Bachelor Girl_ The Secret History of Single Women in the Twentieth Century - Betsy Israel [48]
Occasionally the clubs exhibited nascent hints of feminism, or at least signs of independent thinking. In 1910, for example, the Siegel-Cooper Bachelor Girl Social Club organized a celebration of Washington’s Birthday “without even inviting men.” Instantly they were denounced by male employees as man haters. Replied the bachelor girls: “No, we are not married, neither are we men haters, but we believe in women’s rights and we enjoy our independence and our freedom. Notwithstanding that if a fair offer came our way we might not [sic] consider it.”
Wealthy matrons found such beings coarse and undesirable in all ways, but their daughters were often intrigued. Trapped in a life of calling cards, formal teas, and chaperoned balls, young society girls craved some small measure of freedom before the inevitable wedding. Not that one would be so low as to actually work, but they had heard of these dances—the rackets—and there was something, why, it went without saying, monstrous in it all, yet still compelling.
“Slumming” even then had its magnetic lure, but it was rare to stumble upon the ideal circumstances for actually doing it. Rackets presented the perfect opportunity to anonymously and briefly indulge in—or at least watch—rowdy downtown behavior. Of course the girls under investigation were very “low,” headed for a life one could not begin to contemplate. Yet in the heat of a spiel, they seemed powerful—daring girls, brave, and perhaps even the tiniest bit enviable. Some of these same well-bred young ladies felt a secret fascination with stage stars. They would not, even for a laugh, stand among the “matinee girls,” the back-door fixtures who waited every day for their current idols to exit. But they were drawn to actresses, who throughout the nineteenth century had set the leading fashion trends. (Serious dramatic actresses were expected to supply their own costumes, and part of the thrill of theatergoing lay in the anticipation of seeing what they wore.) Actresses were also considered somewhat disreputable.
Out on her own, slumming with her beaux, the upper-class girl went to the shows. Actresses were interesting, but more immediately thrilling were the sequined chorus girls and the showgirls, curvaceous balletic things who appeared entr’acte to show new fashions. And everyone had a secret fascination with the Ziegfeld Follies girls and, most important, with Ziegfeld’s famed Floradora sextette. All six of these special stars, supermodels of their day, would marry millionaires.
In part, the allure of the working girl—like that of a low actress—derived from how much the mere idea of such a person upset one’s mother. Whether a shop girl or a showgirl, she was the exemplar of everything a daughter should not be—and should not even be exposed to. A great many mothers found these young working women personally threatening. If factory girls were thought to be whores with day jobs, then shoppies were believed to be mistresses in waiting. They spent their days surrounded by beautiful things and were encouraged to have men buy them clothes. If the girl was pretty, smart, and ambitious, she might walk out after work with a man, a husband, she’d sold a hat to. They would very likely “treat” each other in all sorts of ways.
One of the era’s most popular plays was called Only a Shopgirl (1902) by Claire Wellesley Sterling. Posters show a wealthy fur-clad wife bursting into a dim boardinghouse room. She points one manicured finger at a shirtwaisted girl named Hulda. Hulda stares back defiantly, her smaller siblings gathered around her in terror. “YOU,” shouts the woman, “are nothing but a low shop girl!” Says Hulda: “Better a low shop girl than a fashionable idler as heaven is above hell!” The play was produced throughout the teens and the themes reworked in several silent films until its