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Title details for Bad Girls by Amanda H. Littauer - Available

Bad Girls

Young Women, Sex, and Rebellion before the Sixties

by Amanda H. Littauer
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In this innovative and revealing study of midcentury American sex and culture, Amanda Littauer traces the origins of the "sexual revolution" of the 1960s. She argues that sexual liberation was much more than a reaction to 1950s repression because it largely involved the mainstreaming of a counterculture already on the rise among girls and young women decades earlier. From World War II–era "victory girls" to teen lesbians in the 1940s and 1950s, these nonconforming women and girls navigated and resisted intense social and interpersonal pressures to fit existing mores, using the upheavals of the era to pursue new sexual freedoms.
Building on a new generation of research on postwar society, Littauer tells the history of diverse young women who stood at the center of major cultural change and helped transform a society bound by conservative sexual morality into one more open to individualism, plurality, and pleasure in modern sexual life.

  • Creators

  • Series

    Gender and American Culture

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 17, 2015

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781469623795
      • File size: 4351 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781469623795
      • File size: 4351 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      August 1, 2015

      At the intersection of women's history, the history of sexuality and gender, and the emerging field of girls and girlhood studies, Littauer's (history, Northern Illinois Univ.) first book probes the sexual agency of young women of the 1940s and 1950s. The author marshals an impressive range of sources, including government surveys, letters written to sexologist Alfred Kinsey, and oral histories, to revise our understanding of wartime and postwar sexual daring. From "victory girls" to "B-girls" and women who unabashedly pursued same-sex desires before the era of gay liberation, this analysis challenges our collective memory of the mid-20th century as one of unremitting conformity and sexual repression. While remaining attentive to the marginalizing effects of race and class as well as gender and sexual identity, Littauer shows how young women of the period asserted their sexual agency even as girls' and women's sexual autonomy was undeniably constrained by social censure and legal force. VERDICT A well-crafted, deeply researched contribution to the field, this work will be eagerly read and digested by scholars of this understudied period in the history of gender and sexuality in America.--Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc. Lib., Boston

      Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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