V. I. Warshawski: Hard-Boiled Superwoman?

In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the hard-boiled female detective joined the crowded field of crime fighters. Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone debuted in 1977 with Edwin of the Iron Shoes, and then 1982 saw the birth of two of the most famous (early-ish) hard-boiled women—Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone in “A” is for Alibi and Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski in Indemnity Only.

Perhaps not completely coincidentally, in the late 1970s and early 1980s a TV perfume advertisement was tremendously popular, at least by measure of how ubiquitous it was. Featuring a catchy jingle and memorable—if now-cringey— lyrics, the various iterations of the Enjoli ad appeared to seep through the consciousness of so many women.

I, for one, remember how, as an impressionable young girl, I could—and still can—recite the ad, word for word. And I’m not alone! When I share the (albeit blurry) ad with my detective fiction classes, female students in particular report back that their mothers recall how they were sold this bill of goods for what young women could aspire to.

Here is the 1978 and 1979 version of the ad:

It becomes an interesting sociological experiment to have today’s students examine these ads. For a targeted practice in analyzing ads, I sometimes ask my students how the earlier version compares to the one from 1982 below.

Note, for instance, the addition of a male voice who says, “Tonight I’ll cook for the kids”? My, how times have changed from 1978 to 1982! As Virginia Slims ads (also of the 70s and 80s) used to proclaim about women who could now exercise the freedom and the means to purchase their tobacco products, “You’ve come a long way, baby!”*

So, you may be asking how these decades-old ads are figuring into a post about mysteries. But maybe you are not too familiar with V. I. Warshawski then?

I teach both Grafton and Paretsky in my detective fiction classes, and the similarities between the two are worth noting. Wise-cracking, independent, strong, determined, perhaps even “hard-boiled”? You got it.

But differences between Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone and Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski are even more fascinating to students who get the whole “hard-boiled” genre. While early Grafton novels have Kinsey chomping on olive-pimento cheese, berating herself for her lack of “class” and fashion sense, and having literally no one to spend Christmas with, Paretsky’s V. I. is a veritable Renaissance woman. Baseball AND opera. Breaking and entering AND Bruno Magli red high heels. Mixing it up with mafia bosses AND whipping up fine cuisine for romantic partners.

Wait a second. Does that make V. I. Warshawski the 24-hour woman super detective?

Hmmm. Perhaps there will be a Part 2 to this post at some point in the future after I explore some other topics…

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* For a closer look at the ways the advertising industry co-opted the language of women’s liberation, it’s enlightening to watch Jean Kilbourne’s documentary film series starting with Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women. Again not coincidentally, the first of these appeared in 1979.