It's been a very busy and productive couple of weeks for me, mostly spent in the university library. Right now the main effort is on the years of my girlhood -- specifically from 1949 to 1961 -- but the chronology is the only thing that is sharply focused. I have been reading children's etiquette books, Seventeen from 1961, and Parent's Magazine. ​I have also looked at Brownie and Intermediate Girl Scout handbooks from the 1950s. Here's a taste of what I found:

The most important thing I have learned so far is that “hegemony” is not singular; cultural forces push and pull at us from many directions, and take many forms. There was no single message about our sex and what was expected of us because of it. There were many. Nor are all influences external to ourselves. Even as children, we produce our own beliefs and mythologies, some connected to the stories told to us by our elders, some colored by media, or religion, or any of a myriad other influences. 
This is why it is so important to study the marketplace AND the market, the consumers AND what they consumed. This is why my own story was not enough, why I have to find others in my cohort, similar enough to me in age and race to understand the full complexity of this process.

If you are an American white woman born in 1949 or from the high school class of 1967, and willing to be interviewed for this project, send me a note through the "contact" link.

My mother, bless her heart, tried hard to make me into a lady. Raised "genteel poor" (a preacher's kid in a family of ten), she relied on both Emily Post and Amy Vanderbilt for insights into middle-class norms. My brother and I also read The Goops, though more for fun than guidance. The Goops ​offered this to little tangle-prone moppets like myself:

My mother didn't recite Burgess as she yanked the comb through my disobedient curls or poked my scalp with bobby pins during the Saturday night hair-setting ritual. She said, "You must suffer to be beautiful". That lesson would eventually apply to pointy-toed shoes, high heels, girdles and bras. And that was just for starters.

But at some point, I stopped believing that. There's grooming, and there's pain, and I am old enough to know the difference!

(From the very-much-in-progress  Age Appropriate.)

Here comes puberty.

The truly odd thing is that my life from about 10 to 14 is relatively undocumented by my otherwise shutterbug father. So I have a few pictures, but not what I would like for this project. 

Here's what I remember:

1960-61 

First bra in late fifth grade or early sixth grade. It was one of those silly knit "grow bras" and I had already outgrown it. In sixth grade (1960-61) I went from one end of the gym line to the other, having grown six inches. I was no longer a short, skinny girl who loved to run and jump rope. Bouncing boobs were too embarrassing. My posture deteriorated. I lived in terror of boys snapping my bra strap, and was sure everyone was staring at me.

Summer of 1961

My first nylons, shaving my legs, my first purse, and first and only subteen dress. By that fall I was 5' 9" and wearing a misses 14. That summer a lifeguard flirted with me because he thought I was in high school, which I found funny and flattering.

Fall, 1961 (7th grade)

Trying to figure out what to wear was a constant puzzle. I outgrew girls' clothes so fast, and went right into misses sizes. I experimented with nail polish, make-up, and new hairstyles but had trouble getting the hang of it.

Maybe it is a good thing there aren't more pictures.

​Looking through my old photos raises some questions about the origins of my personal sense of style. My mother chose or made most of my school clothes, and I don't recall having much say about them until later elementary school (probably fifth or sixth grade). I am not sure why she didn't pick pastels, or why my clothes were so tailored, but it probably had to do with her taste as well as her perception of me.