The Subway Girls

The Subway Girls by Susie Orman Schnall
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was a tempidly interesting book about The Subway Girls, an advertising ploy that was like a mini pageant each month for girls in New York to sell advertising space on the subway in the 1950s. It also follows a professional woman working in advertising today. The point of the book is to show that although some opportunities have opened for women, there are still life choices women have to make concerning work and family. And though women are more often in jobs they weren’t 50 years ago, there is still plenty of biases and prejudices (as well as behaviors) that women still have to fight. It made an interesting jumping off point for book club, but it had immature writing with bad dialogue, questionable motivations, and forgettable plot line.

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What’s interesting to me,” Olivia said, “is that people today talk incessantly about work-life balance and making choices and sacrifices and blah, blah, blah, as if it’s something new that women have to deal with. But listening to all of you, I realize that’s just about being a woman. The times may have changed, but the identity crises we all go through don’t. The societal structures may have a new coat of paint, but they’re still the same impenetrable walls and ceilings underneath that modern gloss. And we’re still expected to do much more than any of us is capable of doing.”