Seems I should remember her.

Francine Gottfried (born 1947) is a clerical worker in New York City's Financial District who acquired sudden brief celebrity when, in the space of two weeks in September 1968, increasing numbers of men began watching her as she walked to work. Newspapers dubbed her "Wall Street's Sweater Girl" as her curvaceous figure seemed to be the sole reason that crowds formed spontaneously around her whenever she appeared in the financial district.

Fame Edit

Gottfried started working at Chemical Bank in the financial district on May 27, 1968. By late August, a small band of girl watchers had noticed her, and that she always followed the same route. They timed her daily arrival and started spreading the word to their colleagues and co-workers. For three weeks, the band of gawkers grew exponentially larger until on September 18 there were 2,000 people waiting for her.

By this point the crowd itself had become the phenomenon drawing the crowd, and the following day, September 19, over 5,000 financial district employees downed tools, left work and poured into the streets at 1:15 pm to watch the 5-foot 3-inch brunette exit the BMT station clad in a tight yellow sweater and miniskirt and walk to her job at the Chemical Bank New York Trust Company's downtown data processing center.[1] Police closed the streets and escorted her through the mob, which damaged three cars as men climbed on their roofs to gain a better view. Stockbrokers and bankers leaned out of windows overlooking Wall Street to watch as trading came to a virtual halt. "Ticker tapes went untended and dignified brokers ran amok," wrote New York magazine.[2] Photographers from all the daily papers and Life,[3] Time, and New York[1] snapped her picture. "A Bust Panics Wall Street As The Tape Reads 43" read a headline in the Daily News.

The following day, Friday, September 20, the corner of Wall and Broad was jammed with 10,000 spectators and press who waited for Gottfried in vain.[4] Her boss had called and asked her to stay home to put a stop to the disturbances. Gottfried, who lived at home with her parents in Williamsburg,[citation needed], was not seeking notoriety and started taking a different route to work.[5] "I think they're all crazy," she was quoted as saying. "What are they doing this for? I'm just an ordinary girl."[6] On October 4, publicists took other busty women to Wall Street as rivals for Gottfried's attention: Mrs. Geri Stotts, an office manager flown in from Burbank, California by a Los Angeles radio station,[7] and Ronnie Bell, a stripper in a New York burlesque house.[8]

After that, the Francine mania on Wall Street quickly subsided.[citation needed]

Responses Edit

Although Gottfried made it clear to interviewers that she was willing to entertain movie and modeling offers, her 15 minutes of fame were soon over and she quickly faded into obscurity. Brief accounts of the crowd-gathering phenomenon she triggered subsequently appeared in a number of sociological and pop historical books, some treating it as a survival of the so-called "bosom mania" of the 1950s.[9] A folk song about her, slyly contrasting the crowd that went to see her with the one welcoming presidential candidate Richard Nixon nearby, was published in Broadside magazine. Artist and prankster Joey Skaggs offered a facetious show of support by hanging a 50-foot black bra opposite the stock exchange. She dined with the Apollo 10 astronauts, and Esquire awarded her a "Dubious Achievement" award, depicting her with other "dubious achievers" on the cover of the January 1970 issue. She was referenced as a cultural icon of the era in Thomas Hauser's novel Finding the Princess.

You need to provide a link. One with pictures would be most appropriate.

Jim

All this wall of text and no pictures? Color me skeptical. You pasted it in your op, in fact:

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[citation needed]

Never heard of her and after a search I’m not too impressed.

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Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
All this wall of text and no pictures? Color me skeptical. You pasted it in your op, in fact:

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[citation needed]

Reminds me of Kim Kasdashian's butt

In the early 1970's when I was 18 I worked one summer at a Dor-O-Matic factory in a Chicago suburb. Whenever one of the office gals came onto the factory floor to deliver a piece of paper or something to the foreman, many of the men would climb up on whatever machine they ran, and start hooting and whistling, etc.

This boss let it go - I suppose because it only lasted a few seconds and didn't impact production.

Meh

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Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
Meh

This man speaks the truth. Not my type, don’t get the hype.

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Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
Not my type, don’t get the hype.

Totally concur, a 43 is simply way too big as is the kardasian caboose. PASS!

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Originally posted by P220 Smudge:

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Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
Meh

This man speaks the truth. Not my type, don’t get the hype.

Agreed, but things were different back then. Nowadays, women parade around with their tits on display. You can get a coffee from a girl in pasties and a thong that barely covers the cookie, with her whole ass on display.
Back then, while she was covered, that was a little risqué. It was definitely not the ordinary. Women were more conservative back then.
Now, I say this as if I was alive then. I wasn’t, but I have listened to a lot of older people talk about things exactly like this. I am a little bit of a history buff, but when it comes to fashion, I’m quite a history buff.

Fair enough, Beancooker. I think a lot of what’s throwing me off is the hair. That’s far more... “I don’t even know how to describe” compared to anything I’ve grown up with.

I’m not berating her appearance! I’m just saying that while I can appreciate that she’s a pretty lady, the style just isn’t for me.

Just for the record, here is the wiki page link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francine_Gottfried

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Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
Fair enough, Beancooker. I think a lot of what’s throwing me off is the hair. That’s far more... “I don’t even know how to describe” compared to anything I’ve grown up with.

I’m not berating her appearance! I’m just saying that while I can appreciate that she’s a pretty lady, the style just isn’t for me.

You’re a few years younger than I am, but in the late 80s and early 90s, girls teased their bangs into what we described as “the tumbleweed”. If anyone had tried to light up a cig in the ladies bathroom at school, it would have blown the building off it’s foundation. Cans and cans of aqua net were sprayed on like nothing ever seen before.

Just google “ 80s hair bangs aqua net” and you’ll see what I mean. While her hairstyle isn’t in style now, at least it had some style.

Just for research purposes...

Francine was 5'3" and 43" around the bust.
Dolly Parton 5'0" and 41" around the bust.

Interesting story and says more about the idiot men in New York than anything else...

I was going to google this and post a picture... thank goodness someone else did... I'm not impressed.

The guy in the tan London fog trench coat has his hands in his pants pockets as well as the mug in the sport coat. Horn dawgs all!

As mentioned, attitudes and mores change over time. I don’t know enough history to know exactly when the fad started, but at some point during that era (some) women decided for reasons of their own to start displaying the size and shape of their breasts as clearly as possible without actually uncovering them. Tight, form-fitting sweaters became a preferred method, and that led to the term “sweater girl.” It was common and evidently slightly risqué, but did not violate any nudity laws.
I recall that during one morale tour in WWII a well-known female entertainer said to a large group of soldiers (paraphrasing), “I don’t know why you guys are so fascinated with sweater girls. Take away their sweaters, and what have you got?”—to wild hoots of approval.

And the women who wore sweaters for that purpose probably never told a man, “Hey: my eyes are up here!” I also suspect that the practice led to greater recognition of and fascination with women’s breasts, and the larger and more prominent the better.

The modern demonstration of a similar body display (IMO, of course) is the popularity of skintight yoga pants: It’s pretty clear that not all the women who wear them do so because of their comfort and convenience. It is, of course, not only clothing fashions that change. At one time the thought of one of today’s taut, fit and thin women would have been a total turn-off for most men.

Women have always done this, look at the old paintings with the woman’s boobs spilling out the top of their bodices.

I guess the guy’s version would be giant cod pieces.

People have always been sexed up freaks wanting to look at naughty bits.