The Barbizon Paulina Bren (read along books txt) š
- Author: Paulina Bren
Book online Ā«The Barbizon Paulina Bren (read along books txt) šĀ». Author Paulina Bren
On August 26, 1970, Helen Gurley Brown marched down Fifth Avenue with Betty Friedan. They were joined by the photogenic Gloria Steinem, cofounder of Ms. magazine, who in 1963 had gone undercover as a Playboy bunny, exposing the sexism and racism in that organization, and arguing that in fact all women were routinely treated as Playboy bunnies. Ten thousand women, the younger ones in jeans and T-shirts, the older ones in summer floral dresses, marched with these three feminist icons. It was the Womenās Strike for Equality, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, passed in 1920, which granted women the right to vote: it had also been the impetus for the construction of womenās hotels in the 1920s. Brown, Friedan, and Steinem linked arms with a group of veteran suffragettes, and the march swelled as bystanders joined them, some marchers hoisting signs that read: āDonāt iron while the strike is hot!ā and āI am not a Barbie Doll!ā Men stood on New Yorkās sidewalks and watched; some heckled, one wearing a brassiere on Forty-Fifth Street, others shouting āBra-less traitors!ā at them as they made their way down Fiftieth Street.
It was the beginning of a new era, and it was marked at Mademoiselle by the end of the old one. Editor-in-chief Betsy Talbot Blackwell was stepping down from her post. A lifetime smoker, her coughing fits were now ear-shattering. Incoming guest editors were told to pretend they could not hear what sounded like a freight train passing through, although BTB liked to say this was her way of announcing her entry. She was now called āMotherā by much of the staff, but she had continued to move along with the times, to insist on Mademoiselleās trailblazing āfirsts.ā Just the previous year she had āO.K.ād my first four-letter word in copy.ā In her parting āEditorās Memoā to the magazineās readers, she cataloged her journey from 1935 to the present: āThe birth and growth of nylon and TV, of zippers and jets and no-iron fabrics and the big wig habitā¦ of āBlack is Beautiful,ā revolution on campus, and Womenās Lib. The era has brought us a whole new vocabulary: the UN and A.A., freeways and hippies, ballpoints and Beatles, consumerism and communes, rock ānā roll, smog, test-tube babies, ethnic everything. In fashion, pantsuits have become staple wear for womenāunforeseeable as late as the 1940s, as have micro-miniskirts, bikinis, bodystockings, hotpants.ā
Her send-off was drawn out, with honorary dinners and personalized gifts, including spring flowers from actress and former guest editor Ali MacGraw (also a onetime roommate of Gloria Steinemās), who thanked Betsy for igniting her career by putting her on the front cover of the 1958 August College Issue. The cherry on the cake (which was pink, of course) was a party thrown in her honor by CondĆ© Nast, the magazineās publisher after Street & Smith, on the rooftop of the St. Regis hotel, everything adorned with pink roses. Even with all the well-wishers around her, BTB must have paused to remember the guest editor balls that had taken place on that same rooftop every June from 1937 on. But she understood this was a new era: Edie Locke was going to be the new editor-in-chief of Mademoiselle, forgoing BTBās trademark hats, cigarettes, and Scotch.
But it was not new beginnings for everyone. The Barbizon began to falter. A residential hotel built for the New Woman of the 1920s was now less alluring. For those looking for a husband, it was a place bereft of men. As one former resident complained: āI donāt know why girls interested in meeting men and having a life of their own would ever choose to live in a place like that. When they date, they canāt have people upāthey drop the boys at the door.ā For those looking for the quintessential New York experience, as countless young women before them had, there was now something stodgy about the Barbizon, embodied by its older residents, āthe Womenā (as they had always been called by the hotelās young residents). The Barbizonās cultural programs, which had once included concerts, recitals, and plays, were now reduced to a television set on the mezzanine floor. Free afternoon tea continued in the ādark Tudor cavern above the lobby,ā but hardly anyone bothered to show up these days. Those who did were mostly the elderly ladies gathered around one of their own, Mrs. Anne Gillen, who played the hotel organ from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. dressed in pearls and a pillbox hat, while the younger ones who had nowhere else to go gathered around the hotelās social director, who thought it was fun to play a game coming up with categories of horses. Just as this was a time of confusion for many, so was it for the Barbizon.
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