Bad Girls: Young Women, Sex, and Rebellion before the Sixties

by Amanda H. Littauer

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, School, Gender and Sexuality, Feminism, American History, Sexuality

280 pages, Paperback

First published September 2, 2015

Reviews

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

In contrast to several books I've read on how American government and society tried to rein women's sexuality in, this looks at the women's side: "victory girls" who banged servicemen in WW II, B-girls who teased guys into buying them watered-down, overpriced drinks, lesbians, girls who went steady (which was seen as close enough to marriage to justify going all the way) and women's reactions to the Kinsey Report. An interesting change of pace, but it feels like something is missing, even though I can't identify what. Perhaps it's just Littauer's stiff, pedantic style (even by university-press standards) that puts me off.

[Anna]

review forthcoming in Library Journal.