Shifts in Attitude: Before
Joan McCracken: '...you could not kiss...'Anita Fream: '...you want to be a virgin...'Sylvia Clark: 'One was supposed to go from absolute celibacy... to suddenly... blossoming sexuality with one's husband...'Joan McCracken: '...we all wore girdles...'Loretta McLaughlin: '...they would burn in hell fire for eternity...'Richard Hauskenecht: '...mistakes occurred...'Joan McCracken: '...condoms were not acceptable...'Leslie Woodcock-Tentler: '...looking for another answer...'

Anita Fream | video | transcript

Well I think some of the assumptions that I grew up with through the late fifties were that it's good to come from this kind of sheltered environment and that's what you want. You want to be a virgin when you get married -- that a man would want nothing other than a virgin at marriage. And that for a woman to experience her own sexuality at an early age, meaning in her teens, meant she was bad and not the kind of girl that you'd want to run around with if you were another teenager. Certainly not the kind of girl you'd want to admit to be.







After