The Quintessential Flapper, Lois Long was a writer for The New Yorker for over 40 years. Born in CT, but a city girl at heart, Lois ran off to New York right after college where she began to make a name for herself at Vogue and Vanity Fair. Soon after, Lois met Harold Ross who hired her to write for The New Yorker.
Under the nom de plume "Lipstick", Long created the column "When Nights are Bold" where she covered nightlife in New York City. The column was full with wit, sarcasm and satire, and because Long used a pseudonym, she could be a sassy and scandalous as she wanted to be, writing memorable lines like; "Here I go plodding around, in my conscientious, girlish way, to all kinds of places at all hours of the night with escorts only reasonably adept at the art of bar-room fighting, and nothing ever happens to me…" and "If you could make it to the ladies’ room before throwing up,’ she chortled, you were ‘thought to be good at holding your liquor…. It was customary to give two dollars to the cab driver if you threw up in his cab."
"Lois Long's columns were laced with a wicked sort of sexual sense of humor. She openly flouted sexual and social conventions...she was absolutely a wild woman. She would come into the office at four in the morning, usually inebriated, still in an evening dress and she would, having forgotten the key to her cubicle, she would normally prop herself up on a chair and try to, you know, in stocking feet, jump over the cubicle usually in a dress that was too immodest for Harold Ross’ liking. She was in every sense of the word, both in public and private, the embodiment of the 1920s flapper. And her readers really loved her." - Joshua Zeitz
In her own way Lois Long was inspiring woman who captured the minds and hearts of her readers. She was the quintessntial flapper, the original Carrie Bradshaw.
Lois "Lipstick" Long, A City Girl.
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