Prohibition Era

Linda Hall

YOU’D need to be well advanced in years to remember the ‘You’ve come a long way, baby’ advertisements.

They appeared in American magazines which, when I first lived here, were a welcome change from Woman and Woman’s Own and light years away from Teresa ­ published by the Movimiento, the only permitted political movement at that time ­ or pious Telva. The US adverts featured Virginia Slims, marketed exclusively for women, although in Spain women hadn’t even begun, let alone come a long way.

Females, ‘nice’ females, didn’t smoke although I did. They most certainly did not smoke in the street which, again, I did, although decades later I look askance at women smoking in the street. To be fair I also look askance at men who smoke in the street too, as no ­ one is more intolerant than somebody who has kicked a 60­a­day Ducados habit.

In the late 60s there were so many things that a young woman didn’t do.