Join me in this live 90-minute class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about the rewards and challenges that shaped life for American women after World War II – and the lessons their struggles offer us today.

We’ve all heard of the can-do Rosie the Riveters who kept the American economy going while men served overseas during the Second World War: how they rose to the call, left their homes and children and went to work, and experienced an exciting flash of freedom, only to be sent home when it was all over.

While writing my new book, Double Click: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines, I discovered that the desire to work wasn’t only a wartime phenomenon. So many young women were excited about the idea of working after the Depression that publishers created a completely new kind of periodical for them: the career-girl magazine. I paged through hundreds of issues of these publications while doing research, examining their stories, their advice columns, their fashions, and their pictures.To my amazement, the ideal reader emerged from their pages didn’t seem especially sheltered or reserved, but had much in common with young women today; she seemed curious, active, and eager to participate in the wider world.

Then she suddenly disappeared, replaced by the 1950s suburban mom.

It’s this forgotten woman who I want to share with you in my 90-minute class, Five Things I’ve Learned about the Forgotten Heroines of American Feminism, a portrait gleaned from reading hundreds of stories and looking at thousands of pictures.

These are some of the things we’ll discuss:

• Contrary to popular misconception, young women in the late 1930s and 1940s were so interested in life outside the home that there was a thriving market for career-girl magazines well before women were asked to take over men’s jobs during the Second World War.

• The lives of many women during this time weren’t so different to ours today.  They juggled work and marriage, and they grappled with divorce and blended families. They were also much savvier about sexuality than I had imagined. 

• During this period, it was women who created the active, body-conscious, on-the-go clothes we still wear today. Women dreamed up so many aspects of contemporary fashion, including separates, knits, jumpsuits, wrap dresses, opaque tights, and ballet flats. And in large part it was women photographers who pioneered the way women looked in those clothes, presenting women who strode through fields and city streets, and piloted planes. 

• Why the sudden turnaround?  What made these young women who had previously been so active and engaged return to the home and worship the idea of being wives and mothers–or at least, what made them pretend that’s all they cared about?

• Why has this history been so thoroughly forgotten?  Now – at another moment when circumstances are again conspiring to force women to retreat into the home – this is the perfect time to remember, and make sure it doesn’t happen again. 

I hope you will join me. 

-Carol Kino