Single Women on TV in the 1960s and 1970s: Sometimes They Really Did Make It on Their Own
Single women in 1960s popular culture as unlikely agents of social change
I spent way too much time during my first weeks of college feeling intimidated and scared. I grew up in the small town of Dunmore, Pennsylvania (near Scranton) and went to the very public Dunmore High School, and then there I was, in 1971, at Vassar College. At my high school, when someone said a word with more than three syllables, it was intended as a joke. Those first few weeks of college, I found myself laughing at all sorts of inappropriate times.
The first weekend of my first semester of college, I went to a movie on campus with many other students. On the way back, several of those students were analyzing what they had just seen. What did it really mean? What was wrong with the assumptions in the film and the portrayals of different kinds of people?
I had never discussed a movie with my friends in that way. I was sure I was going to flunk out.
“Those Girls: Single Women in Sixties and Seventies Popular Culture”
Now I love to think critically about popular culture, and to read other people’s analyses, especially when the…
