You Shouldn't Have Worn That

Smith College freshman Sylvia Plath and her best friend Marcia Brown co-wrote a satirical article about dating, published in a special section of the Princeton Tiger (May 5, 1951, pp.13-15), Princeton’s college-humor magazine. The co-written article, “In Retrospect: A Plea for Moderation” is a taxonomy of college males who in the authors’ opinion are disappointing blind dates. There’s the “Super-Egoed Rah-Rah,” the “Cousins, Brothers, and Cast-Off Suitors,” “The Athlete,” “The Responsible,” and the “Mother’s Boy.” All non-starters. Yet the co-authors conclude they “hopefully but cynically look forward to the next weekend.” 

 

The special section’s contributors are all women from women’s colleges. Jani Kettering of Bennett College (Millbrook, NY) drew for Plath and Brown’s article comical illustrations of the “Rah-Rah,” “The Athlete” and “Mother’s Boy.”  On page 23 of that issue, sharing a page with two seriocomic poems (a doggerel about dating, signed “Smith,” and a poem mocking strapless dresses) is Kettering’s cartoon, captioned “Bob and Ceil Chapman didn’t get along so well tonight.” It recalled for me the moment in The Bell Jar when Esther Greenwood must hold her dress together after a blind date rips it during a sexual assault.

 

“Ceil Chapman” (1912-1979) was in the 1950s a very popular designer of strapless and off-the-shoulder cocktail and evening gowns; she was Marilyn Monroe’s favorite designer.

Sylvia wrote Aurelia on March 19 that Marcia typed their article while Sylvia cleaned her dorm room, and wrote on May 14 that their article had been published.