Dear T, O, E, L, L, C, and A:
A friend told us that when she entered Pomona College in 1961, it was the custom that all the newly arriving women ("co-eds" they were called in those dark days) were "measured" by the sophomore men. She said that the women were lined up and their measurements (height, weight, bust, waist, hips) taken and announced to the assembled spectators. This shameful blast from the past shocked and embarrassed me.
I'm five years older than our friend, but I'm glad to say that I never heard of any remotely similar goings-on at the college I attended. (Maybe such things happened in the backward, benighted frat clubs, but surely, I hope hope hope, not in my part of the campus). In fact, I was a bit skeptical of our friend's story -- it being so grotesque -- so I searched a Pomona alumni website for confirmation and found this picture. I'm sorry to say that the evidence is incontrovertible.
Tale of the tape, 1961.
Crew-cut boy is smiling, and I think I understand why. He's almost touching shirtwaist girl's breasts. In those pre-Vietnam years, female virginity was still a mystical virtue, mechanical contraception (there were no pills) was near-impossible to obtain and prone to failure, pregnancy before marriage was a life-shattering disgrace, and abortion was illegal and sometimes fatal. It might be that taking the measure of the young lady's bosom was the sexual pinnacle of crew-cut boy's four years in college. Nevertheless, I'm puzzled that shirtwaist girl is so amenable to the taping. Is she actually smiling? Doesn't she realize that she's participating in an absurd demeaning dehumanizing rite?
I asked our Pomona friend how she dealt with the ritual. "Well," she said, "here's what I did. I went downtown and bought a large size inflatable bra. I put it on and blew it up to monumental proportions. I brought a pin to the ceremony. I planned to pop the bra just as I was being measured, but the thing was so tough it didn't deflate as planned. I wish it had. That was my protest. I should have done more. It was difficult to buck tradition. When things are customary, taken for granted, it takes a lot of strength to go against the system even when you know it's wrong."
Here's another story, young 'uns, from the same era. In 1960, your grandmother, AGP, began teaching mathematics in Newton, Massachusetts. Her salary was $4200 a year, but if she had been a man, it would have been $4300. The district had two salary scales, one for men and one for women. I remember studying a printed schedule that had one column labelled M and one labeled F. The difference between M and F was small, but it increased with every year of experience. However small or large the discrepancy, it was still an insult and an injustice, designed as much to assert superiority and inferiority as to make an economic difference.
Both AGP and I knew it was wrong, but I'm embarrassed to say that we did not protest. Before "equal pay for equal work," it was taken for granted that Fs would be paid less than Ms. Why didn't we argue, agitate, organize? Because we were paralyzed, I think, by the powerful forces of custom and convention.
I wonder about crew-cut boy. Was he forever locked into 1960 attitudes or did he eventually come to enlightenment? What sort of relations did he establish with mature women? And did he, perhaps, have a daughter? Would he have advised her to attend Pomona College, and if he did so, did he try to ascertain whether first-year female students were still being measured?
I wonder also about the abuses in our society that we notice but tolerate because they are so embedded in the culture. And even more so, by the abuses we don't notice but will be clearly apparent in a generation or two. Which of today's events will look as antiquated and rearward in fifty years as that Pomona ritual?
