CUPID

I ran across a reference to an organization called Citizens for Upgrading Prostitution in Detroit (CUPID) in a 1980 article from The Observer on the Women's Movement in the US.  Hunh.   Anybody know anything about them?  Well, I'll start asking around...

Young Woman Goes to the City (1970s-style)

"Dear Mom & Dad,
Have gone to Chicato to seek fame and fortune. Don't wait up.
-Love, T.R."

T.R. Baskin, 1971

I need to track down a copy of this film!  I remember seeing it once before, long, long ago and long before this research project existed.  I think it will help with my chapter on the 1970s and it can't possibly be worse than "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" or "An Unmarried Woman."

Street Harassment in Belgium

Ms. seems to have street harassment on their radar of late.  Here is an article on a short film that is reminiscent of Hadleigh-West's War Zone.

Personal Space and Beach Volleyball

A recent article in The Atlantic raises many key points in just a few short paragraphs.  Not surprisingly, the author darts between culture, law, custom, and activism leaving them all underexplored.

"The perception of women’s bodies as public property to be commented upon and regulated is one of the universal undercurrents of urban life, no matter what we are wearing. Covered or uncovered, women are targets for judgment, appraisal, and harassment."

I particularly appreciated that the article offered a critique of "women-only spaces" by quoting a woman from Delhi: "Segregating men and women will never help anyone develop tolerance and respect for others’ PERSONAL SPACE."

Public Drinking Cultures across Time and Space

Here is a fun new project to follow: public drinking!

http://tavernsproject.com/

Five historians are blogging about their research in different eras and locations.  The project "looks at how public space is used, and how tavern culture produces places and social groupings; how these spaces are regulated in the name of order, morality and health; the rhetorics of drinking and taverns, of pleasure, harm and authority. The project asks if the performance of drinking, and ideas of spectacle and carnival, are still part of modern drinking culture, and if contemporary questions about public policy on drinking and ‘anti-social behaviour’ find resonances in the past."

Salud!

Yeah, right...

Speaking of women's workplace experiences packaged up for puffy entertainment... I've been struck lately by the wallowing in pre-feminism workplace gender roles that seems to be at the heart of both Mad Men and Pan Am.

By setting these shows in the early 1960s, we can slap women on the ass, stuff their perfect bodies into girdles, call them girl, have them make coffee, clean up after us, and manuever them into a lunchtime tryst all under the guise of "look how far we've come." But the nostalgia of this... the way in which the shows revel in it: "Can you believe how bad it used to be?" wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

A Visit to TVland

A few months back I watched Bosom Buddies. I see some television producers at ABC have also been revisiting the vault and will be offering up a new version soon. I'm not much of a TV watcher, but this promo pic and the trailer on the website are low-hanging fruit. Hey, kids, let's make a joke out of the challenges women face in the workforce... sounds awesome. I can hardly wait...