It’s difficult to imagine a group of Gilded Age women reading a magazine, or listening to music on a phonograph, while reclining on a rug. Their foundation garments wouldn’t have permitted it. The wool wouldn’t have been comfortable to laze on, even if it had been acceptably ladylike to do so. But this is exactly the posture in which we find women in the 1950s, at least in innumerable editorials and print ads. They lie sideways, wearing pants or leotards, doing their thing, almost as though there were a new, secret room in the house hovering just below the horizon line of the coffee table.

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