early 20thC working-class women.
Coney Island 1890s, early
1900s - new urban commercial mixed-sex mass entertainment - dance halls,
vaudeville, movies & amusement parks.
Challenge traditional
morals - freedom, drop inhibitions;
"Tunnel of Love"- "spooning,"
"petting."
Almost 60% of all women in
NY age 16-20 worked for wages.
Experiment with new social
roles.
"tough dances"
"If you want to get any
notion took of you, you gotta have some style about you."
"treating" - "Don't you
know there ain't no feller going to spend coin on you fer nothing?"
Men and women each
"picking up" companion - "Most of the girls quite frankly admit making Ôdates'
with strange men."
department store
managers advised employees to round out meager wages by finding a "gentleman
friend" to buy them clothes & pleasures.
"If my boy friend didn't
take me out, how could I ever go out?" boarding house,
Workplace familiarity,
sexual harassment.
Subculture - "charity
girls"; "you beat me again. My chump only spent $2.50"
Girls who resisted - "I
never go out in the evenings, except to my relatives, because if I did, I
should lose my reputation and that is all I have."
WWI - women working in
factories, streetcar conductors; overseas as nurses, ambulance drivers,
telephone operators;
New York Times 1920
women's skirts hems nine inches off ground, "far beyond any modest
limitation"
president Univ. Florida,
"The low-cut gowns, the rolled hose and short skirts and born of the devil
and are carrying the present and future generations to destruction."
Utah bill punishing
women who wore skirts more than three inches above ankle with fines or prison;
Flappers - cosmetics,
giving up corsets,
F. Scott Fitzgerald's
1920 This Side of Paradise "I've kissed dozens of men, I suppose
I'll kiss dozens more."
1920s "Jazz Age" (slang
for sex)
clergyman: "in 1921-22
jazz had caused the downfall of 1,000 girls in Chicago alone."
Charleston, fox-trot,
"lewd gyrations".
Ladies' Home Journal:
"jazz originally was the accompaniment of the voodoo dancer, stimulating the
half-crazed barbarian to the vilest deeds." jazz led to "blatant disregard of
even the elementary rules of civilization," "whorehouse music," "music in the
nude."
1904-1905, cheap movie
theaters - nickelodeons - "nickel madness".
1907, 200 nickelodeons
in Manhattan alone - five per block in Harlem. Chicago two cents a show -
"the poor man's
amusement" or the "workingman's theater".
"leisure revolution" -
Saturday afternoons off
"Eight hours for work,
eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will."
1911 Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory fire NY - 146 died;
theater escapism, mixed-sexes: "note how the semi-darkness permits a
Ôsteady's' arm to encircle a Ôlady friend's' waist." Jane Addams warned 1909
easy for movies to become children's "moral guide."
1920s Hollywood coming
of age - actresses virgin vs. vamp.
Mary Pickford "America's
Sweetheart"
Theda Bara classic
"vamp" (vampire) - "the wickedest face in the world, dark, brooding, beautiful
and heartless".
Clara Bow, the "It"
girl;
Mae West
1925 Broadway play Sex,
1927 The Drag -
eight days in jail,
1933 film She Done Him
Wrong - "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?"
"haven't you ever met a
man who could make you happy? " "Sure - lots of times."
"It's not the men in
your life, it's the life in your men."
mid1930s new production
code prohibited "vulgar" words, revealing costumes & anything immoral.
- 1924 sociologists
Robert & Helen Lynd - Muncie, Indiana; Middletown.
young people world of
own - 1920s almost 75% enrolled in high school; 13% college;
car "a house of
prostitution on wheels."
0ulture - sexual
innovation & heterosocial mixing.
- 1920s contraceptives,
experimentation.
- women reaching young
adulthood 1920s, rate of premarital sex jumped sharply, to roughly 50% of the
group, then relatively constant until late 1960s.
- Emily Post's Etiquette
1927 "the Vanishing Chaperon".
Dating, necking and
petting
1920s 92% of coeds
engaged in petting; those "rejecting all sex play feel that they are on the
defensive."
"A girl can have many
friends, but when she gets a Ôsteady,' there's only one way to have him and to
keep him; I mean to keep him a long time."
differences - rural
communities; working young people;
lowest social class of
whites, almost one-quarter of births outside marriage.
- 19thC prescriptive
literature sex good marriage, emphasis on control & regulation. 1920s emphasize expression rather than
control.
- different ideas of
female and male sexuality.
1930s Theodore Van de
Velde's Ideal Marriage.
1930, 55 birth control
clinics in 23 cities in 15 states. 1938, over 300 clinics; 1942, over 800
clinics across country.
1929 Sanger National
Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control - 5 congressional
hearings.
1930 federal court
permitted shipping and advertising of birth control for legalized uses - boom
in condoms.
mid-1930s, largest
makers producing 1.5 million condoms per day; drugstores, gas stations,
barbershops.
1936 U.S. vs. One Package
federal appeals court overturned anti-contraception provisions of Comstock Law -
allowed doctors to prescribe contraceptives for whatever reasons they judged
appropriate.
1937 AMA reversed
earlier opposition to birth control - med schools no training.
middle-class women
taking birth control for granted. diaphragm, class difference. 1940s
lower-class women little knowledge of reproductive processes or contraception.
less than half of
working-class wives used birth-control, and over one-third of those just
"careful in timing of sex.
Early motherhood,
numerous pregnancies, large number of abortions.
Study 10,000
working-class women Sanger's clinic late 1920s showed one of five pregnancies
intentionally terminated.
Half women hadn't had
abortions, but those who did averaged two or three each.
"I knew nothing when I
got marriage. I always thought you had to see a doctor before you got pregnant.
I didn't know the act led to pregnancy."
Lack of contraception
both whites and blacks in rural South - fertility rates highest in country.
men "admit using condoms
before marriage - but almost no one, apparently, actually employs them after
marrying."
women , "I hope you
don't find me with another when you come back."
1936 birth control
clinic West Virginia reduced fertility by one-third.
racial prejudice - 1938
NC contraception with tax dollars; soon six other southern states.
"On one occasion a
health officer didn't think his county needed contraception. When he discovered
that the Negroes were accounting for 85% of the births, he quickly changed his
mind."
1942 Planned Parenthood;
1938 poll Ladies Home
Journal
79% of American women approved of contraceptive practice.
Child-spacing - birth
control not just female autonomy, but also family stability.
WWII:
Rosie the Riveter
"I let a sailor pick me
up and go all the wayÉ mainly because I had a feeling of high adventure and
because I wanted to please a member of the armed forces."
"a real sex paradise.
The plant and town were just full of working girls who were on the make."
"khaki-wackies," victory
girls, and good-time Charlottes.
"The old time prostitute
is sinking into second place. The new type is the young girl in her late teens
and early twentiesÉ determined to have one fling or better."
1942 Minneapolis
Tribune:
"WACs and WAVES and women weldersÉ where is it all going to end?É Is it hard to
foresee, after the boys come marching home and they marry these emancipated
young women, who is going to tend the babies in the next generation?" Marriage counselors &
psychologists: "Let him know you are tired of living alone, that you want him
now to take charge."
returning men wanted
women to display "tenderness, admiration, or at least submissiveness."
June-Sept 1945, one out
of every four women dropped from factory jobs.
post-WWII prosperity;
1945 poll: 57% of women
& 63% of men said that married women whose husbands earned enough to
support family should not be allowed to hold jobs even if they wanted to work.
Suburbanization:
Bill Levitt - Long Island
Levittown - 40 houses/day, under $8000; 17,000 houses 82,000 people.
Advertising - housework
as distinct calling,
Freudian psychology -
women ought to be happy serving family. New York psychiatrist 1950s, "You
all know women who lack warmth and tenderness. They do not want to be homemakers or mothers, but judges of
the Supreme Court. Such a woman
could suffer total sexual frigidity or homosexuality by separating herself from
all that is considered womanly such as cooking and making a home."
1947 The Modern
Woman: The Lost Sex psychoanalyst Marynia Farnham & sociologist Ferdinand Lundberg.
"natural" role
in home.
Feminism a
"neurotic reaction to natural male dominance."
Career women "penis
envy", rejecting natural womanly instincts. working women & single
women as unhappy or psychologically disturbed.
1952 The Adventures
of Ozzie & Harriet,
Leave it to Beaver,
Father Knows Best - "Princess",
"Leave it to Beaver was not a documentary."
25% of all Americans
below poverty line in 1950s.
20% of all couples
described marriages as unhappy;
divorce rates rose.
late 1950s more white
married women entering labor force after children entered school (though often
part-time work) - growing service sector.
1948 Ladies' Home
Journal: "bad
housekeeping" and "poor cooking" "direct cause of divorce."
"latchkey kids" grew up to become
juvenile delinquents
"Momism".
Teenage culture - "going
steady."
1944 Seventeen,
dating do's and don't:
"Do point out Johnny's best features.
Say something like: ÔYou have hands like a doctor's, strong and
efficient'" and "Don't ever let your irritation show on your face. When you're
angry, sit still, be quiet, smile if you possibly can, and start [by saying]
ÔI'm sorry.'"
40% of women at Barnard admitted
sometimes "playing dumb" to catch a man.
1959 Barbie doll,
1953 Hugh Hefner Playboy:
"Playboy philosophy": If you are
a man between 18 and 80, Playboy is meant for youÉ [as] a pleasure-primer style to
the masculine tasteÉ We enjoy mixing up cocktailsÉ putting a little mood music
on the phonograph and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion
of Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sexÉ."
nude photographs of
Marilyn Monroe.
1955 Playmates the "girl
next door" - "It's natural to think of the pulchritudinous Playmates as
existing in a world apart.
Actually, potential Playmates are all around you: the new secretary at
your office, the doe-eyed beauty who sat opposite you at lunch yesterday, the
girl who sells your shirts and ties in your favorite store. We found Miss July in our own circulation
department, processing subscriptionsÉ."
1946 US birthrates began
to skyrocket.
1957 record 4.3 million
babies born -
baby boom - women marrying
younger, having kids sooner (first child earlier in life than grandmothers did)
- "ideal" number of kids rose from two to four.
by 1960, most US couples
incorporated family planning into married life.
wives age 18-44, 81% used
some form of birth control, another 7% expected to use it.
blacks, Catholics, women
without high school diplomas less likely to use contraception.
1960 college women 93%
use, grade-school women 72% use.
White women 80%, black
women 60%.
Southern black farm
women highest level of unwanted fertility and lower rate of contraceptive use;
"postwar America was a
society with stop-go lights flashing everywhere. Sex, its magic spell
everywhere, was accompanied by the stern warning: don't do it."
double standard:
Sexual availability "bad
girl",
"the gap between males
and females in the youth culture with respect to sex and love is so marked that
there are distinct male and female subcultures."
working class girls as Ôpickups" - "all right for a boy to
go as far as he wants, but not with the girl he is to marry or with a girl in
his own class."
colleges rule "in loco
parentis".
Alfred Kinsey:
case histories of 18,000
men and women.
1950 804-page Sexual
Behavior in the Human Male, "Kinsey Report".
sold almost 250,000
copies,
conclusions: masturbation
and petting with women almost universal; almost 90% of men premarital
intercourse; almost 50% extramarital sex. Over 33% homosexual experience.
1953 Sexual Behavior
in the Human Female - over 5000 white females.
90% engaged in petting,
over 60% masturbation, half premarital intercouse, 25% extramarital sex.
younger generation more
experimentation.
33% of women born before
1900 kept clothes on during sex, vs. just 8% of those born in 1920s.
gynecologist William
Masters & psychologist Virginia Johnson - clinical tests in lab measuring
human sexual response.
1966 Human Sexual
Response
- against idea of woman as merely passive sexual partner.
1957 Supreme Court Roth case (trial of
bookdealer accused of selling pornography): "sex and obscenity are not
synonymous." Said Michigan law would
"reduce the adult population to reading only what is fit for children."
1966 Fanny Hill case Justice Brennan,
"A book cannot be proscribed unless it is found to be utterly without redeeming
social value."
1960s Hollywood looser
production code;