Happy Birthday, Doris Fleischman

In 1923, Fleischman, a PR pioneer, became the first married woman in America be issued a passport under her maiden name.

Happy Birthday Doris Fleischman. I know. You’ve never heard of her. But here’s why you should have. 

Fleischman (pictured above) was born on July 18, 1891, to Harriet and Samuel Fleischman, as the second of four children. She went to Hunter Normal School, then Horace Mann, from which she graduated in 1909, before enrolling at Barnard College that fall. While in college, she won varsity letters in softball, basketball, and tennis. She studied music and thought about staking out a career as a singer.

It was the early twentieth century. Women hadn’t yet been granted the right to vote in America. They were considered subordinate to men in almost every realm of society and life, and yet Fleischman didn’t so much as entertain the idea of not working. 

Fueled by that resolve and her knack for writing, she scored a job at the New York Tribune, writing for the women’s page. Later, she was promoted to assistant Sunday editor and became the first woman to cover a prizefight. Among others, she interviewed former president Theodore Roosevelt, dancer Irene Castle, and activist and social reformer Jane Addams.

In 1919, a little-known publicist Edward L. Bernays, poached Fleischman as a writer and she spent the next six decades working for and with Bernays. In 1922, the pair got married. When the newlyweds registered at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the bride wrote Doris Fleischman—not Bernays—a gesture that made headlines the next day. 

A few years later—in 1923—she applied for a passport to travel to Europe and did so under her maiden name. It was issued as such, making her the first married woman in America to receive a passport with her maiden name. She managed to do this, according to reports, because she wrote to authorities explaining that since “the purpose of a passport is to establish identity, I assume you will not wish me to travel under a false name.”

Fleischman’s legacy should be more widely celebrated and known. She was a pioneering feminist, a working women, and all the while, exhibited a joie de vivre and a fearlessness in the face of setbacks and restrictive social norms.

When Fleischman was fifty-seven, she published an article in the American Mercury entitled “Notes of a Retiring Feminist.” She wrote: “Mrs. stands to the right of me, and Miss stands to the left. Me is a ghost somewhere in this middle.”  In 1955, her memoir, A Wife is Many Women, became a bestseller. Fleischman died of a stroke in 1980. She was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

‘Dramatic’ Girls

Elsewhere this week, another episode in the long and sorry saga of women’s health being neglected and marginalized.

The Guardian on Sunday reported on new research in the U.K. showing that a fifth of young women who have sought help for their mental health say they were told they were being “dramatic.”

According to the survey the paper cited (which was commissioned by the suicide prevention charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (Calm) and conducted by YouGov) 27% of those who had spoken up about a mental health crisis over the past five years were told their issues could be hormonal. A third said that they had been asked if they were “overthinking things” and 20% had been asked if they were on their period. The survey also found that 22% of the women feared being seen as “attention-seeking”.

These latest findings are particularly troubling because of climbing suicide rates among young people in the U.K. One young person now ends their own life every two days, according to recent national statistics.

Citing mental health charities and campaigners, the Guardian reports that this is in part because stereotypes about women mean that when they seek help, their feelings and symptoms are often not seen or are dismissed.

Atomic Women

And finally this week, ahead of the hotly anticipated release of Oppenheimer later this month, I read a great piece in Rolling Stone magazine about the ways in which Christopher Nolan’s movie fails to fully credit the women, some of which were recruited out of high school, who worked on the government’s Manhattan Project that would eventually lead to the development of nuclear weapons.

The piece is written by Denise Kiernan who authored the New York Times bestseller, ‘The Girls of Atomic City’ which tells the story of the central role that women played in the project—which was largely headquartered in Oak Ridge, Tennessee—despite being oblivious to what they were actually doing.

Here’s what Kiernan writes in the Rolling Stone piece:

“Even those close to Oak Ridge’s decision-makers remained in the dark. Celia Klemski worked at the “Castle on the Hill”  —the administrative headquarters of not only Oak Ridge, but the entire Manhattan Project. Celia often took dictation, sometimes encoded, and once from a general who had the entire office buzzing. No one told her his name, and he said to just call him “G. G.” (Celia later learned that man was Manhattan Project head General Leslie R. Groves, played by Matt Damon in Oppenheimer.) In the same building, women pored over newspapers and magazines to flag words forbidden by the U. S. Office of Censorship. Despite her proximity to those who “knew,” Celia had no idea the reason behind this massive undertaking. She didn’t care. She had a brother in Italy and another headed to the Pacific. She told me she wanted to do her part to help bring them home.”

Read the full article here, buy Kiernan’s book here, and watch Oppenheimer in movie theaters from July 21 across the U.S.

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