Marlene Wagman-Geller

As a 1950s housewife, my mother was “a woman who lunched.” The Mrs. So-and Sos-who went by their spouses’ first and last names- were unable to pursue careers. The mindset of the era was a wife who worked meant her husband was a poor provider; a bank- issued paper bearing the words: PAY TO THE ORDER OF were an attack on his masculinity. Moreover, the little lady’s real job was in the PTA, the kitchen, the bedroom. And so she lunched.