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100 Years of Breaking the Rules—a Social History of Living Single

Betsy Israel

DEDICATED TO

Hayley Israel Doner,

greatest single girl I know

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

I Think We’re Alone Now

Chapter One

The Classical Spinster: Redundants, The Singly Blessed, and The Early New Women

Chapter Two

The Single Steps Out: Bowery Gals, Shoppies, and The Bohemian Bachelorette

Chapter Three

Thin and Raging Things: New (New) Women, Gibson Goddesses, Flapping Ad Darlings, and The All-New Spinster In Fur

Chapter Four

The Suspicious Single: Job Stealers, The Riveting Rosie, and The Neurotic Husband Hunter

Chapter Five

The Secret Single: Runaway Bachelor Girls; Catching the Bleecker Street Beat and/or Blues at the Barbizon

Chapter Six

The Swinging Single: Career Girls, The Autonomous Girl, The Pill Popper, and The Lone Female In Danger

Chapter Seven

Today’s Moderne Unmarried—her Times and Trials: Ice Queens of the Eighties and Nineties, Baby Brides, Slacker Spinsters, and The Singular Cry of the Wild: “Hey! Get Your Stroller Off My Sidewalk!”

Bibliographical Notes

Searchable Terms

About the Author

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not exist without the foresight, goodwill, and patience of two extraordinary people. My agent, Susan Ramer, has been with me through three proposals, five drafts, and an epic spell of writer’s fog. She has devoted so much time to this project, worked through so many of its problems, and been such a wonderful friend that I cannot thank her enough. Jennifer Hershey is the most thoughtful, good-natured, and enthusiastic editor I’ve ever worked with. She helped me to find a way through what seemed a great dark mass of material and never did she doubt it would take shape. Despite an enormous workload, she personally edited this book down to the tiniest detail. Maureen O’Brien, a terrific editor and good pal, saw Bachelor Girl through to its conclusion and ace publicist Jessica Miller worked tirelessly to get it read. I am indebted to my research assistant, Jeryl Brunner, the woman who can find anything, anywhere. Thanks, too, to Jeanine Barry, Carleen Woolley, and Ariana Calderon for their assistance and fact-finding. Donna Brodie at the Writer’s Room gave me much-needed early encouragement, and Amy Gross offered me the chance to write about single women, in Mirabella. Thanks, too, to all the friends, colleagues, and relatives who have listened and commented throughout. In particular I am grateful to my husband, Ezra Doner, and to Nan Friedman, Betsy Zeidman, Priscilla Mulvihill, Lorraine Rapp, Fleur and Sheldon Israel, the late Alex Greenfield, Sally Hines, and Dalma Heyn; to Teriananda, who took care of my household; and to Susannah Israel Marchese, who had an easy answer to my hardest question. My beloved Hayley and Timothy have been more tolerant and patient than any children should ever have to be. Finally, my inestimable thanks to the many women who so carefully and honestly described their lives as bachelor girls.

INTRODUCTION

I THINK WE’RE ALONE NOW

Commands sent through highways and byways…drawing rooms, workshops, by hints and suggestions…lectures…the imploring letter…essays…sermons…as if a voice…din[s] in the ears of young women: Marry! Marry! For the unmarried woman fails at the end for which she was created.

—“THE WAY OF ALL WOMEN,” HARPER’S, 1907

We all grow up with images of single life. For me, these were brightly colored fantasies that drew on TV heroines—That Girl Marlo Thomas, Avenger Emma Peel, Catwoman, the Mary-and-Rhoda duet—and a vision of how I’d look in the tight little blue suits of UN tour guides and stewardesses. A young woman plotting out a single life circa 2002 has a broader, more eccentric range of iconic singles to play with, each wearing her own unique single suit: Ally McBeal, cute, hallucinating miniskirted lawyer; Bridget Jones, “singleton,” who sees clearly the masochism inherent in both her single life and her own ill-fitting tiny skirts; and the Sex