The New Woman: Mandy Rice-Davies

Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler 

One of the Phantom's fondest memories of the two months he spent in London his fourth year in medical school was reading the obituaries in the London Times, which he read in the Royal Brompton Hospital cafeteria every morning, to start each day on the right note. In those days, the cafeteria tables were covered with pink table cloths, and a lady came up to pour your tea for you and to bring you biscuits. It was a most civilized way to begin the day.

The Times' obits were wonderfully opinionated and dwelt as much on the controversies in the lives they were describing as on the triumphs. By contrast, those of the New York Times , are dull affairs, but today's piece on Mandy Rice-Davies is a happy exception. 

Ms. Rice-Davies came to public attention in 1963, because she was having an affair with an aristocrat, Lord Astor, which he denied and when asked why she should be believed when Lord Astor denied it, she simply said, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?"

Years later, she explained her willingness to go on public record over the years by simply saying she did not want to be remembered as a prostitute, for the sake of her family.  In those days, she explained, "Good girls didn't have any sex at all and bad girls had a bit." 

Which brought back that time to the Phantom in stark relief--it was actually true then: In the 60's women were expected to be virgins at marriage. Their first sexual experience was supposed to be their wedding night. Can you imagine? Fortunately, today's adolescents can likely not imagine what that was like. For most American women born after 1963, with the exception of some Catholics, this notion of there being virtue in a lack of sexual experience has been discredited. A friend and colleague of mine, who was born in 1945, once remarked at a dinner party she had only ever had sex with one man, her husband. Now, her husband was a very good looking and glossy guy, a television personality, a former Navy flyer, an all around heart throb, but my wife, once we were alone in the car together, could hardly contain her contempt: "Can you imagine being proud of that? Good Lord, that's like being happy you had only had sex once for each child! Let us never have dinner with them again." 

Even then, the Phantom thought that good girl thing a very morbid idea, but proper people were scandalized and turn red whenever he voiced that opinion in polite company.

As Ms. Rice-Davies aged, she became a successful business woman and her third marriage was decades long.  "My life," she said, "has been one long descent into respectability."

Noah Cross makes something of the same point, in "Chinatown," when he says, "Politicians, old buildings and whores all get respectable, if they last long enough."

Ms. Rice-Davies, of course, was no whore. She simply enjoyed the benefits of a sexual relationship with a wealthy older man, just as that man's wife did, but without the official blessing of church and state.

It is a great blessing that attitudes toward what women should be have changed dramatically since those dark days in the 1960's.  The double standard has finally disappeared from the thinking of today's youth. If boys can enjoy sex, so can girls. Hallelujah!  Claire Underwood, in "House of Cards" explains her attitude when she describes how Francis proposed to her:

"He said, 'Claire, if all you want is happines, say no. I'm not going to give you a couple of kids and count the days until retirement. I promise you freedom from that. I promise you'll never be bored'...He was the only one who understood me."

When his own sons were growing up and the Phantom expressed such sentiments, he was told, "Oh, just wait until your boys are old enough to notice girls: You won't be so liberal then." And the Phantom responded, "I hope they start having sex as early as possible." Fortunately, the Phantom's wife, who worked at Planned Parenthood, was with him on all this and handed her sons condoms as soon as she became aware of girlfriends entering the picture--and this was to their sons'  great embarrassment, initially, but they did not turn them down. Mother simply waved off the protests, with a dismissive: "It's either has happened or will  happen. Don't be caught unprepared."  Something about her frank approach simply dissolved all the drama and likely reduced some of the drive toward sex. They both seemed to make the transition from pre sexual lives to sexual lives with a minimum of distress, although, not without zero distress. 

Their experience  had to be better than what preceded them in their parents' generation.

For the Phantom, there has been the problem of fearing that all his best sins are behind him, but he is grateful things have moved in a direction of freedom and honesty, and people like Many Rice-Davies, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Maud Gonne, Simone DeBouvier, Erica Jong, Mary Gordon and May West all contributed to that movement.

Along with the progress in racial relations, the progress, at least in the Western world, toward regarding  women as full human beings, with equal  rights and protections, has been one of the great achievements of American and European civilization over the past 50 years. 

This has benefited men every bit as much as it has benefited women.