Synopses & Reviews
Long before Carrie Bradshaw in
Sex and the City, there was Mary Richards in
The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Every week, as Mary flung her beret into the air while the theme song proclaimed, "You're gonna make it after all," it seemed that young, independent women like herself had finally arrived. But as Katherine Lehman reveals, the struggle to create accurate portrayals of successful single women for American TV and cinema during the 1960s and 1970s wasn't as simple as the toss of a hat.
Those Girls is the first book to focus exclusively on struggles to define the "single girl" character in TV and film during a transformative period in American society. Lehman has scoured a wide range of source materials—unstudied film and television scripts, magazines, novels, and advertisements—to demonstrate how controversial female characters pitted fears of societal breakdown against the growing momentum of the women's rights movement.
Lehman's book focuses on the "single girl"—an unmarried career woman in her 20s or 30s—to show how this character type symbolized sweeping changes in women's roles. Analyzing films and programs against broader conceptions of women's sexual and social roles, she uncovers deep-seated fears in a nation accustomed to depictions of single women yearning for matrimony. Yet, as television began to reflect public acceptance of career women, series such as Police Woman and Wonder Woman proved that heroines could wield both strength and femininity—while movies like Looking for Mr. Goodbar cautioned viewers against carrying new-found freedom too far.
Lehman takes us behind the scenes in Hollywood to show us the production decisions and censorship negotiations that shaped these characters before they even made it to the screen. She includes often-overlooked sources such as the TV series Get Christie Love and Ebony magazine to give us a richer understanding of how women of color negotiated urban singles life. And she reveals how trailblazing characters continue to influence portrayals of single women in shows like Mad Men.
This entertaining and insightful study examines familiar characters caught between the competing fears and aspirations of a society rethinking its understanding of social and sexual mores. Those Girls reassesses feminine genres that are often marginalized in media scholarship and contributes to a greater valuation of the unmarried, independent woman in America.
Review
and#8220;The three remarkable women in this book wrestled with some of the most compelling questions in the history of American reform movements. What was the best way to achieve social justice? Was economic inequality more important than sexism or racism? Slutskyand#8217;s original, nuanced book explains how these women discovered uniquely American answers to these questions.and#8221;and#8212;Kathy Olmsted, author of Real Enemies, Red Spy Queen, and Challenging the Secret Government
Review
andldquo;[
Gendering Radicalism] combines the study of twentieth-century women, California, and andlsquo;radicalandrsquo; politics in a way that has not been done before. Very well written and informative.andrdquo;andmdash;Kathleen Cairns, author of
Proof of Guilt: Barbara Graham and the Politics of Executing Women in AmericaSynopsis
The first book to focus exclusively on the struggle to define the "single girl" character in TV and films during a transformative period in American society. Reveals how these controversial female characters—unmarried, professional, childless women—were caught between the competing fears and aspirations of a society rethinking its attitudes towards social and sexual mores.
Synopsis
In 1919 Charlotte Anita Whitney, a wealthy white woman, received one of the first Communist Labor Party membership cards for the charter group of the northern California Communist Labor Party. Less than a decade later in Berkeley, California, a Jewish woman named Dorothy Ray Healey became a card-carrying member of the Young Communist League. Nearly forty years later, in 1966, Kendra Claire Harris Alexander, a mixed-race woman, enlisted with the Los Angeles branch of the Communist Party, determined to promote class equality.
and#160;In Gendering Radicalism, Beth Slutsky examines how American leftist radicalism was experienced through the lives of these three women who led the California branches of the Communist Party from its founding in 1919 to its near dissolution in 1992. Separately, each woman represents a generation of the membership and activism of the party. Collectively, Slutsky argues, their individual histories tell the story of one of the most infamous organizations this country has ever known and in a broader sense represent the story of all women who have devoted their lives to radicalism in America. Slutsky considers how gender politics, Californiaand#8217;s political climate, coalitions with other activist groups and local communities, and generational dynamics created a grassroots Communist movement distinct from the Communist parties in the Soviet Union and Europe. An ambitious comparative study, Gendering Radicalism demonstrates the continuity and changes of the party both within and among three generations of its female leadersand#8217; lives.
About the Author
Beth Slutsky is an associate instructor of history at the University of California, Davis, and a program coordinator for the California Historyand#8211;Social Science Project.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Screening the "Single Girl"
1. Challenging Convention: Single Women, Sex, and Censorship in Early 1960s Cinema
2. Leaving Home: Single Women's Perilous Journeys in Late 1960s Television and Film
3. Living Liberated: Single Women in Early 1970s Sitcoms and Commercial Culture
4. Claiming Sexuality and Power: Working Women and Wonder Women in 1970s Action Series
Courting Danger: Single Women and Sexual Aggression in 1970s Film
Epilogue
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index