I just came upon Barbara Cloud – the now retired fashion editor several Pennsylvania newspapers, including the now-defunct Pittsburgh Press and the Post-Gazette. Most women’s pages included a fashion editor. In a magazine profile she said:“Not being schooled in fashion writing,” says Cloud—who would later serve as fashion editor of The Pittsburgh Press for 33 years—“possibly allowed me to open up with more personal observations. That’s what I found interesting. When I want to share a story with readers, I begin to write as if I am writing a letter to a friend and I want them to know what or who I have just seen.” And Cloud has seen…

I am getting ready to present my paper, “Who’s Wearing the Pants? How The New York Times Reported the Changing Dress of Women” at its conference in San Francisco. In it, I examine how the New York Times represented women wearing pants from 1950 through 1975. I found various themes against women wearing pants ranging from political to religious to workplace issues.Some of these articles were in the women’s pages and some were in the hard news sections and editorial sections. Current New York Times columnist Gail Collins wrote of this time: “It was a convoluted expression of the classic view of sexual differences: women did not wear the pants…