for a whole summer with the goal of dropping 75 pounds.
The Beauty Farm’s guests relied on then-new nutritional models and exercise techniques to lose weight – up to seven pounds per week, the Gersons claimed. They preached a holistic approach, heavy on psychology and self-actualisation. The girls, Helen said, ‘gain an insight to their problems’, meaning the underlying mental or emotional issues that led to overeating, and develop ‘methods and manners that will stand them in good stead all their lives’. The farm-to-table menu was high in protein and low in carbohydrates, sugar, and salt. Many guests got their first taste of exotic ingredients such as soybeans, avocados, and alfalfa sprouts.
The unspoken goal of all this self-improvement was landing a husband. After spiking during the Second World War, the average age of American brides dipped to 20 in the 1950s as women outnumbered men for the first time. Physical attractiveness was considered a prerequisite for matrimony. As one guest, 15-year-old Becky Voelz, told a reporter: ‘A girl can be a regular drip – I mean she can be sullen and stupid and have a rotten personality – but if she’s got a good figure, she gets plenty of dates.’
By its second year, the Beauty Farm was booked to capacity, attracting guests from as far away as Idaho, Texas, and Montana, but its success was shortlived. Attitudes towards dieting and appearance changed in 1965, when a study of teen dietary data by the Department of Agriculture, led by nutritionist Dr Evelyn Spindler, concluded that six out of ten teenage girls were undernourished, and four out of ten boys. The study attributed the high number of girls to ‘the national fear of fat’, especially milk; skipping breakfast (because they were too busy getting dressed); and consuming junk food rather than nutrients. It noted that boys ate better because physical fitness was more important to them and they were not as weight-conscious as girls. The study received a lot of attention in the press and many community groups started teen nutrition programmes in response.
The Beauty Farm closed in the late 1960s. Its demise can probably be attributed to multiple factors; the Department of Agriculture report and changing attitudes towards teen dieting combined with the end of the postwar economic boom and the nascent free-love, anti-marriage counterculture to lower demand for what the Farm offered.
Whether or not it succeeded in getting its guests to the altar, the Beauty Farm was a stepping stone to establishing Malibu as a wellness destination and the US ‘health spa industry’ as what United Press International described in 1975 as ‘a $350 million annual sales business that has mushroomed since World War II’. Today, the Gersons’ grandsons operate the site as a luxury resort, spa, corporate event centre – and wedding venue.
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell is a fashion historian based in Los Angeles.