Free College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, And Co-eds, Then And Now Translated By Lynn Peril Viewable As Text

engrossing, endlessly entertaining history of women at college in America, Peril covers all the expected big ismssexism, classism, racism, feminismin detail, but also explores midnight snacks, gentlemen callers, smoking and drinking, quirky campus traditions, the rise and fall of women's basketball, the "college girl" in pulp fiction and movies, and an array of other issues big and small.
I loved her previous book, Pink Think, but College Girls is both more carefully researched and more confidently written.
Also, as a Vassar girl, I admit I enjoyed following my alma mater through its spotted history and to its eventual transition to a coed school.
A buoyant read Peril discusses some interesting facets of women in higher education: from the introduction of womens colleges to histories of womens behaviors and habits in coed settings.
Geared toward the general reader i, e. it's not a dense historical text, she includes many amusing details of college curricula designed for women laundry courses!, sexual mores, regulations for women in college, social anxieties about gender, and so forth.
I was very disappointed with this, I specifically picked it out because I was interested in bluestockings, Given that they're specifically cited in the subtitle, I expected the topic to make up a notable portion of the book at least a chapter.
Instead, they were only discussed for a few pages, I tried to read through regardless, but I ultimately lost my patience when I got to the chapter on college fashions.

To be fair, much of it was quite informative and easy to read, However, many of the chapters were too tedious to push through and I disliked how she organized information by subject more than time period.
I suppose whether or not you enjoy this will depend on what kind of information you're interested in.
For someone specifically interested in intellectual women in the years before higher education was considered acceptable for the "weaker sex," I found it seriously lacking.
The amazing Lynn Peril has done it again, Much like "Pink Think," her "College Girls" takes us on an illuminating journey of the history of women.
This time, rather than focusing on femininity as a while, she focuses on women in college in the US.
Her use of period advertisements and photos only adds to the fun, Peril makes learning about changing trends and rules in the education of women both hilarious and informative.
This book delivers. A geek who wears glasses Or a sex kitten in a teddy This is the dual vision of the college girl, the unique American archetype born when the ageold conflict over educating women was finally laid to rest.
College was a place where women found selfesteem, and yet images in popular culture reflected a lingering distrust of the educated woman.
Thus such lofty cultural expressions as Sex Kittens Go to Collegeand a raft of naughty pictorials in mens magazines.


As in Pink Think, Lynn Peril combines womens history and popular culturepeppered with delightful examples of femoribilia from the turn of the twentieth century through thesin an intelligent and witty study of the college girl, the first woman to take that socially controversial step toward educational equity.
This was an assigned text in an undergrad class on twentieth century American history, It was definitely the least "academic" of the textbooks we discussed the writing feels more like a novel or a popular history book.
But that helps to widen it's audience to more than simply history nerds, and it's an interesting subject.
I particularly enjoyed reading a book that was, in some respects, about me, or at least about my foresisters.
I attended a woman's college, one which is actually mentioned, briefly, in College Girls,

It's a lighter read, definitely social history, and one which I occasionally take out to reread bits and pieces.
This was an interesting mix of advertisements and excerpts from the time and the author's voice, Historical without being dry.
I'm considering getting a copy for my niece who is currently in college, I found this book at my library while searching for a sex education book this book is not a sex education book, but it popped up in the catalog with a keyword searchfor a patron and I could not resist putting it on hold for myself.
It looked like something right up my alley, The book covers the evolution of college girls from those at teachers' seminaries in the West in the lates to those husband hunting coeds of thes to the Girls Gone Wild hotties.
It covers all aspects of a college education for women classes, rules, dating, friendships, sororities and sports.
It is peppered with reproductions of advertisements and photographs, It was quite an entertaining and informative book, My only complaint is the book seemed to stop after thes for the most part, I would have liked to learn more about thes ands when a lot of things changed on college campuses.
.stars. Very interesting but it felt a little repetitive at times, Not too textbooky, but not terribly dumbed down either, This book covers and discusses basic life as a college girl at the turn of theth century.
Not only was it interesting, but it was fascinating to read about what it was like for women like my grandmother and mother to go to college.
Definitely a good book for someone starting out on Women and Gender studies, A little too repetitive on the feminist aspect, It's a great history from about the midth century to the sixties with very little of the history of before or after that time.
It was interesting that the first degree was awarded to Piscopia in thes and because of that they freaked out and barred women from entering uni.
at all for a while and that women didn't start attending uni, in relatively larger numbers until the turn of the twentieth century, If only to just go husband hunting! It's such a difference to how I see my current education! Also, classes in laundry and marriage.
'nough said Excellent! Smart and fun at the same time, Makes me want to check out Peril's other books, A fun read, with surprise! several references to good old Swellesley, Despite the salaciouslooking cover, the author struck a great balance between funny stories and serious analysis, It was informative and pretty rigorously researched but still accessible,

After reading this book and sitelinkManly Meals and Mom's Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America in, I'm struck by how many different agendas society has managed to devise for women since thes or so.
College education is good! College education is dangerous! Educated women can work and become equals to men! Educated women can be good housewives because they understand the science behind their angel food cake and they took "laundry science" courses! Women need new gadgets to help them with cooking because it's hard! Women need technically detailed cookbooks to make cooking a science! Women take all the art out of food only men make food emotional and artistic! No wonder things are still so confused.
I had to read this book for a college writing course in the fall of this year.
Overall this was a pretty intriguing account of the history of women in education, primarily in the United States.
Peril does a good job of working up from the beginning of thes where the only thing that essentially existed for women were special women's schools, up until today where no one really thinks much of women going to college anymore.
In fact, more women go to college now than men, She's very thorough though, and manages to keep your interest well,

My only complaint about the book is that it is somewhat repetitive, but it's sort of hard to notice at the same time.
Peril covers a variety of topics all the way across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and I found myself pretty shocked by some of the information.
She presents it in a somewhat humorous fashion as well, which keeps you interested and the introduction of the book she relates her research to herself too.


I found it to be a pretty interesting book, but it's not something I would have typically picked up on my own to read.
I would recommend it to anyone interested in education, the history of education, and anyone interested in feminism.
This was great. It took me awhile to read, only because it was so dense with information about the history of the college girl and of women's colleges and coed schools, and because I kept putting it down to read other things.
It's funny amp informative, and has a lot of vintage images of college girl stuff, I am a fan of sitelinkPink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons, sitelinkLynn Peril's first book and this one was equally fascinating and fun.
While Pink Think focused mostly on the post WWII's ideas of what femininity meant, College Girls explores education for women going back to the late's when the first women were entering higher education.
Having overyears of history to draw from, the arguments for and against and surrounding the education of women are fascinating.
Additionally, the issues surrounding sending daughters off to college seem to have shocking similarities over the ages.
From leaving parents and living on your own, to what to study, to boys and dating to clothing and consumerism direct marketing to coeds, don't think you were first Victoria's Secret, and the constant tension between educating women and having women fulfill the traditional roles of wife/mother, the tension has been there from the first woman who sought higher education.




For me this book helped clarify some of the existing tensions that I've been aware of while on campus, in dealing with that work v.
stay at home mom issue many of my coworkers/friends deal with and generally about the double standard to which women are held.
Looking forward to getting my hands on Peril's next book as well! lyyn peril previously wrote a book i really enjoyed, called pink think, all about the marketing of femininity.
she is also the author of "thirft score" fanzine, her zine credentials are probably what compelled me to read her books, but her books are actually quite good, which is much more than i can say for most zinesters who make the jump to actually writing books.
this isn't really anything like "thrift score," because it's all researched amp not about buying stuff at thrift stores.
it is in fact about the history of women amp higher education, women have not always been allowed to go to college, amp even after women's colleges started operating in the lates, they weren't really equal with men's colleges of the same era.
many women's colleges just trained women in the domestic artsthings like laundering, embroidery, manners, etc, they were glorified finishing schools, basically, for women who would go on to be the wives of distinguished business executives or politicans.
or they trained women in specialty industries like laundry or sewing that were still considered women's work.
amp even when coed universities where men amp women took the same classes amp were free to pursue the same degrees became more standard, there was still a discrepancy in how many women were attending college, what they were studying, amp how the "college girl" was being marketed amp marketed to.
i myself am a college dropout, but this book really made me want to go back amp finish my bachelor's because it made me very aware of the fact that a good education has been a privilege of men for a significant chunk of history amp for white, wealthy men, at that.
i mean, who knows if i'll really do that, but it was definitely a really fascinating book amp i wanted to keep reading it even when it was over.
yay, lynn peril! write more books!,