I come from a family of bakers and good cooks and only have a fraction of their skills, but it taught me to, as my father would say, “know what’s good.” Paraphrasing a poem, I believe that all types of love happen at a kitchen table, in a cafe, at a food truck, or over a picnic basket.Read More
“Pulp” vs “Purity” Romances and 1950s Women Somewhere in Between
CONTENTS
Even if she was a widow, she was somehow a virgin. Or so lightly touched by a previous marriage she was considered pure enough for the purposes of being an appropriate wife in the 1950s post-war mystique, which was eager to yank women out of workplaces and into pedestal-shaped cages.
Pulp vs. Purity
Pulp Romances
At the time, there was a distinct separation between pulp romances and what I’m calling “purity” romances. Pulp romances were distributed through bus stations and drug stores. Their love stories didn’t arrive at a happy ending without lurid events, like lesbian side affairs or dalliances with bad boys that lead to brushes with the law. While they could be exploitative, pulp romances had real world problems like sexual assault, battering and bullying, substance and alcohol abuse, and the lack of financial autonomy that drove women to desperate measures.
Pulp novels of this era were the first to posit lesbian stories that didn’t end in death for the “predator lesbian.” They were books so inexpensive and brief they could be read on a bus journey and left behind, no one the wiser that you’d been gobbling up tales of premarital sex, walks on the wild side, and the temptations of Those Kinds of Women. It’s a pulp romance, Spring Fire, that opens Irene’s mind in Wind in Her Hair to the idea that women can not only be true and valued friends to each other, they can also be lovers. Read More
Hours Left in Huge Sapphic Fiction Sale
1952 – The Italian Cut, Juliet Caps, and the Touring Car featured in Wind in Her Hair
CONTENTS
If you’re like me, however, the difference between a bouffant, poodle, and an Italian haircut for women escapes you entirely. Even after reading up on how they’re cut, layered, and styled I couldn’t tell you the difference.
It’s like that moment in The Devil Wears Prada when Andi rightly scoffs at people raving over the difference in color between two identical belts. (They’re identical, I tell you, identical!)
The Italian Cut
When creating the world that Irene Carson was going to inhabit, and having some fabulous cover art that immediately became Irene in my mind, I did some deep and often fun dives into fashion. For example, what’s the name of the haircut the woman in the cover art above is rocking? Read More
Sapphic World Book Club – Saturday!
They’re going to ask me questions. You can ask me questions. Read More