Olive Oyl and Spinach
When I’m cooking spinach, I think of my father. Strange? Well, I was a skinny kid and pale, with dark, long hair. My father called me Olive Oyl back then! You know, Popeye’s leading lady. I guess the tall feature didn’t matter to Dad. My father was right about the resemblance. I remember looking in the bathroom mirror. I had to sit cross-legged on the fake-wood countertop to see myself. I’d hop on the toilet to get up there, and I’d stare, thinking the skin under my eyes was translucent.
Dora Paskel (1872–1953) of Chester, Illinois, E.C. Segar’s hometown. The muse for Olive Oyl. And Popeye was inspired by Frank “Rocky” Fiegel. A tough, pipe-smoking sailor from the same town, who worked as a bar bouncer and got in fights all the time. What a pair!
I loved my special nickname, and it stuck for years. I learned later that Olive Oyl is a bit chaotic, a bit anxious, and headstrong, just like me! And it’s cool too, because I love olives and olive oil.
Where did her name come from? Olive Oyl is a silly little pun, and her older brothers’ names are Castor Oyl and Crude Oyl! Not as culinary appealing. “Oyl lifts” is an Olympic weightlifting exercise. She is slight, yet strong in body and will!
What I didn’t know when I first met her as a cartoon in the show, Popeye The Sailor Man, is that she started as a comic strip called Thimble Theatre, created by cartoonist E.C. Segar, in 1919, and Olive was the original main character—Popeye, Olive’s lover, didn’t show up until ten years later.
The interesting love story goes like this: Olive was engaged to a loser guy named Harold Hamgravy. He was a slacker who chased rich women and had many “get rich quick” schemes. In a later comic strip, Castor Oyl and Ham Gravy hired a sailor named Popeye to man his ship for a treasure hunt. As Popeye’s popularity went viral in 1930, Ham got ghosted by Olive Oyl, and Popeye became THE man.
The Spinach: During the Great Depression, E.C. Segar gave Popeye his famous superpower food: a can of spinach – so he can fight the bad guys! There are many theories around “why spinach.” The most believable one is: Segar was sending kids and families subliminal messages to eat more of an affordable, vitamin-packed vegetable, at a time when American diets were missing so many nutrients.
It worked! Popeye is credited with helping boost U.S. spinach consumption in the 1930s by 33%!
A lot of us grew up hearing “spinach is loaded with iron” and will help us build muscles just like Popeye the Sailor Man. My father told me exactly this. The thing is, spinach does have iron, but not in huge, superhuman amounts. The USDA says that 1 cup of spinach is about 3.7 mg of iron. Still, spinach is a nutritional gem, rich in vitamins (especially vitamin K), folate, antioxidants, and more.
I read there was a rumor that spinach’s iron count was a clerical error (a misplaced decimal point) and that’s why the cartoonist used the vegetable, but that isn’t proven. As an artist-type myself, I think Segar just needed a pop of bright green to round out his color story.
Go eat some spinach to stay strong and healthy throughout this winter!
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popeye, smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/popeye
