Dot Cochran

Many early comic strips at the turn of the century featured society girls and their adventures. A perfect example of this is “Me and My Boyfriend”, illustrated by Dot Cochran.

Dot was born in 1901. By her twenties, she illustrated her first strip, “Dot and Dodo” for The Toledo Bee (of which her father was an editor). She went on to “Me and My Boyfriend”, which depicted the life of a young flapper named Doris.

At the time, American culture was fascinated by the new generation of young women who wore their hair in bob cuts, smoked, and enjoyed a fun night on the town. As one can imagine, with any youth movement that was new and different, opinions were mixed.

“Roughly the world is divided into those who delight in her, those who fear her and those who try pathetically to take her as a matter of course. Optimists have called her the hope of the new era, pessimists point to her as ultimate evidence of the decadence of the old.”

~Margaret O’Leary, The New York Times, 1922

By 1927 the flapper lifestyle was coming to its end with the Great Depression right around the corner. With it went “Me and My Boyfriend” and Dot packed her bags to move to England with her husband.

Dot Cochran (1901 – Date of Death unknown)