The Damned and the Beautiful by Paula S. Fass

Speaking to 1,500 students at Wellesley College in 1921, Mrs. Petting parties grew so popular they became targets of societal safeguardians who believed the make-out mania was tearing apart the social fabric. Over the next few years the ritual spread. 'That, they tell me, is the name applied in Baltimore to the haunters of cosy corners and 'twosing' in general.' 'Did you ever hear of 'petting parties'?' the reporter asked. One of the earliest mentions of the scandalous soirees was a Washington Times story from New Year's Eve 1915. Petting parties, Fass explains, 'allowed young people to experiment in a self-limiting way by creating peer regulation that both encouraged experimentation and created clear limits.' They were not orgies and they were not promiscuous - one set of partners only.' In that sense they had imposed limitations created by the group presence. These parties always stopped before intercourse.

'But certainly there were parties where young people did quite a lot of erotic exploration - kissing and fondling.

Fass, professor emerita of history at the University of California, Berkeley and author of The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s. 'Petting parties varied quite a lot,' says Paula S. To others, the out-in-the-open hug-and-kissfests were blinking neon signposts on the Road to Perdition. To some social observers, petting parties of the 1920s were a natural, post-First World War outgrowth of a repressed society. Two flapper women - with their dates - sit on a bed in Chicago, circa 1928.

The Damned and the Beautiful by Paula S. Fass