Lifestyle

1950s etiquette tips win teen $300K book deal

So much for Women’s Lib.

An eighth-grader took cues from a 1950s etiquette book touting white gloves and girdles in a quirky bid to be popular at school a couple years ago — and now, she’s laughing all the way to the bank.

Teenager Maya Van Wagenen cleverly chronicled how she used tips from the decades-old “Betty Cornell’s Teen-age Popularity Guide’’ to gain an edge as a student new to Brownsville, Texas.

She followed some of Cornell’s sage advice, which included the gloves, white pearls and girdles, as well as how to properly squeeze pimples, shave one’s legs for summer and deal with “figure problems’’ by choosing grapefruit and wheat toast “with [a] small amount of butter’’ for breakfast.

Oh, and most importantly: “Be yourself, don’t put on airs, treat everybody with the same kindness,’’ Cornell, 86, added to The Post through her daughter, Betsy Huston Fadem, 59, on Tuesday.

Van Wagenen kept a journal about her “social experiment,” and her book based on her experiences is due out in April.

“Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek’’ is part of the teen’s impressive $300,000 two-book deal with publisher Dutton Children’s Books, a unit of Penguin Group.

And DreamWorks just optioned movie rights to the book, according to Deadline.com — with Amy Harris, a writer who has helped produce “Sex and the City’’ and spinoff “The Carrie Diaries — on the script.

According to her bio, Van Wagenen now lives in rural Georgia with her parents and two siblings, including the sixth-grade brother she still shares a room with.

But Van Wagenen said in a recent press release, “I have always loved to read and dreamed about seeing my books on the shelves of a library and in the hands of other people.”

She has said she grew up reading Louisa May Alcott and touts on Twitter that she’s a fan of British TV and chocolate.

Cornell, a mother of three and former model from Teaneck, NJ, said she was thrilled at the renewed interest in her own book, one of four she penned on teenage issues at the time.

“I thought I would never hear about the book again,’’ she admitted.

Asked whether girls today could relate to the advice in her book, she replied, “Some of it, but not all, because so many things have changed.’’

Her daughter, Fadem, said her mother met Van Wagenen in April and “it is a gift to me to have [Maya] use my mom’s book in this way.”

“It connected me and my mom in a new way,’’ said the Philadelphia resident.

“I hadn’t read my mom’s book until then because I feel my mom raised my sister and I on that advice, so reading it just made me feel I was listening to all the to-dos that a mom gives her daughter.

“But Maya’s book brought it to life.

“It was fascinating to me how universal the themes and topics were that she addressed in 1950,’’ Fadem said of her author mother.

She said that her mother “filled up” when told about Van Wagenen’s journal and book.

“I don’t think she ever thought anybody would read her book again,” Fadem said.