First Person Singular by Wendy Braitman

Early Typecasting

One of the early model typewriters, which received its patent on this day in 1868, had flowers printed on its casing so that the weaker sex would feel more comfortable using it. And use it, we did. While being a secretary was originally a job for men, the invention of the typewriter brought unprecedented numbers of women into the workforce and by 1910, according to the Census Bureau, 81% of the professional typists (or type writers) were female. After all, we worked for cheap. Here’s the earliest record of an ad for women typists, placed in a New York paper, on December 15, 1875 by Remington:

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When It Paid To Be Single

Today we celebrate the anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, whose passage by the U.S. Congress, at long last, gave women the right to vote. It was a protracted, vicious battle, which began in earnest more than 70 years earlier, in 1848, at the women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. But the opportunity for diverse employment took decades longer and one of the first prized professions open to women was becoming a stewardess. There were strict rules in the early days. You had to be single, a registered nurse, under 115 pounds and less than 5’4” tall. It took until 1968 and the second wave of feminism for these rigid job conditions to be eliminated. Here’s some hard-to-imagine trivia from the archives of United Airlines:   Continue reading »

“No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor”

The orgasm quote is from the late, great, Betty Friedan (February 4, 1921- February 4, 2006). The Feminine Mystique, her seminal book published in 1963, shattered the myth of the contented housewife:

Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — “Is this all?”

Why It’s Great to Be Single on Valentines Day, reason #3 from Emily:   Continue reading »