The concept of the “Modern Woman” was a 1920s invention that many Western men had a difficult time wrapping their collective heads around; with this confusion in mind, Italian novelist and lexicographer Alfredo Panzini (1863 – 1939) attempted to spell it all out for the editors of Vanity Fair in this short article.


“She will be a stenographer, a school teacher, a movie actress. But She will not cook for you. She will not do your washing. She will not knit her own stockings.”


Read a 1951 profile of a future First Lady: the young Nancy Reagan.




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Read The Post-War Change in Women <br>(Vanity Fair, 1921) for Free

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