Jazz

Come on, hon, we're gonna paint the town -- and all that jazz.
I'm gonna rouge my knees and roll my stockings down -- and all that jazz.
Come on, babe, I know a whoopee spot where the gin is cold and the piana's hot.
It's just a noisy hall where there's a nightly brawl, and all that jazz.

That’s from the musical  Chicago, a song sung in the show by women emerging from their cocoons.  Wow.  Was that innocence!  They thought they were so “out there” and over the top; and for that period in history, they were.  America had just begun to peek out from the layers of Victorianism and when the hems came up and the morals came down, there was excitement in the air.  An excitement over all the things that could be done, that could be experienced that had never before appeared on the radar screen of the people — of the women -- of this young country.

And did they experience!  Night clubs and booze and drugs and gangsters — the whole nine yards.  What a glorious feeling it must have been to be able to say “I don’t have to follow your crummy rules any longer.  I can step out and strut my stuff and you can’t do anything about it!”  For women, this was groundbreaking.  Forget the hiding of wicked limbs under floor length, heavy dark skirts.  Get rid of the long hair that was so hot and in their way as they scrubbed their floors and cared for their many children and cooked the interminable breakfasts, lunches and dinners for the husbands who would come home to flop down and watch the work, not lifting a finger to help.  Forget the prison of marriage that kept women in, while the men stepped out and had fun.

It all changed.  And it was good.  We needed to break out.  We needed to be able to explore this life, somewhat like a baby crawling around on the floor, grabbing at colorful objects without an eye to what might be harmful, or not.  So women collectively thumbed their noses at the rules that had been created for them by the men.  Women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had laid the ground work for them; the women who had the courage to stand their ground and say “This just isn’t working.”  These are the ones who fought for the rights of women to rouge their knees and dance to jazz and drink their first drinks — if that’s what they wanted to do.  The Stantons and the Anthonys fought for the right to break out of that bubble of isolation that had held women captive for so many centuries.  Hurrah!  

I often think of what it would be like to have lived before the time when women began to move out, began to experience their first tastes of freedom.  Would I have done all those things that had been expected of women before the beginning of liberation?    I know I would have hated it.  And I most likely would have ended up joining with the likes of Stanton and Anthony. Hell, when I lived in New York in the late 60’s, I became a card carrying member of NOW.  I knew how I was being treated at work, and it wasn’t with the same opportunities that were being given to the men.  I like to think I would have been one hell of a rebel.  With a great, big cause.

I’m in the process of planning a musical theatre concert, and All that jazz is on the program.  When I see it being rehearsed and then performed, I’m gonna think of where we’ve come from and what it’s taken to get us where we are, and I’m gonna give those women who laid the groundwork for us a great, enormous roar of thanks!