It will give you a whole new perspective on just how free you are today. I highly recommend this book for all women, whether college educated already or planning on heading to college. While the book has less of the now that was promised, it is still an amazing look into the struggle women went through to be able to get an education and to them be able to use it. In addition, the author shows just why the arguments used to try to keep women from getting educated were ludicrous. The list continues on and on and shows that women had to fight every inch of the way for the freedom to obtain an education and to be treated with the same respect and freedom as their male counterparts. Peril combines women's history and popular culture-peppered with delightful examples of 'femoribilia' from the turn of the 20th century through the 1970s-in an intelligent and witty study of the college girl, the first woman to take that socially controversial step toward educational equity. Why women shouldn't be involved in sports as it wasn't healthy for them. Why women's only colleges were started and what sort of problems they encountered. What women would initially be allowed to study and why they would ever need it. The author examines women's college education from about every aspect possible.

Women have come a very long way from when the first crossed the threshold of an institution of higher learning to where they are today. While I am not pushing their product, the slogan fits this book quite well. For those of you under 50 who might read this review, the opening title was taken from an advertising slogan that ran on television in the 1960s and showed how far women had come because they now had a cigarette designed especially for them.

College Girls by Lynn Peril