Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900-1945 / Edition 1

by Elizabeth Alice Clement

Overview

The intense urbanization and industrialization of America's largest city from the turn of the twentieth century to World War II was accompanied by profound shifts in sexual morality, sexual practices, and gender roles. Comparing prostitution and courtship with a new working-class practice of heterosexual barter called "treating," Elizabeth Alice Clement examines changes in sexual morality and sexual and economic practices.

Women "treated" when they exchanged sexual favors for dinner and an evening's entertainment or, more tangibly, for stockings, shoes, and other material goods. These "charity girls" created for themselves a moral space between prostitution and courtship that preserved both sexual barter and respectability. Although treating, as a clearly articulated language and identity, began to disappear after the 1920s and 1930s, Clement argues that it still had significant, lasting effects on modern sexual norms. She demonstrates how treating shaped courtship and dating practices, the prevalence and meaning of premarital sex, and America's developing commercial sex industry. Even further, her study illuminates the ways in which sexuality and morality interact and contribute to our understanding of the broader social categories of race, gender, and class.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807856901
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	06/26/2006
Series:	Gender and American Culture
Edition description:	1
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Alice Clement is assistant professor of history at the University of Utah.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

With rich examples relayed through an often sparkling narrative, Clement eloquently and persuasively outlines the process through which the emergence and evolution of 'treating' created a new and more permissive continuum for female heterosexual behavior. She demonstrates how the sexual practices of working-class youth in many ways became the model and set the trajectory for the development of 'modern' American sexual norms and practices. This is a remarkable book.—Leisa D. Meyer, College of William and Mary

Editorial Reviews

Love for Sale would be an excellent addition to an upper-level undergraduate course in the history of sexuality or US women's history.—Journal of the History of Sexuality

From the Publisher