The serious Sylvia was agonizing over the execution of the Rosenbergs and McCarthyism; others were delighting to dream over trousseau lingerie at Vanity Fair's showroom.

Perhaps some guest editors would keep Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in their peripheral vision. But Sylvia recognized their execution as the most extreme and gruesome example of McCarthy's red-baiting paranoia.

She was restless. She drove a little too fast, swam a little too far offshore. She hitchhiked. She skied recklessly. While Sylvia's rabid perfectionism was very real, she was far from the good-girl persona she worked so hard to cultivate.

Sylvia possessed a deeply conditioned respect for authority. She wanted desperately to live up to the expectations of a society that viewed her as a bright, charming, enormously talented disciple of bourgeois conformity. On the other hand, she ached to experience life in all its grim and beautiful complexity. The poetic eye was always at work examining the nuance and measuring obscure detail, turning conversation into ultimatum (Steiner)

For the next nine months, Sylvia would report on campus trends, politics, tastes, style. It was an honor, but it was grueling. Sylvia was overworked. She had boyfriend problems. She longed for Europe. She broke her leg in a skiing accident. Her best friend, Marcia Brown, had gotten engaged and moved off campus - other girls were away on their junior year abroad. The whole campus seemed mired in some bleak haze- there were suicide attempts, abortions, disappearances, and hasty marriages. Sylvia coped with shopping binges in downtown Northhampton- sheer blouses, French pumps, red cashmere sweaters, white skirts, and tight black pullovers - clothes more suited to voguish amusements than studying. Everyone wanted to be one of Mademoiselle's guest editors, but Sylvia needed it - some shot of glamour to pull her out of the mud.

Her romances often seemed like dalliances; she enjoyed male company and blossomed in its presence, but she did not appear to care deeply about any of the men [Steiner]