Gibson Girl
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The Gibson Girl was the archetypal personification of the feminine ideal of physical attractiveness as portrayed by the pen-and-ink illustrations of artist Charles Dana Gibson during a 20-year period
An iconic Gibson Girl portrait by Charles Dana Gibson, circa 1891
"The Crush" (1901)
New Woman
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The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century and had a profound influence well into the 20th century. In 1894, writer Sarah Grand used the term "new woman" in an influentia
Gibson Girl
…spanned the late Gilded Age and Progressive Era in the United States, from around the 1890s to the 1920s. The character came to embody the concept of the New Woman and became iconic in the early 20th century. The Gibson Girl character was created by Charles Dana Gibson in the 1890s for advertisements. During this…
Frances Benjamin Johnston's Self-Portrait (as "New Woman"), 1896
Their First Quarrel (1914), an illustration by Charles Dana Gibson. The Gibson Girl was a glamorous version of the New Woman, shown here. In the image, she keeps her back turned to her suitor as they both pretend to read.
Geologist Florence Bascom was typical of the New Woman. She was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University (1893) and, in 1894, the first woman elected to the Geological Society of America.
Political postcard, depicting the New Woman on her modern safety bicycle championing equal voting for men and women