propaganda for, 130n, 165–66
temporary nature of, 167, 168–70
WACs in, 168–69, 170
in World War I, 129, 130, 142–43
Wasserstein, Wendy, 40
Welter, Barbara, 27
Wharton, Edith, 19–20
“What About Alice?” (Cohen), 248
What Should We Do with Our Daughters? (Livermore), 142
“What’s Wrong with Ambition?” (Weaver), 189–90
Wheeton, Ellen “Nelly,” 34
Where Are My Children?, 38–39
white slavery, 122–24, 125
Who’s Who (1902), 116
“Why Women Don’t Marry” (Tompkins), 111–12, 145
widows, 172, 198–99, 209, 235
widows-manqué, 23n
Wilcox, Susanne, 115
Wilson, Edmund, 129–30
Wine of Youth, 132–33
witches, 17, 197
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 37–38
womanists, 109, 114
Women, The (Luce), 39–40
Women of New York, or Social Life in the Great City, The (Ellington), 77
Women of Steel, 166
Women’s Bureau, U.S., 147, 175
women’s colleges, 26, 114, 143
“women’s” jobs, 103, 150, 152, 170, 178
Women’s Moral Reform Society, 31
women’s movement, 208, 233, 234, 236, 251
see also feminists
Women Who Went to the Field, The (Barton), 47
Wonder Woman, 167
Woolf, Virginia, 110
Wordsworth, William, 17
Work-a-day Girclass="underline" A Study of Some Present-Day Conditions, The (Laughlin), 86
Working Girl, 101
World War I, 126, 127, 129, 130, 142–43
World War II, 146n, 164–70, 178
see also postwar period; wartime jobs
Wright, Fanny, 35
Wylie, Janet, 227–28
Wylie, Philip, 228
Wyman, Jane, 198–99
“yellowback” romance novels, 60
“Yellow Wallpaper, The” (Gilman), 47–48
Yezierska, Anzia, 66–67, 69
Zaharias, Babe Didrikson, 155
Ziegfeld Follies, 94
About the Author
BETSY ISRAEL is a journalist and former editor who has contributed to the New York Times, Elle, Rolling Stone, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, Redbook, People, Mademoiselle, Vogue, New York, Spin, Playboy, and the Los Angeles Times, among many others. She is a former columnist for Glamour, US, and New York Woman, and was a contributing writer for Mirabella. She has written numerous screenplays and is the author of a memoir, Grown-Up Fast: A True Story of Teenage Life in Suburban America. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children.
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Praise for Bachelor Girl
“Bachelor Girl is such a delectable read that it belies its stature as a profoundly important synthesis. It takes a witty and perceptive stance on the culture, but it’s also a prodigious journalistic investigation that disinters the droll and moving social history of the single woman in America.”
“Bachelor Girl is essential reading…. It provides a unique framework for understanding today’s single girl.”
“Ms. Israel’s book provides a useful history of single working girls and new women of all stripes, from the shop girl to the Gibson goddess to the swinging single…. Replete with both Dickensian details and humorous asides.”
“When it comes to being a bachelor girl, women have long been stuck with a stigma. Author Betsy Israel explains how to defy it.”
“Betsy Israel deconstructs all the old ‘single girl’ stereotypes, providing us with a fresh, perceptive point of view and elevating the bachelor girl to her rightful place in modern American social history—and it’s about time.”
“Betsy Israel salutes single womanhood from the last century’s spinsters to the career gals of today.”
“What a read! At long last, a book that really tells it like it is. I loved it!”
“A lively history of single women, shifting between the facts of women’s lives and their representation in the media…. Fascinating.”
“A must-read for contemporary bachelor girls. Israel’s insightful study examines the plight of the single woman as a social phenomenon from the mid-1900s to the present.”
“Betsy Israel explores, in a thoughtful and entertaining style, why society persists in finding nonconforming women both threatening and perplexing.”
“Required reading!”
“Betsy Israel’s social history covers everything from 1920s flappers to 1970s career girls, with wit and style. A must-read for feminists with a sense of humor.”
“Single women are still designated as different from the other kind, not a group any single figure is particularly comfortable to be signed up with. What is this categorizing about? Betsy Israel’s brilliant new book takes us through a century of ‘different-ness’ and explores why it might be extant.”
“[Bachelor Girl] is not one history but two: an examination of popular perceptions about single women since the Industrial Revolution paired with the lesser-known truth about how women actually inhabited their roles…. Engaging, convincing, even stirring.”
“Israel has an easy journalistic style and clips along at a good pace. She coins some witty phrases—‘the Cult of Independence’—and often breaks for the ironic aside…. An intriguing balance of cultural history and pointed detail.”
“Bachelor Girl takes a revealing look at just how far the single woman has come. For those girls and the country’s women in general, Bachelor Girl serves as a reminder, as well as a yardstick: You may have come a long way, but don’t forget the hardy souls who made it possible.”