College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Co-eds, Then and Now

by Lynn Peril

A geek who wears glasses? Or a sex kitten in a teddy? This is the dual vision of the college girl, the unique American archetype born when the age-old conflict over educating women was finally laid to rest. College was a place where women found self-esteem, and yet images in popular culture reflected a lingering distrust of the educated woman. Thus such lofty cultural expressions as Sex Kittens Go to College (1960) and a raft of naughty pictorials in men’s magazines.

As in Pink Think, Lynn Peril combines women’s history and popular culture—peppered with delightful examples of femoribilia from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1970s—in an intelligent and witty study of the college girl, the first woman to take that socially controversial step toward educational equity.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Feminism, Education, Womens Studies, Gender, Sociology

416 pages, Paperback

First published August 17, 2006

About the author

Lynn Peril was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1985. She writes, edits and publishes Mystery Date: One Gal's Guide to Good Stuff, a zine devoted to her obsession with used books (particularly old sex and dating manuals, etiquette and self-help books and health, beauty and fashion guides) and other detritus of popular culture, especially that concerning gender-related behavioral prescriptions. Mystery Date is currently taking a well deserved hiatus, but will return some day (or so she hopes - in the meantime, visit the archives). She further explores these issues in her book, Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons (W.W. Norton, 2002), a pop-culture history of the perilous path to achieving the feminine ideal.

A Pushcart-Prize-nominated writer, Ms. Peril's column, "The Museum of Femoribilia," appears in Bust magazine. Her essays and reviews have appeared in London's Guardian newspaper, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and Hermenaut among other publications. Lynn Peril received her M.A. in History, with a concentration in Gender, from San Francisco State University, 1995. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband, Johnny Bartlett, and two cats (well, eight if you count the ferals).

Reviews

[Shelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this. I found it endlessly fascinating, very readable and loved the inset boxes. BT fans, it offers interesting context and anecdotes about girls at Vassar in the 1910s, and information about college attendance then in general. It was, I think, at its best when talking about the 1900-1920 years - there wasn't as much about the 19th century or mid-20th, and too much of her own experiences at the start, in the 70s. Still, it offered context for a lot of mid-century books I've read - like Shelley in The Luckiest Girl (1958), who knew she'd go to college, but only because it was done and expected and she didn't know what else to do. It was quite interesting watching the progression of higher education for women from its start to that mentality.

There were just so many interesting facts and things I loved learning about. Things like Charlotte in 1896, writing home that her ambition was to weigh 150 pounds, and proudly relating her trek up the 130s as the semester passed, followed by a list of "athletic measurements" that girls should have in 1914 (5'1, 118 pounds, 31-22-35, among many others), then to 1924, when professors started to worry that girls were convinced that a normal weight was no longer good enough, that they had to be underweight. I was also fascinated by basketball's history for women in college and the amazing and inventive lengths men went to in order to try and keep women uneducated, right up until the 1960s. Some of the quoted novels and papers were awe-inspiring...in a bad way. And the college classes in ironing and laundry! Fascinating.

Anyway, clearly, I thought it was awesome.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book while stuck in the last chapters of The Tin Drum for a light read. I go to a school that is on the coordiante system (I technically go to an all girls school, but we share just about everything with an all boys school, minus the deans and the sports teams), so knowing the history of women's struggles through education means a lot to me.

Favorite Quote:

Over the years, "undemocratic" was perhaps the most frequent chare lobbed against Greek-letter organizations...
"Of course the fraternity system did not escape attack by radical members of the studne body. Sometimes, they were sincere thinkers; sometimes they were hurt rushees who had not recieved bids. They gathered in the back room of the college joint and drank beer and discussed Life earnestly. They agreed that marriage was a moth-eaten institution and fotball the curse of the American college. They believed in Socialism and the style of Ernest Hemingway. And they railed against the fraternity system because it was undemocratic. It glorified money over brains. It preferred a man whose father was born on the right side of the tracks and who dressed well and danced correctly, to one who hashed [i.e. waited tables at the dining hall] his way to Phi Beta Kappa."
In other words, the people who dared castigate the Greeks were the passed over dregs who were antifrat, antimarriage, antifootball socialists. (pg 83-84)

[Shaenon Garrity · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engrossing, endlessly entertaining history of women at college in America. Peril covers all the expected big isms--sexism, classism, racism, feminism--in detail, but also explores midnight snacks, gentlemen callers, smoking and drinking, quirky campus traditions, the rise and fall of women's basketball, the "college girl" in pulp fiction and movies, and an array of other issues big and small. I loved her previous book, Pink Think, but College Girls is both more carefully researched and more confidently written. Also, as a Vassar girl, I admit I enjoyed following my alma mater through its spotted history (and to its eventual transition to a coed school).

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this book is well-researched, it's a really demoralizing read. Over and over we are hit on the head about how the world was biased against and threatened by educated women. This book felt like one of despair, struggle, and prejudice, not one of overcoming, succeeding, and proving society wrong. More horrifying is how ossified some societal beliefs seem to be, or how they can move in retrograde. This book made me tired.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun book looking at the (white) American woman college experience - primarily from the 19th century to the 1970s. It was written in 2004 so it is firmly out of date in the conclusion but thankfully the rest of it hasn't been affected. It is a pop history book but one of the better ones I have read recently - informative but not too heavy. Good job, Lynn!

[Ciara · Rating 4 out of 5]

lyyn peril previously wrote a book i really enjoyed, called pink think, all about the marketing of femininity. she is also the author of "thirft score" fanzine. her zine credentials are probably what compelled me to read her books, but her books are actually quite good, which is much more than i can say for most zinesters who make the jump to actually writing books. this isn't really anything like "thrift score," because it's all researched & not about buying stuff at thrift stores. it is in fact about the history of women & higher education. women have not always been allowed to go to college, & even after women's colleges started operating in the late 1800s, they weren't really equal with men's colleges of the same era. many women's colleges just trained women in the domestic arts--things like laundering, embroidery, manners, etc. they were glorified finishing schools, basically, for women who would go on to be the wives of distinguished business executives or politicans. or they trained women in specialty industries (like laundry or sewing) that were still considered women's work. & even when co-ed universities where men & women took the same classes & were free to pursue the same degrees became more standard, there was still a discrepancy in how many women were attending college, what they were studying, & how the "college girl" was being marketed & marketed to. i myself am a college drop-out, but this book really made me want to go back & finish my bachelor's because it made me very aware of the fact that a good education has been a privilege of men for a significant chunk of history (& for white, wealthy men, at that). i mean, who knows if i'll really do that, but it was definitely a really fascinating book & i wanted to keep reading it even when it was over. yay, lynn peril! write more books!

[Efox · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a fan of Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons, Lynn Peril's first book and this one was equally fascinating and fun. While Pink Think focused mostly on the post WWII - 1970's ideas of what femininity meant, College Girls explores education for women going back to the late 1800's when the first women were entering higher education. Having over 100 years of history to draw from, the arguments for and against and surrounding the education of women are fascinating. Additionally, the issues surrounding sending daughters off to college seem to have shocking similarities over the ages. From leaving parents and living on your own, to what to study, to boys and dating to clothing and consumerism (direct marketing to co-eds, don't think you were first Victoria's Secret), and the constant tension between educating women and having women fulfill the traditional roles of wife/mother, the tension has been there from the first woman who sought higher education.

For me this book helped clarify some of the existing tensions that I've been aware of while on campus, in dealing with that work v. stay at home mom issue many of my co-workers/friends deal with and generally about the double standard to which women are held. Looking forward to getting my hands on Peril's next book as well!

[Cynda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read -Governess: The Lives and Times if the Real Jane Eyre- right before I read this book. A good order to read these books. The desire to be more equal then started as education reform which is discussed in a -College Girls-. There is an overlap in the time line, an important one not to be missed. I can see how we got from there to there to here. We have in US have sought educational equality and then back-pedaled and said we sought more compatible wives and efficient homemakers and mothers. And then we forward pedaled and may yet back-pedal. As women, we have undeniably have improved our social equality in large part due to education of women. Educated women lead the way in the Suffrage Movement and mainstream sexual liberation. Controls were put into place in various ways to control women student populations from distractions from family and schools, yet -in loco parentis- has become a limited force in women's pursuing a college education. We are becoming who want to be more not what we were born to be. Whew....
Lynn Peril's writing style allows much information to be given without the information overwhelming the reader. It is written for the college-educated women who want to know more about their niche of women's history. Along with the text, Peril includes vignettes, lists, ads, pics related to the text to make the story come a little more, or a lot more, alive.
I will be including this book in the Women's History List in Listopedia.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read this book for a college writing course in the fall of this year (2014). Overall this was a pretty intriguing account of the history of women in education, primarily in the United States. Peril does a good job of working up from the beginning of the 1800s where the only thing that essentially existed for women were special women's schools, up until today where no one really thinks much of women going to college anymore. In fact, more women go to college now than men. She's very thorough though, and manages to keep your interest well.

My only complaint about the book is that it is somewhat repetitive, but it's sort of hard to notice at the same time. Peril covers a variety of topics all the way across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and I found myself pretty shocked by some of the information. She presents it in a somewhat humorous fashion as well, which keeps you interested and the introduction of the book she relates her research to herself too.

I found it to be a pretty interesting book, but it's not something I would have typically picked up on my own to read. I would recommend it to anyone interested in education, the history of education, and anyone interested in feminism.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first nonfiction book I have picked up in a while. I originally planned on reading bits and pieces of it for the purpose of some research, but I was so fascinated with the description that I felt the need to just read it cover to cover. Frankly, I'm glad I did. Never before have I felt so proud to have a college degree. Periodically my jaw dropped with surprise at the things people actually believed 100+ years ago (women should not study during their menstrual cycle because it would disrupt blood flow and thus damage their reproductive organs?!), and parts of it I found immensely interesting. I loved the photos and various advertisements that were included.

My only complaint about this book was that the author spent too much time I felt on early early early college days (1800s) and not as much time on college girls in the 1930s and on. I would have loved to have seen more information about those eras, how the Depression affected colleges and the girls there, how WWII impacted college, and so on.

One more complaint: This book actually made me miss college days a little bit. You never realize how fun they were until they're long gone.

[Susanne E · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read, with (surprise!) several references to good old Swellesley. Despite the salacious-looking cover, the author struck a great balance between funny stories and serious analysis. It was informative and pretty rigorously researched but still accessible.

After reading this book and Manly Meals and Mom's Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America in 2012, I'm struck by how many different agendas society has managed to devise for women since the 1860s or so. College education is good! College education is dangerous! Educated women can work and become equals to men! Educated women can be good housewives because they understand the science behind their angel food cake and they took "laundry science" courses! Women need new gadgets to help them with cooking because it's hard! Women need technically detailed cookbooks to make cooking a science! Women take all the art out of food - only men make food emotional and artistic! No wonder things are still so confused.

[Christie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book at my library while searching for a sex education book (this book is not a sex education book, but it popped up in the catalog with a keyword search)for a patron and I could not resist putting it on hold for myself. It looked like something right up my alley. The book covers the evolution of college girls from those at teachers' seminaries in the West in the late 1800s to those husband hunting co-eds of the 1950s to the Girls Gone Wild hotties. It covers all aspects of a college education for women classes, rules, dating, friendships, sororities and sports. It is peppered with reproductions of advertisements and photographs. It was quite an entertaining and informative book. My only complaint is the book seemed to stop after the 1950s for the most part. I would have liked to learn more about the 1960s and 1970s when a lot of things changed on college campuses.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was quite enjoyable - very educational and got me thinking about women and education, and my own education (what if I had gone to a women only institution?). However, Peril's writing style this time around didn't do it for me. She used pointlessly obscure vocabulary that didn't serve to further her arguments and, at times, became suddenly moralizing. I started off hanging off of her every word, but unfortunately that quickly lost steam. It would also seem that she forgot about the "and Now" portion of her title.

On a positive note, I loved all the pictures that she included! The photographs of women's basketball teams in the late 1890s alone were fantastic.

All things considered, it was still a good book that I would recommend to people who are looking for a history of women and higher education.

[Ginny Messina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was the first of my grandmother’s 5 granddaughters to go to college and she was absolutely horrified; she emphatically believed that the morals of all college girls were highly suspect. Grandma came of age in the 1910s, and reading this book helped me understand how she came to hold these beliefs—-and never let go of them for the next eight decades!

This is a good overview of what life was like for college girls, especially at the turn of the century, and also of societal perceptions and expectations of coeds. The author’s editorial and personal comments were a little off-putting. I also wish she had spent more time discussing the experiences of girls who went to college in the 1940s and ‘50s. But overall, an interesting and edifying read.

[Megan Stolz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an assigned text in an undergrad class on twentieth century American history. It was definitely the least "academic" of the textbooks we discussed; the writing feels more like a novel or a popular history book. But that helps to widen it's audience to more than simply history nerds, and it's an interesting subject. I particularly enjoyed reading a book that was, in some respects, about me, or at least about my fore-sisters. I attended a woman's college, one which is actually mentioned, briefly, in College Girls.

It's a lighter read, definitely social history, and one which I occasionally take out to re-read bits and pieces.

[MM · Rating 2 out of 5]

A buoyant read – Peril discusses some interesting facets of women in higher education: from the introduction of women’s colleges to histories of women’s behaviors and habits in co-ed settings. Geared toward the general reader (i.e. it's not a dense historical text), she includes many amusing details of college curricula designed for women (laundry courses!), sexual mores, regulations for women in college, social anxieties about gender, and so forth.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great for any lady, young or old, with an inclination towards education, history, or the simple appreciation of steps taken towards sexual equality. Peril's writing is spot on delightful and digestible. She does shy away from the slew of grim aspects, ideas, and direct quotations surrounding the struggle for women's higher education. Peril also takes care to note the classist nature of women's education and employment, soothing those who are sociologically minded or easily rankled.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plenty of amusing stories Old Girls will enjoy, and others may too, even if they have never rolled a hoop. Peril tries to put some structure to her research, and brings a lot of primary sources into the light.

It comes to an abrupt ending without drawing any conclusions. Perhaps if you read it slowly over a long period of time that will not feel so jarring. Keep it on the sunporch and pick it up when you are out there smoking.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

The amazing Lynn Peril has done it again. Much like "Pink Think," her "College Girls" takes us on an illuminating journey of the history of women. This time, rather than focusing on femininity as a while, she focuses on women in college in the US. Her use of period advertisements and photos only adds to the fun. Peril makes learning about changing trends and rules in the education of women both hilarious and informative. This book delivers.

[Ariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not too text-booky, but not terribly dumbed down either. This book covers and discusses basic life as a college girl at the turn of the 20th century. Not only was it interesting, but it was fascinating to read about what it was like for women like my grandmother and mother to go to college. Definitely a good book for someone starting out on Women and Gender studies.

[Mkb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent! Smart and fun at the same time. Makes me want to check out Peril's other books.

[Nut Meg · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was very disappointed with this. I specifically picked it out because I was interested in bluestockings. Given that they're specifically cited in the subtitle, I expected the topic to make up a notable portion of the book (at least a chapter). Instead, they were only discussed for a few pages. I tried to read through regardless, but I ultimately lost my patience when I got to the chapter on college fashions.
To be fair, much of it was quite informative and easy to read. However, many of the chapters were too tedious to push through and I disliked how she organized information by subject more than time period. I suppose whether or not you enjoy this will depend on what kind of information you're interested in. For someone specifically interested in intellectual women in the years before higher education was considered acceptable for the "weaker sex," I found it seriously lacking.

[Kathryn Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was published in 2006 and it still holds up. The information is so accessible and I love how many pictures there are. I learned so much about the history of the American college girl. This book covered lesbian women at universities, Black women at universities, and white women at universities. The amount of research and care that was put into this book is incredibly obvious and Lynn Peril discussed intersectional identities with great respect. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to any woman going through college. An excellent read for women’s history month!

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fabulous. An entertaining read that is simultaneously chock full of information on a topic that I'm embarrassed to say I didn't know a lot about. Tons of citations and a packed bibliography for those who want to dive even deeper on a particular area. Love the way it interweaves historical texts with sources like women's and girls' magazines, as Peril is such a genius at doing.

[B · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of women in college. Great quotes and copies of advice pamphlets, college ads, etc. An interesting look at the change in our society's views on the purpose of higher education--the evolution from producing homemakers who could handle tending house, to educating women to be able to converse with their husbands on any topic, to finally a sort-of equal view on male and female schooling.

[Jenine Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting mix of advertisements and excerpts from the time and the author's voice. Historical without being dry.
I'm considering getting a copy for my niece who is currently in college.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Very interesting but it felt a little repetitive at times.

[Rhiannon Root · Rating 3 out of 5]

Women entering high education has been a hot topic since the early 1800s. Why were the women on campus? Was it to better themselves while becoming wives and mothers? Was it to husband hunt? Was it for some other reason?

Author Lynn Peril examines the history of women obtaining college degrees in deft detail in “College Girls: Bluestockings, sex kittens, and coeds, then and now.” Peril is so thorough I can hardly believe it.

The book follows a roughly linear timeline, from the colonial era until Peril’s present (roughly 2003.) There’s a great deal of information here. Did you know sororities began because housing options for women going to college was sparse at best? Did you know that some colleges had strict requirements about attending religious services and being back in their dorms at certain hours? (Also dating customs and mores have changed drastically since the early 20th century. It’s wild and fascinating to read.)

Peril also makes the point that colleges largely became coed because they stood to gain a lot more money that way, rather than because administrators had idealistic notions about women’s education. There were also significant portions of this book dedicated to talking about women of color and traditionally black colleges, which was awesome. I’d love to see more books do this sort of thing. (Though I thought there could have been more ink devoted to that subject.)

I didn’t love this book, but I did quite like it. The pace was a bit too slow and self-satisfied at points and there were also some issues with tone. The author was sarcastic and unsympathetic at points that were baffling. The instance that sticks out in my mind is toward the end when a news anchor lost her job because of some risqué photos emerged from a spring break trip when the woman was in college, ten or so years prior. The author makes a joke and blames the woman for her bad judgment. (Who hasn’t done stupid things in their twenties? Come on.)

Overall, “College Girls” is a solid reading choice for anyone looking to better understand how high education has changed the lives of women.

[Carolyn Fitzpatrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book if you are just sort of mildly curious about the different rules and stereotypes that women have been subjected to in their attempt at higher education. There were a lot of tidbits that I had never heard of before, like women being benched for the first three days of their period due to the belief that exercise would cause their ovaries to shrivel up permanently, and "Boston Marriages" being NBD until Freud ruined everything. But about half of these fun facts are not connected to a particular decade, or even century. The book is arranged thematically, and in the chapter about, for example, being new on campus, a variety of phenomenon are described without a specific start or end point being given.

Also, although the first chapter gives a good explanation of why the first black colleges came into being, they really weren't mentioned after that expect to say that Spelman girls didn't like having to go to chapel every single day, or their boyfriend only being allowed to visit once every six weeks. (Is Spelman still like this? How has the rule changed over time? We don't know!) There was a chapter on women's lib and it mentioned that in the 1960s black rights was given much more attention than women's rights on college campuses. Stokely Carmichel's comment about the only available position to women in SNCC was stated: "prone". So was wondering, what were black women up to on their campuses? Was feminism seen as a danger to racial progress there too? We don't know that either.

[Liselotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok children, sit around, because I'm going to talk about the best feminist history books I've found in a long time!

Lynn Peril is my favourite author about feminist history. Especially College Girls, this book makes my history loving heart beat faster. It shows a really subjective few to the subject (the feminism isn't stuffed down your throat basically) but it just explains what women had to do and had to endure to reach the position we have now. What I enjoy MOST about Lynn Peril is that she writes for everyone. Women of colour and trans women are also talked about in her books, which brings such a nice perspective to her books, as these are groups that are incredibly often overlooked in history books. I've been trying to get everyone in my life to read these books (I've failed thus far!) but I totally, for 100% recommend these books if you love history, if you love feminism or if you want to start reading Lynn Peril. You can't go wrong with her!