Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: Ouida Baggett Regan and the Portrayal of Successful Women

Ouida Baggett Regan (1927-2017) was a female entrepreneur, developer, and active citizen of Pensacola, FL. But how did Ms. Regan, described by one male contemporary as the “petite blonde with gray-green eyes,” navigate gender norms of the mid-twentieth century? Through her business, the Baggett Construction Company, Regan built thousands of homes in Pensacola’s suburbs along with what would be the tallest building in the Florida panhandle for decades. She became a self-made millionaire, all of which challenged the cult of domesticity of the time. Traditionally, during the 1950s, a middle-class, white woman’s place was in the home—not building it. She resisted traditional historical conditions by developing throughout Florida and Puerto Rico and chairing the National Home Builder’s Association and Florida’s Council on Economic Development. Her attachment to femininity fuels this agency as she did not lose sight of what made her a woman. She attended debutante balls, hosted lavish parties, and wore extravagant apparel—all of which were regular highlights in the papers. This poster draws on newspapers and magazines to visually aid how the media portrayed Regan, through primary-source photographs, and headlines. Intellectually, this poster argues that women could break free from the domesticity stereotype of the 1950s and 60s, to be successful career-wise, while still holding onto their femininity—that the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Measuring Regan’s success is challenging because today, there is no local memory of Regan’s effect on Pensacola nor the developing industry. By exploring Regan’s ability to strategically use ‘traditional’ female stereotypes to break the standard of the stay-at-home, married middle-class ideal, historians can learn that agency and tradition were considerably achievable even in the 1950s deep south. Newspapers portrayed Regan as the single mom with a “honey-soft voice” and who ‘wears good clothes well;” however, she built a lucrative empire that transcended gender and appearance.