Back to the "fallen woman" thing for a moment: I explained this to Greg in a PM but I think I should post it here, too, for our non-American friends who might not have understood my quip, "Help! I'm 'fallen' and I can't get up!" It was meant as a joke (the origins of which I'll explain below) and was not an indication that I thought "fallen woman" had anything to do with "people needing a bit of a hand-up from a friend because they've got a bit low", as Greg puts it.

It's actually a bit of a pun on the phrase "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up" which has been a running joke in the US for several years now. It stems from a poorly-acted TV advertisement for a product that didn't work: a button that one was supposed to wear on one's person. When the button was pushed, the wearer was to speak aloud, and supposedly the message would be heard by an operator who would alert medical personnel to come to the person's rescue. The elderly actress in the commercial, who spoke that line, overplayed her predicament so thoroughly – and the device was so obviously phony – that the commercial was parodied over and over, ad nauseum. Nowadays, "I've fallen and I can't get up" has become a part of our popular culture. So I attempted to make a poor joke by making a pun out of a poor joke. Shameful, I know, but there it is. Usually I'm better-behaved than that!

But I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the origins of the phrase "fallen woman" did indeed have to do with Adam's (and Eve's) Fall. I'll have to check that out! Again, in my original use of the phrase on 23-Apr-02, 12:13 PM, I was referring to Lovelace's days as a prostitute as well as to the wider definition of "scarlet" that Fionn mentions. And again, I recognize and salute the fact that she got out of the prostitution-and-porn business, got out of the abusive relationship she had been in, changed her behavior and worked to help keep other young women from being forced into the sort of life she'd once lived.

Rest in peace, Linda Boreman.