Cartoon Woman Reflects Society

1967

My name is June Gale. I am a nurse.

My white hat sits atop my plain brunet hair like a beacon. I work for Dr. Rex Morgan, M.D. I have worked for him since 1948, when he became a comic strip. It is now 1967. I do not know how old I am. But I am the same age I always was.

Rex is 40 and a bachelor, according to the “The World Encyclopedia of Comics.” Here is my description in the same book: “The nurse at his office is June Gale, who is secretly in love with her boss; in return she receives appreciation and respect from Morgan.”

This is my life. I am a nurse in an office. I love a man who does not love me back. He appreciates and respects me. This, frankly, does not seem enough. Sometimes I feel dead inside.

So I propel myself into the future. Visit the comic strips of 1997. Blondie! Still here? She has a catering business now, but her body is as tight as ever. I meet Cathy for the first time. She is a modern woman, but her problems seem familiar. I think Cathy is dead inside, too, but hides it with chaos and obsessions.

I stray off the comic pages into the real paper. I look at the images and the words about women in the 1997 newspaper and it seems that much has changed. In this age, I would not need to marry the doctor. I could be the doctor.

But it seems that much has stayed the same. Women still worry about their weight, their hair, their clothes. They are always trying to better themselves. They still don’t show up on the front page much. Victimhood is big.

We didn’t have the same words for this victimhood in the 1960s. But I know now, looking through the modern newspaper, that I am a depressed, co-dependent woman who loves too much. And I need to join a health club.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Comic strip

MEMO: For information about this and other related stories, see main story under headline: Era of Change