We've Come a Long Way, Baby!

by Gwen Cooper — July 20, 2007

Last night I tuned in to the premiere of AMC's new series Mad Men, which follows the travails of an early-'60s Madison Avenue ad agency. As a former advertising-industry professional myself, I'd been looking forward to some amusing then-and-now compare/contrast scenarios. They were certainly there in abundance. What was less amusing--even bordering on the heartrending--was the depiction of the experiences of single women both in and out of the workplace.

It seems shocking that as recently as 1960, a woman could visit her gynecologist to discuss birth control and have him tell her something like, "The prescription for the Pill costs $11 a month. Don't go thinking you have to be the town pump just to get your money's worth," as one of the characters was. (I'm sorry--is "town pump" one of those technical-type medical terms?) It's also hard to imagine an office where a woman coming in for her first day on the job would be told repeatedly to wear shorter skirts and show a little leg because that's what her new boss likes.

I guess somewhere between sexy secretary and town pump laid the middle-ground line that a woman was supposed to tread in those days.

As a dating blogger--and the author of a novel whose main character is more "Valley of the Dolls" than "Beach Blanket Bingo" in terms of her philosophy on sex--I can't help but wonder what my own columns would have looked like if I'd been writing them, say, 45 years ago. Of course, I probably wouldn't have been writing a column like this at all 45 years ago--what I mean is, what would I have felt comfortable admitting to in public? What would I have felt comfortably doing in the first place? And what would friends, lovers, and readers have thought of my firmly held belief that a woman is every bit as entitled to sexual satisfaction as a man is?

The past couple weeks of my dating life have been rather tough as Robert and I try to move past the fact that I kissed somebody else. There have been some bad, painful days, and may be more ahead. Nevertheless, I think I can honestly say that I wouldn't trade my worst day of dating now for somebody else's best day of dating back then.

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, recently published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen Cooper's posts in "The Dating Life," click here.