What did young, independent women do for fun and how did they pay their way into New York City's turn-of-the-century pleasure places? Cheap Amusements is a fascinating discussion of young working women whose meager wages often fell short of bare subsistence and rarely allowed for entertainment expenses. Kathy Peiss follows working women into saloons, dance halls, Coney Island amusement parks, social clubs, and nickelodeons to explore the culture of these young women between 1880 and 1920 as expressed in leisure activities. By examining the rituals and styles they adopted and...
What did young, independent women do for fun and how did they pay their way into New York City's turn-of-the-century pleasure places? Cheap Amuseme...
Explores the experiences, ideas, and conflicts that have shaped the emergence of modern sexual identities. This work features articles on sexual assault, homosexuality, birth control, venereal disease, sexual repression, pornography, and the AIDS epidemic, which examine the ways that sexuality has become a core element of modern social identity.
Explores the experiences, ideas, and conflicts that have shaped the emergence of modern sexual identities. This work features articles on sexual assau...
This book examines a remarkable collection of twenty-seven letters written by a white working-class woman to her African American lover in 1907 and 1908. Stuffed inside a black lace stocking, the letters were hidden under the floorboards of a house in Northampton, Massachusetts, until their recent discovery. Reflecting the passions and anxieties of the moment, the letters were written by Alice Hanley, the daughter of Irish Catholic immigrants, to Channing Lewis, a cook in Springfield. Since the thoughts and feelings of women like Hanley have usually been filtered through middle-class...
This book examines a remarkable collection of twenty-seven letters written by a white working-class woman to her African American lover in 1907 and...
Hope in a Jar The Making of America's Beauty Culture Kathy Peiss "Incisive, lively. The model of everything social history should be."--Los Angeles Times How did powder and paint, once scorned as immoral, become indispensable to millions of respectable women? How did a "kitchen physic," as homemade cosmetics were once called, become a multibillion-dollar industry? And how did men finally take over that rarest of institutions, a woman's business? In Hope in a Jar, historian Kathy Peiss gives us the first full-scale social history of America's beauty culture, from the buttermilk...
Hope in a Jar The Making of America's Beauty Culture Kathy Peiss "Incisive, lively. The model of everything social history should be."--Los Angeles...
ZOOT SUIT (n.): the ultimate in clothes. The only totally and truly American civilian suit. Cab Calloway, "The Hepster's Dictionary," 1944
Before the fashion statements of hippies, punks, or hip-hop, there was the zoot suit, a striking urban look of the World War II era that captivated the imagination. Created by poor African American men and obscure tailors, the "drape shape" was embraced by Mexican American pachucos, working-class youth, entertainers, and swing dancers, yet condemned by the U.S. government as wasteful and unpatriotic in a time of war. The fashion became notorious...
ZOOT SUIT (n.): the ultimate in clothes. The only totally and truly American civilian suit. Cab Calloway, "The Hepster's Dictionary," 1944
