by Joshua Zeitz
13 “crude beliefs and the common intelligence”: On the exchange between Bryan and Darrow, see Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 3–8, 187–93.
14 “age of Amen”: Larson, Summer for the Gods, 229.
CHAPTER 8: NEW YORK SOPHISTICATION
1 towns outside of Chicago: Gerald E. Critoph, “The Flapper and Her Critics,” in Carol V. R. George, ed., “Remember the Ladies”: New Perspectives on Women in American History (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1975), 153.
2 Kearney, New Jersey: Critoph, “The Flapper and Her Critics,” 154.
3 “flapper slouch”: New York Times, July 6, 1922, 8.
4 “declaration of independence”: Critoph, “The Flapper and Her Critics,” 154.
5 Mrs. Anna Mesime: New York Times, November 16, 1922, 10.
6 at least $117: New York Times, March 5, 1922, 3.
7 “Eulogy on the Flapper”: Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, “Eulogy on the Flapper,” Metropolitan Magazine, June 1922, in Matthew J. Bruccoli and Mary Gordon, eds., Zelda Fitzgerald: The Collected Writings (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1991), 391.
8 Butte, Montana: Mary Murphy, “ ‘ … And All That Jazz’: Changing Manners and Morals in Butte After World War I,” Montana 46, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 54.
9 “a big-boned westerner”: Ben Yagoda, About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made (New York: Scribner, 2000), 25.
10 Algonquin Hotel: Margaret Chase Harriman, The Vicious Circle: The Story of the Algonquin Round Table (New York: Rinehart, 1951), 21–22; Rian James, Dining in New York (New York: The John Day Company, 1931), 21–22.
11 highbrow discussions: Yagoda, About Town, 32.
12 Dorothy Parker: Robert E. Drennan, ed., The Algonquin Wits (New York: Citadel Press, 1968), 112–13.
13 old lady in Dubuque: Background on The New Yorker is culled from Yagoda, About Town, chap. 1–2.
CHAPTER 9: MISS JAZZ AGE
1 “most dashing figure”: Brendan Gill, Here at The New Yorker (New York: Random House, 1975), 203.
2 stumbled her way: Gill, Here at The New Yorker, 203; “Lois Long” in American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
3 “exceptionally well-constructed”: Dale Kramer, Ross and The New Yorker (Garden City: Doubleday, 1951), 82, 212.
4 later raised to $75: Harrison Kinney, James Thurber: His Life and Times (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1995), 378.
5 “Drinks were a dollar twenty-five”: Kinney, James Thurber, 378–79.
6 specially fitted wire: Michael and Ariane Batterberry, On the Town in New York (New York: Scribner, 1999), 205.
7 stock exchange bell sounded: Rian James, Dining in New York (New York: The John Day Company, 1931), 227.
8 “threw up in his cab”: Kinney, James Thurber, 378–79.
9 amused her colleagues: Kramer, Ross and The New Yorker, 82–83.
10 “Lilly Daché hats”: Kennedy Fraser, Ornament and Silence: Essays on Women’s Lives (New York: Knopf, 1996), 234.
11 “the real excitement”: New Yorker, April 3, 1926, 42.
12 “HAS been a week!”: New Yorker, November 14, 1925, 25. For a description of the County Fair, see Charles G. Shaw, Nightlife (New York: The John Day Company, 1931), 84.
13 Most working women: Winifred D. Wandersee, Women’s Work and Family Values, 1920–1940 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 85. Thirty percent of women in the 1920s worked as domestic servants, 19 percent as clerical workers, 18 percent as factory workers, 6 percent as store clerks, and 9 percent as farmers.
14 earned lower wages: Lynn Dumenil, Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 115–16. Saleswomen earned only 42 percent of what salesmen brought home.
CHAPTER 10: GIRLISH DELIGHT IN BARROOMS
1 $28,754.78: Matthew J. Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, rev. ed. 1993 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 224–25.
2 “where the $36,960 had gone”: Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, 225.
3 first week in Paris: Sara Mayfield, Exiles from Paradise: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Delacorte Press, 1971), 94.
4 never bothered to learn anything: Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, 275.
5 Upon arriving in Valescure: Nancy Milford, Zelda: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 106.
6 sometime after July 13: Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, 230–33.
7 “terrible four-day rows”: Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, 245.
8 Colony, at Sixty-first Street: Rian James, Dining in New York (New York: The John Day Company, 1931), 187–88.
9 Pirate’s Den: Stephen Graham, New York Nights (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1927), 32–33.
10 “the crowd there”: New Yorker, November 21, 1925.
11 “short, squat maiden”: New Yorker, November 14, 1925, 26; and December 18, 1926, 79.
12 “snappy little roadster”: New Yorker, November 21, 1925, 22.
13 “threw up a few times”: New Yorker, February 12, 1927.
14 “spectacular dry raids”: New Yorker, January 1, 1927, 56.
15 “it was nothing”: Harrison Kinney, James Thurber: His Life and Times (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1995), 379.
16 “hoped we could drink”: Kinney, James Thurber, 378–79.
17 “Youth of America”: New Yorker, July 17, 1926, 47–48.
18 a new cocktail: Dale Kramer, Ross and The New Yorker (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1951), 124.
19 “grown-up sport”: New Yorker, July 24, 1926, 38.
20 “Remedy for a dented flask”: New Yorker, July 3, 1926, 48; July 10, 1926, 48.
21 “without a corkscrew”: New Yorker, December 4, 1926, 91–92.
22 “girlish delight in barrooms”: New Yorker, September 12, 1925.
CHAPTER 11: THESE MODERN WOMEN
1 Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 150–52.
2 Lillian Symes: Lillian Symes, “Still a Man’s Game: Reflections of a Slightly Tired Feminist,” Harper’s Magazine 158 (May 1929): 678–79.
3 “sex rights”: Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 42–43.
4 “These Modern Women”: Elaine Showalter, ed., These Modern Women: Autobiographical Essays from the Twenties (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1979), 5.
5 Heterodoxy: See Judith Schwartz, Radical Feminists of Heterodoxy: Greenwich Village, 1912–1940 (Norwich, Vt.: New Victoria Publishers, 1986).
6 “inquisitive and skeptical eye”: Symes, “Still a Man’s Game,” 678–79.
7 “Declaration of Sentiments”: Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Women’s Rights Movement in the United States, rev. ed. 1975 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959), 74–75.
8 Charlotte Woodward: Flexner, Century of Struggle, 74–75.
9 “rights of every human”: Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 19. Italics added for emphasis.
10 According to prevailing wisdom: Elaine Tyler May, Great Expectations: Marriage and Divorce in Post-Victorian America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 17–22.
11 To many second-generation suffragists: Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780–1920,” American Historical Review 89, no. 3 (June 1984): 620–47.
12 “Why Women Should Vote”: Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920, rev. ed. 1981 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 68–69.
13 “Women’s place is Home”: William H. Chafe, The Paradox of Change: American Women in the 20th Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 15.
14 Over the preceding decade: Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 135. By 1925, sixteen states banned
women from working at night; thirteen states established minimum wages for women.
15 to justify these laws: Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 186.
16 Alice Paul: Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 122.
17 Another member of the NWP: Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 124.
18 “the most important function”: Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 129.
19 “slaves to the machines of industry”: Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 134.
20 “flapper attitude”: New York Times, April 12, 1922, 5.
21 “feminists—New Style”: Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, “Feminist—New Style,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine 155 (October 1927): 552.
22 Bromley concluded: Bromley, “Feminist—New Style,” 560. Italics added for emphasis.
CHAPTER 12: THE LINGERIE SHORTAGE IN THIS COUNTRY
1 sex was on the brain: Mary Murphy, “ ‘ … And All That Jazz’: Changing Manners and Morals in Butte After World War I,” Montana, 46, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 58.
2 “tall, urbane”: New York Times, February 23, 1968, 1.
3 “fifteen and seventy-five”: New York Times, February 23, 1968, 1.
4 “Maybe we began drinking”: Harrison Kinney, James Thurber: His Life and Times (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1995), 380.
5 “I just learned”: Harold Ross to Lois Long, May 16, 1930, The New Yorker Records, New York Public Library, Box 6, Lois Long Folder.
6 “Zelda Fitzgerald figure”: Kennedy Fraser, Ornament and Silence: Essays on Women’s Lives (New York: Knopf, 1996), 234.
7 Their marriage announcement: James Thurber, The Years with Ross (New York: Little Brown and Co., 1957), 26–27.
8 a Packard: New York Times, November 30, 1929, 20.
9 “All we were saying”: Kinney, James Thurber, 380.
10 nationwide alcohol consumption: David E. Kyvig, Daily Life in the United States, 1920–1940 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 24.
11 three-quarters of all college-age men: Paula S. Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 275–77.
12 “Imagine yourself kissed”: Caroline Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Knopf, 1985), 57.
13 “my girl of all the girls”: Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual,” 58.
14 “When a Vassar girl”: John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 126.
15 1870s to the 1920s: Caroline Smith-Rosenberg, “The New Woman as Androgynye: Social Disorder and Gender Crisis, 1870–1936,” in Disorderly Conduct, 253.
16 Boston marriages: Smith-Rosenberg, “The New Woman as Androgynye,” 254.
17 Bryn Mawr College: Smith-Rosenberg, “The New Woman as Androgynye,” 281.
18 women in 1890: Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 66.
19 gay subcultures: John D’Emilio, “Capitalism and Gay Identity,” in Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson, eds., Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), 100–13.
20 “Protestant Westerners”: Kinney, James Thurber, 379–80.
21 “lingerie shortage in this country”: New Yorker, November 14, 1925, 24.
22 “Turn about”: New Yorker, October 19, 1925, 28–29.
23 “perennial Greenwich Village Inn”: New Yorker, August 1, 1925, 20.
24 “Without being flapper”: New Yorker, November 21, 1925, 22.
CHAPTER 13: A MIND FULL OF FABULATIONS
1 rambling town house: Axel Masden, Chanel: A Woman of Her Own (New York: Henry Holt, 1990), 128.
2 “at the farthest corner”: Marcel Hadrich, Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 25.
3 “I told myself”: Masden, Chanel, 8.
4 “little prisoner”: Hadrich, Coco Chanel, 28.
5 “concerned with independence”: Hadrich, Coco Chanel, 33.
6 “I—who never told the truth”: Masden, Chanel, 4.
7 “mind was full of fabulations”: Masden, Chanel, 19.
8 “I invited the chambermaid”: Hadrich, Coco Chanel, 65.
9 “reading cheap novels”: Masden, Chanel, 40.
10 “didn’t know anything”: Masden, Chanel, 39.
11 “Forgive me”: Hadrich, Coco Chanel, 75–79.
12 “I was just a kid”: Hadrich, Coco Chanel, 78.
13 “It was very complicated”: Hadrich, Coco Chanel, 79–80.
14 “Two gentlemen”: “Fashioning the Modern Woman: The Art of Couturiere, 1919–1939,” The Museum at FIT, exhibition pamphlet, February 10, 2004, to April 10, 2004.
CHAPTER 14: AN ATHLETIC KIND OF GIRL
1 The feminine aesthetic: Caroline Rennolds Milbank, New York Fashion: The Evolution of American Style (New York: Abrams, 1989), 35–45.
2 the daily torment: Kate Mulvey, Decades of Beauty: The Changing Image of Women, 1890s–1990s (New York: Checkmark Books, 1998), 41.
3 English magazine correspondent: Helene E. Roberts, “The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2, no. 3 (Spring 1977): 561. The case study is drawn from Victorian England but is representative of corseting in the United States.
4 study of fifty women: Roberts, “The Exquisite Slave,” 561–62.
5 “ever present monitor”: Roberts, “The Exquisite Slave,” 564–65.
6 “No one but a woman”: Roberts, “The Exquisite Slave,” 557.
7 “Take what precautions”: Roberts, “The Exquisite Slave,” 556.
8 J. Marion Sims: Charles Sellers, Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 256–57.
9 “The corset-curse”: Jenna Weissman Joselit, A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character and the Promise of America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001), 49–50.
10 Stanton put the matter: Paula Welch, “The Relationship of the Women’s Rights Movement to Women’s Sport and Physical Education in the United States, 1848–1920,” Proteus 3, no. 1 (1986): 36.
11 “We only wore it”: Joselit, A Perfect Fit, 46.
12 “ladies of irreproachable character”: Welch, “The Relationship of the Women’s Rights Movement to Women’s Sport,” 36.
13 “popular rise of sports”: John Higham, “The Reorientation of American Culture in the 1890s,” in John Weiss, ed., The Origins of Modern Consciousness (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965), 25–28.
14 “athletic kind of girl!”: Higham, “The Reorientation of American Culture,” 30–31.
15 “To men, rich and poor”: Welch, “The Relationship of the Women’s Rights Movement to Women’s Sport,” 37.
16 Dr. Edward Clarke: Margaret A. Lowe, Looking Good: College Women and Body Image, 1875–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 2.
17 “day’s tramp”: Lowe, Looking Good, 47–49.
18 “the biggest day”: Lowe, Looking Good, 49.
19 “no skirts at all”: Lowe, Looking Good, 48.
CHAPTER 15: LET GO OF THE WAISTLINE
1 “King of Fashion”: Paul Poiret, My First Fifty Years (London: V. Gollancz, 1931), 285.
2 “Parisian of Paris”: Poiret, My First Fifty Years, 11–12.
3 “Women and their toilettes”: Poiret, My First Fifty Years, 19.
4 “smash my pride”: Poiret, My First Fifty Years, 25.
5 Four hundred copies: Poiret, My First Fifty Years, 27, 36.
6 “The women wore them”: Poiret, My First Fifty Years, 43.
7 “Young man, you know”: Poiret, My First Fifty Years, 61.
8 “You call that a dress?”: Poiret, My First Fifty Years, 63.
9 clothing for the New Woman: Amy De La Haye and Shelley Tobin, Chanel: The Couturiere at Work (Woodstock, N.Y.: The Overlook Press, 1996), 13; Sandra Ley, Fashion for Everyone: The Story of Ready-to-Wear (New York: Scribner, 1975), 53–55.
10 “I waged war upon it”: Poiret, My First Fifty Years, 73.
11 “shackled the legs”: Poiret, My First Fifty Years, 73.
12 “despotism of fashion”: Poiret, My First Fifty Years, 290.
13 supreme derision: Poiret, My First Fifty Years, 146–47.
14 “made for each other”: Axel Masden, Chanel: A Woman of Her Own (New York: Henry Holt, 1990), 55.
15 “Chanel frock was born”: Masden, Chanel: A Woman of Her Own, 69; Marcel Hadrich, Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 90.
16 “let go of the waistline”: Masden, Chanel, 78.
17 Harper’s Bazaar: De La Haye and Tobin, Chanel, 20.
18 “leading the way”: New York Times, April 23, 1916, X2.
19 Marie Louise-Deray: Masden, Chanel, 80.
20 “Let them take lovers”: De La Haye and Tobin, Chanel, 19.
21 “flapper uniform”: Bruce Bliven, “Flapper Jane,” New Republic, September 9, 1925.
22 “feminized tweeds”: New Yorker, November 7, 1925, 28.
23 masculine influences: De La Haye and Tobin, Chanel, 42.
24 “misérabilisme de luxe”: Masden, Chanel, 116–17.
25 Parisian law student: Valerie Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History (New York: Berg Publishers, 1998), 256.
26 “Oriental” or “primitive” themes: Elaine Porter, “Women’s Fashions in 1920s America,” unpublished BA dissertation, Cambridge University, Spring 2005, 9–16.
27 “hemline moveth slowly”: Washington Post, July 12, 1925, SM4.
28 DISPLAY OF SPRING FASHIONS: New York Times, January 22, 1927, 15.
29 A Baptist pastor: Jenna Weissman Joselit, A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character and the Promise of America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001), 66.
