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Black and white headshot of author Erin Blakemore

Erin Blakemore

Erin Blakemore is a Boulder, Colorado-based journalist Her debut book, The Heroine’s Bookshelf (Harper), won a Colorado Book Award for Nonfiction and has been translated into Italian, Korean and Portuguese. Erin has written about history and culture and other topics for Smithsonian.com, The Washington Post, TIME, mental_floss, NPR’s This I Believe, The Onion, Popular Science, Modern Farmer and other journals. You can find more of her work at erinblakemore.com.

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Young Boy with Hat, 1990s
Lifestyle

Divorce, Gen-X Style

By clinging to a one-dimensional view of selfish parents and ignored kids, GenXers missed the chance to empathize with their (heading-for-a-divorce) parents.
An advertising card for White, Warner & Co. Stoves and Ranges
Politics & History

How Stovemakers Helped Invent Modern Marketing

Most people in the United States have a stove in their kitchen. But how did this “must-have” come to be?
English art and radio critic Frederick Laws (left) and American photographer Lee Miller attend a one-night performance of Pablo Picasso's play 'Desire Caught By The Tail' at the Rudolf Steiner Hall in London, March 1950.
Arts & Culture

Lee Miller, More than a Model

Miller photographed the chaos of war’s end in Europe, documenting major battles, the liberation of Paris, and the horrors of Dachau and Buchenwald.
A dressmaker uses a sewing machine, 1928
Art & Art History

Dressmaking Liberated American Women—Then Came the Men

The creation of bespoke clothing offered women a way to escape traditional middle-class expectations and gain unprecedented power, until men took over.
Olivier salad in a red plate on the table
Education & Society

The USSR’s “Invisible Cuisine”

Unofficial cookbooks—handwritten recipes passed from kitchen to kitchen—provided their owners with social and cultural capital within the Soviet system.
The collector of prints, by Edgar Degas, 1866, and A woman ironing, by Edgar Degas, 1873, both with original frames
Art & Art History

Framing Degas

The French painter Edgar Degas was Impressionism’s most energetic and inventive frame designer.
Frederick & Nelson, Seattle. A Division of Marshall Field & Company
Business & Economics

How the Marshall Plan Sold Europe to Americans

Department-store bazaars let consumers see how glamorous and sophisticated imported goods could be. Ooh, la la!
Martha Stewart, 2001
Education & Society

America’s Domestic Gurus Are Bad Girls

Why do the pages of shelter magazines for women seem so pristine? The answer is not what you think, according to one scholar.
Women form a human chain to carry bricks used in the reconstruction of Dresden, March 1946
Politics & History

Did Allied Bombs Destroy German Morale?

With men mostly absent, women and children dominated a small city called Darmstadt. Then "fire night" came.
Actor John Boles with extras from his latest musical, 'Redheads On Parade', 1935
Arts & Culture

The Rise of Hollywood’s “Extra Girls”

They didn't have to do anything besides stand around and look pretty. At least, that was the myth the studios wanted the public to believe.
Women's fashion catalogue images from the 1930s
Education & Society

The Back-to-School Shopping Tradition in History

As more women went to college, department stores catered to them by setting up pop-up "college shops" every September.
Photograph: Miss Beryl Goode, the well-known golfer, at her wedding to Mr W. J. G. Purnell, July 1913. Source: Getty
Politics & History

When Statutory Rape Laws Led to Forced Marriages

In early 20th-century New York, men accused of "ruining" women under eighteen could avoid prosecution by marrying them.
Photograph: Female fans of Frank Sinatra gaze adoringly at a picture of him in a copy of Modern Screen magazine, c. 1950 Source: Getty
Arts & Culture

How Teenage Girls Invented Fandom

They were mocked for their obsession with movies. But the fan culture they constructed help build Hollywood.
Girl Scouts, 1951
Politics & History

How American Girl Scouts Shocked Mexico in the 1950s

At a retreat center called Our Cabaña, girls from all over the world became Cold War–era diplomats. American scouts had additional ideas.
A Japanese woman cuts up radishes in her kitchen
Politics & History

The Unlikely Role of Kitchens in Occupied Japan

After World War II, "occupationaries" tried to spread American-style domesticity to Japanese women.
Two nuns caring for newborn babies, 1967
Politics & History

Inside a Home for Unwed Mothers

Young, unmarried pregnant women sometimes gave birth in secret at maternity homes. A historian uncovered some of their stories.
Photograph: Women marching c. 1975 Source: Getty
Politics & History

Consciousness-Raising Groups and the Women’s Movement

In the 1970s, one of the most powerful tools of feminism came from speaking out loud the nature of oppression.
An admission card to one of Anne Laura Clarke's lectures
Education

This Forgotten Female Orator Broke Boundaries for Women

At a time when respectable women rarely spoke to the public, Anne Laura Clarke was a star lecturer.
Anna Julia Cooper, 1892
Arts & Culture

Black Women Have Written History for over a Century

Barriers of racism and sexism slowed them down, but academia wasn't their only venue.
Members of the women's police service during World War I.
Politics & History

Was “Khaki Fever” a Moral Panic over Women’s Sexuality?

At the start of World War I, young working-class women swooned for men in uniform, leading middle-class women to form patrols to police public morals.
Actors Robert Stephens (1931 - 1995) as a cook and Mary Peach as waitress Monique during rehearsals for the play 'The Kitchen' by Arnold Wesker at the Royal Court Theatre in London, 27th June 1961.
Arts & Culture

In The Gay Cookbook, Domestic Bliss Was Queer

Chef Lou Rand Hogan whipped up well-seasoned wit and served a gay take on home life during the early-1960s craze for camp.
A woman typing on a typewriter
Politics & History

Ione Quinby, Chicago’s Underappreciated “Girl Reporter”

She started off as a "stunt" journalist and moved into covering stories about women and crime in the Roaring Twenties.
classroom with Two children Doing Arithmetic. The teacher is colored red.
Politics & History

Did Communists Really Infiltrate American Schools?

Fears that teachers were indoctrinating kids were rampant in the 1950s. But the reality was more complicated.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Drunkard%27s_Progress_-_Color.jpg
Education & Society

Tea Parties for Temperance!

Behind the Victorian movement to replace tippling alcohol with a very British ritual.
A sales assistant at the perfume counter of a department store, 1946
Politics & History

The Fight to Integrate Philadelphia’s Department Stores

Black women shopped at department store counters, but they weren't welcome to work where they spent their money.

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