Famous Quotes | With the present wage conditions...

With the present wage conditions there are thousands of young women who are living in a state of semi-starvation and they are always surrounded by the most terrible temptation. Oh, I know that some of [the] greatest reformers insist that a girl’s virtue is not affected by under-nourishment, disease and nervous collapse; but if these well housed, well fed, well dressed people were put in a dirty, ugly room, if their clothes did not protect them from the cold, if their stomachs were never filled, would not even the staunchest lose some of her self-respect when looking forward to an old age? It is only a matter of wonder to me that so many girls keep clean and decent through it all. - Cora Anderson
Attribution: Cora Anderson, U.S. male impersonator. As quoted in Gay American History, part 3, by Jonathan Katz (1976). Said in 1914; for the previous thirteen years, Anderson had successfully impersonated a man, permitting her to earn a better living than she could as a woman.

Categories: Male Impersonator, Poverty And The Poor, Prostitution And Prostitutes, Sexual Harassment

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