While the women of midcentury America in the popular imagination are seen as being part of the last era of conformity, there were many who did break the boundaries of lady-like behavior. For the past 20 years, art collector Peter Cohen has scoured flea markets and estate sales for photographs of these women from the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s—smoking, flying, playing baseball, or even riding a bucking bronco. Those photographs can be found in a fantastic new book by Rizzoli, Snapshots of Dangerous Women.
There are no captions in the book for these anonymous women, and so the images, such as this one of two women lighting up one another's cigarettes, speak for themselves.
Courtesy of Rizzoli
"Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them," writes Mia Fineman, quoting Oscar Wilde in her introduction to the book. Of course, one doesn’t even need to be a woman to have riding a bucking bronco be a little outside the norm.
Part of Amelia Earhart’s celebrity is undoubtedly tied to the reality that women flying solo in the 1930s was not exactly common. These two women in this photo are not only flying, but look like they’re having a damn good time.
“It would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up, and waited for the phone to ring," sportswriter Joe Williams of The New York World-Telegram famously sneered when talking about Babe Didrikson Zaharias. We will never know whether or not the woman to the left was inspired by the famous athlete’s exploits, but this photo is a reminder that Babe wasn't the only one interested in sports.
The women in the book are not only breaking taboos related to their gender, but also to what women of a certain age should do. Even to this day, there would undoubtedly be ageist criticism of elderly women rocking a sexy leopard print bathing suit and posing for photographs in it.
Of course one of the oldest traditions of gender subversion is dressing in traditionally men's clothing. This woman rocking pants and a pipe looks pretty awesome doing so.
Snapshots of Dangerous Women by Peter J. Cohen. Published by Rizzoli
