A Road Not Taken

                                                                 

                                        

When I was a junior in high school, my mother began to despair of ever getting me off her hands. My grades were A's and B's--not good enough to make Honor Society, maybe, in my mother's opinion, not good enough for college. I had dated a bit but wasn't one of the "popular" girls. I was okay looking but never enough to suit my mother, who was something of a beauty. I was happy--but she wasn't.

So, at the time my friends and I were beginning to think about college choices, my mother sent off for a catalog for Katharine Gibbs--a famous school in New York known to turn out girls headed for careers as executive secretaries or, perhaps, secretaries who married wealthy bosses.

Katie Gibbs required their students to dress properly. In the Fifties this meant dresses, stockings and heels, hats, and white gloves. Along with typing, shorthand, and office management, Gibbs girls were coached in deportment and taught "proper" styling-- hair, dress, makeup.  and they were housed at The Barbizon Hotel for Women where, along with a curfew and a no men beyond the lobby rule, they could enjoy a number of amenities.

My mother, who loved New York and was bored with her own life, thought it would be wonderful for me. Maybe her ugly duckling would become a swan. I balked at the white gloves. Besides, I didn't want to be a secretary. Maybe an archaeologist? Or a veterinarian? But no white gloves.

The Katherine Gibbs application never got filled out. And in my senior year, I surprised everyone, including myself by being one of four National Merit Scholarship semi-finalists in our class of around 900. (The other three were straight A students.) Now college seemed to be where I should go.

That year too I fell in love with John, now my husband of 62 years. And my life has been far removed from New York and white gloves. Though over the course of seven novels, I got pretty good at typing.

All this came back to me when I read The Barbizon-The Hotel That Set Women Free. It tells the story of The Barbizon and the women who lived there--some Katie Gibbs students; some Guest Editors at Mademoiselle magazine (Joan Didion, Sylvia Plath, Gael Greene, to name a few;) and an assortment of would-be actors and artists, hoping for a break (Grace Kelly, Ali McGraw. Betsey Johnson.)

It's a fascinating study of women's quest for freedom and self-fulfillment that covers about seventy years. The Barbizon finally ceased its women-only policy when it came apparent that women no longer wanted the curfews and sorority house ambiance.

It's a fascinating look at times past from the female point of view. 

HERE is an excellent review.