Learning Day: Sonja Henie's Silly Hats! (Patreon)

Sonja Henie was the world's first international teen superstar. Before Shirley Temple, way before Britney Spears, there was Sonja, an ice skater, movie actress, and a woman who was merchandised to hell. She was basically the Minions of the 1930s. If Facebook existed in 1932, people would have posted a ton of Sonja memes with her saying stuff like, "Exercise? I thought you said Extra Fries!" and "Don't be afraid to gain a few extra pounds; fat people are harder to kidnap!" Wow, Minions memes have gotten dark lately.

It's weird that we don't hear more about Sonja Henie today! She sold out arenas with the very first Ice Capades-style show centered around her. She competed in the Olympics at age eleven! She had a cute little Norwegian accent, probably.

Here's why I bring her up: I found a perfectly intact paper doll book from 1942 with some cool cutouts of Sonja wearing weird little hats. So today, I'm just going to take a moment to pause and admire a strangely overlooked piece of world history and her stupid, stupid hats! First of all, check out this flouncy ice princess look!

What? Oh shit, yeah. Um… now that I have, for the very first time, image searched Sonja Henie, there does appear to be a picture of her shaking hands with Adolf Hitler pretty high up on her Google image search results. Not…not sure what's up with that? Let's move on to another outfit, I guess? This storybook look includes a nifty little hair bow that is so dumb. Check out this dumb idiot bow for dummies.

Shit. Ok, apparently Sonja did also have one dinner with Hitler before the 1936 Olympics. I mean, how many people even were there to have dinner with in 1936, right? Let's, um, let's focus on all of the hard work that she put into her career! At the age of fourteen, she won her first world championship! That's pretty neat!

Today you can't even enter Olympic level figure skating competitions before the age of fifteen because it's been found to be too psychologically stressful for young women to compete at that level. In fact, several groups are pushing to raise the minimum age for competition to seventeen. Sonja was already starting her streak of ten consecutive world championships at just fourteen years old, and she grew up just fine.

FUCK! Sonja. Why! Come on, man.

Fine! Ok, so there are two pictures of two separate instances where Sonja Heine shook hands with Hitler. I guess. There's a good chance she was maybe, really into Hitler?

Her family came from money, and she was probably extraordinarily spoiled and not aware of current events. I don't know if she was actively evil of just kind of uneducated on what was happening in the world at the time because she had spent five hours a day ice skating since she was eight years old and probably the rest of her time eating nine hundred pancakes a day so her skeleton wouldn't collapse under the sheer weight of her ice skating muscles. Anyway… here's a gorgeous pink ball gown.

Fuck! Why would you do that Sonja? That's insane. Ok, you very clearly were really into Hitler. I guess that's why your paper doll book was only seven dollars, huh? Maybe that's why no one talks about you anymore? When someone says, "Remember Hollywood's first teen darling Sonja Henie," they have to add a disclaimer that says, "Don't Google her though, because pretty much the first thing you're going to find is a picture of her shaking hands with Hitler."

That's a dumbass hat, and I can't even enjoy it that much because there definitely is a picture of Sonja Henie doing a Nazi salute. I mean, at this point, I feel like I get it. If you keep someone's picture on top of your piano, you're a pretty big fan. That's something you typically reserve for members of your family or One Direction.

Today the only framed pictures of celebrities you might see in people's houses are of The Queen and Jesus. Maybe it's kind of weird to think of Jesus as a celebrity, but if there were a crusades era Tiger Beat, he would have been on the cover of every issue, right? Jesus was the Justin Timberlake of 1095 and the Heath Ledger of 0001.

So, ok, Sonja Heine was pretty into Hitler. In a 2014 Vanity Fair article about her, fellow figure skater Dick Button said she wasn't "a political person," which is what we say about people when they're famous but also very into Hitler. Yes, there's a prominent male figure skater named Dick Button. He invented a figure skating move called the Button Camel, which would have been called the Dick Camel if I had my way.

Yeah, I guess that's an argument you could make. Hey, Sonja, what are you wearing now?

Uh-huh, and which friend would it be that you're shaking hands with on that novelty T-shirt?

First of all, it's Dick Button, not Dick Buttons. Second, I know exactly what Dick Button looks like, and that is not Dick Button. I'm looking at a picture of him right now on the cover of his book Push Dick's Button: A Conversation On Skating From A Good Part Of The Last Century - And A Little Tom Foolery, a book title I didn't make up but sure wish I did. That is not him on your shirt, ma'am! A week ago, if you told me I would find a book called Push Dick's Button and it wouldn't be an erotic novel about Richard Nixon, I never would have believed you.

No, I'm afraid I won't be able to do that, Sonja. It's a shame how sometimes you can stumble on a cool and exciting new piece of history only to fall into a Hitler hole. I just wanted a cute piece of pop culture! Not a horrible reminder of one of history's greatest tragedies. God, Hitler sucks. Hitler ruins everything. And you suck too, Sonja. Why couldn't you just put on more silly hats!

Let this be a lesson to us all. History is like a bingo wheel. You pay your seven ninety nine entry fee to your local pastor and you ask for some silly hats. A simple request. There are plenty of them, but within the bingo balls, buried somewhere deep and unassuming is always Hitler, and you have to hold onto your butt and hope that the very worst thing you get in return is MC Hammer pants.