orichalcum

So, one of the stories I'm mentioning in my job talk on Roman representations of female desire is that of Ummidia Quadratilla. The (conservative male) author Pliny praises his elderly widow friend Ummidia because she shields her young grandson from the performances of her private mime troupe. To clarify things, we're not talking "I'm in a box" mimes here, but rather what were almost certainly extremely lewd and mostly nude farcical takes on ancient myths.

Anyways, I was trying to think of a modern comparison in order to demonstrate the difference between Roman female sexual mores and modern American ones - that while Pliny is slightly disapproving, he thinks Ummidia is a totally decent person despite her penchant for mimes. I'm trying to come up with a well-known older, preferably unmarried American woman who one could imagine being shocked by if a newspaper ran a story about how she frequently hired male strippers or snuck into X-rated movies. At first I thought of Nancy Pelosi, but there is the added political aspect there, plus she's married.

So that's the challenge for you - name an instantly recognizable older (preferably over 60) unmarried American woman for my hypothetical comparison scenario. Imagine her having her own private troupe of male strippers.

Question 2: One of the other topics I'm thinking about, drawn from Rebecca Langlands' book on Roman sexual morality, is the idea that _pudicitia_, a word meaning something between chastity and modesty, was a virtue which required public display. Women supposedly had competitions to see who had the most _pudicitia_; one source even claims that some women got to wear wreaths of _pudicitia._ In one famous case, a patrician woman who had married a plebeian man was forbidden to sacrifice at the temple of Patrician Pudicitia. So she left and founded her own temple of Plebeian Pudicitia in irritation and challenged other plebeian women to have even more pudicitia than the patrician women did.

So here I'm trying to think of an American social or religious group which mandates prominent public display of a virtue, in a competitive way. Langlands insightfully suggests Purity Balls and the whole silver ring/key thing, but you don't hear about prizes being given to the girl who lasts the longest or splinter groups for Latina or Asian-American Purity Balls or whatever. Any suggestions? I thought of Girl Scouts but I don't know if there are any moral virtue badges?