Author Note

Dear Readers,

I've always felt that reading history was more rewarding when you knew what kind of food the people involved in the great events ate, and whether they had comfortable shoes. If you can put human faces (and feet) on historical figures, they seem less like actors walking through a prescripted pageant. It's easier to appreciate that these folks had no idea how the story was going to work out.

So when I wrote WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED, besides interviewing the movers and shakers of women's history in America over the last 50 years, I talked to a lot of average women as well --- about how their lives, their clothes, their housework, their dating rituals and their career expectations had evolved since 1960. There were lots of surprises, down to the number of little girls who had their Barbies going all the way with Ken. Ken has been way more of a stud than I ever imagined.

It's always knocked me out to think that I lived through a change in the way the world regards women that had been waiting to happen for thousands of years. But now, I'm reminded of it in new ways. On the way to work this morning, I crossed my legs in the subway and suddenly thought: pants - we got pants! And whenever I pull laundry out of the drier I remember the 80-year-old woman in Cincinnati who told me that no matter how hard she tried, when she was a young housewife she could never manage to get a shirt ironed in less than 12 minutes.

I'll save the shoe discussion for another day.

Gail Collins