WASHINGTON

Back in the early ’60s, Holly was the woman we wanted to be. The slender and stylish New York beauty was supported by men, yet she seemed free.

Now, back in the early ’60s on TV, Betty is the woman we don’t want to be. The slender and stylish New York beauty is supported by men, and she seems trapped.

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” was cool because of its modern glamour, ushering in a sexy future. “Mad Men” is cool because of its retro glamour, recalling a sexy past.

Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly, a call girl with a crazy streak, got money from strange men at boîtes for “trips to the powder room.” January Jones’s Betty Draper, a housewife with a crazy streak, cheated on her husband, when she was pregnant, with a strange man at a boîte.

The tightly wound Betty is a gilded bird in a cage; she needs to belong to someone, this season to a new, older husband, an adviser to Governor Rockefeller.

The wild-child Holly is terrified someone will put her in a cage — in the Truman Capote novella, she won’t even walk past the Central Park Zoo — and she doesn’t want to belong to anyone. (She also doesn’t want anything to belong to her; that’s why she dumps her cat in a garbage can at the end. In the tacked-on happy ending of the movie, she finds the cat; in the book, which has no leading man to tell her she’s already in a cage of her own making, she doesn’t.)

The alcohol-swigging Betty never calls her blue periods “the mean reds,” as the alcohol-swigging Holly did, but the women have their vertiginous moods in common: luminescent looks overlaying dark psyches.

In Georgetown, in the window of a vintage store called Annie Creamcheese, there’s an iconic poster of Audrey Hepburn as Holly, sleek with cigarette holder, long black Givenchy dress and pearls. Right around the corner, in the window of Banana Republic, there’s a huge picture of Jon Hamm, looking sleek with Don Draper’s mysterious, matinee-idol smolder.

Even though many of us grew up not realizing it, Holly’s a hooker. And in the new season of AMC’s “Mad Men,” which started last Sunday, Don hires a hooker and wants to be slapped.

Set in the same era, the two Manhattan fantasies are dashing escapes from the prim, airless Eisenhower era. Both feature magnetic characters, smoke rings and, in Capote’s phrase, “martini laughter.”

Their gorgeous visual style cloaks strangled emotions, and both narratives brim with louche trysts, sexual liberation, bohemian flashes, suppressed demons and reinvented lives.

In “Mad Men,” the single Richard Whitman from Pennsylvania coal country morphs into the married Don Draper after an accident in the Korean War. In “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” the married Lulamae Barnes morphs into the single Holly Golightly to get out of the backwater Tulip, Tex.

“In New York you can become anything,” Sam Wasson, who wrote the new book “Fifth Avenue, 5 a.m.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the Dawn of the Modern Woman,” told Vanity Fair.

Wasson asserts that Holly was the precursor of Carrie and the “Sex and the City” singletons (not to mention TV trailblazers Mary Tyler Moore and Ally McBeal.) Truman Capote had wanted Marilyn Monroe for the role of the teenage hillbilly turned chic prostitute, and it would have been fun to see that version, too.

But when the producers chose the less exhausting Audrey, her real-life good-girl persona helped mask the raciness of her character.

In the 1960 movie of John O’Hara’s “Butterfield 8,” Elizabeth Taylor’s call girl had to die in a car crash for her sins, just as 20 years earlier, Vivien Leigh, playing a ballerina-turned-prostitute in “Waterloo Bridge,” had to be punished for her wicked ways when she killed herself on the bridge.

It would be many years before audiences would embrace overt hookers as heroines: Jamie Lee Curtis in “Trading Places” in 1983, Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman” in 1990 and Kim Basinger in “L.A. Confidential” in 1997.

Married to the oppressive Mel Ferrer and with a new baby boy, Hepburn’s princess-swan image bled into Holly, making her seem less like a member of the oldest profession and more like a modern, fun-loving single girl.

“In ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s,’ all of a sudden — because it was Audrey who was doing it — living alone, going out, looking fabulous and getting a little drunk didn’t look so bad anymore,” Wasson writes. “Being single actually seemed shame-free. It seemed fun.” So, as a haute hooker, Audrey Hepburn was a fairy godmother, not only to feminism but to the prevailing ethos that style and cool trump all.

By now, plenty of traditional media companies have hopped on the social media bandwagon, pumping out news updates on Facebook and Twitter.

But do those companies have the time and resources to work yet another Web outlet into their daily routine?

Mark Coatney certainly hopes so. Mr. Coatney, a 43-year-old journalist, is the latest hire at Tumblr, a fast-growing blogging service based in New York that says it has 6.6 million users.

Until last month, Mr. Coatney was a senior editor at Newsweek, where as a side project he headed up the magazine’s social efforts on Twitter and Facebook. Last year he decided to add Tumblr to his repertoire.

“I saw it as an opportunity to talk to our audience in a new way,” he said. On Twitter, he said, “the main feedback comes mostly from retweeting,” or retransmitting an interesting message. On Tumblr, “the tone is a lot more conversational.”

Mr. Coatney quickly cultivated a following on Tumblr for his thought-provoking, quick-witted posts. Often they included commentary that was funny and bordering on acerbic — something he was able to get away with largely because “no one at Newsweek really knew what I was doing,” he said.

The credibility he established among Tumblr users, and the fact that Newsweek was one of the first big publishers to sign on, cemented Tumblr’s decision to hire him, company executives said.

Over the last few months, other media outlets have caught wind of Tumblr, which is free to use. The newest recruits include The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, BlackBook Media Corporation, National Public Radio, The Paris Review, The Huffington Post, Life magazine and The New York Times.

But many of those outlets have done little more than set up a placeholder page. In his new job as a “media evangelist,” Mr. Coatney’s role, and in some ways his challenge, is to help them figure out what to do next.

Mr. Coatney describes Tumblr as “a space in between Twitter and Facebook.” The site allows users to upload images, videos, audio clips and quotes to their pages, in addition to bursts of text.

As on Twitter, users can follow other users, whose posts appear in a chronological stream on a central home page known as the dashboard. Users can indicate that they like an item by clicking on a red heart next to it or “reblogging” it.

One of the big differences between Tumblr and Twitter is that Tumblr does not display how many followers a user has, said David Karp, Tumblr’s 24-year-old founder and chief executive.

“Who is following you isn’t that important,” he said. “It’s not about getting to the 10,000-follower count. It’s less about broadcasting to an audience and more about communicating with a community.”

Moreover, he said, the site was designed with creative expression in mind.

“People are creating identities and personalities that Facebook and Twitter are not designed to allow you to do,” he said.

Since Tumblr is currying favor among a young crowd, it could prove valuable for traditional companies and media outlets that are trying to build a relationship with that audience. And those companies are no doubt aiming to win points by being early adopters of a site that is on the rise.

Tumblr is still dwarfed by Facebook and Twitter, which each have hundreds of millions of users and can be significant sources of traffic for online publishers.

Mr. Coatney estimated that posting links and notes to the Newsweek Twitter feed and Facebook page sent roughly 200,000 to 300,000 readers to Newsweek’s Web site each day. By comparison, Tumblr sent closer to 1,000.

But Tumblr is growing quickly. It says it is adding 25,000 new accounts daily, and each month it serves up 1.5 billion page views.

Items posted on Tumblr can also ripple out to far-flung corners of the Web.

When The New Yorker posted the Escher-inspired oil-spill-themed cover for its July 5 issue on its Tumblr page, it drew many links from other sites.

Alexa Cassanos, director of public relations for The New Yorker, which began using the service in late May, said the cover resonated in unlikely places, like the news aggregator Reddit.

Ms. Cassanos said Tumblr afforded The New Yorker an opportunity to showcase some material that might otherwise get lost online.

“We can highlight graphic content like photo essays or slide shows to an audience that may not read the magazine,” she said. “You just couldn’t do that, visually, on Twitter or Facebook.”

Unlike Twitter, where it is not uncommon for publishers to simply set up accounts that automatically publish links to their articles and blog posts, Tumblr requires publishers to add more commentary and interaction if they want to win favor with its community.

Mr. Coatney acknowledged that this might not be an easy sell, particularly when the payoff was not immediately obvious.

“It’s a huge leap of faith for many of them,” he said. “Monetizing that relationship is still a difficult hurdle because you may not be getting new readers at that particular moment, even if you are engaging with them.”

For publishers, services like Tumblr reflect a broader shift in their relationship with their audience, said James E. Katz, a professor of communications at Rutgers University.

“Going back 20 years, publications like Rolling Stone didn’t interact with readers except for letters to the editor,” Mr. Katz said. “One of the realizations that cultural leaders and publishers have had is that there is a lot of expertise, wisdom and ideas in their readership.”

The ability to respond online turns readers into co-creators, he said, which can give them a sense of ownership.

“That is an extremely valuable commodity for publishers these days, even if it does not yet translate to revenue,” Mr. Katz said.

For Tumblr, which is fleshing out its business model and recently raised a $5 million round of venture financing from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures, the interest from media outlets is something of a feather in its cap.

“There is certainly some validation in it,” said John Maloney, president of Tumblr. “They’ve decided that this is the next social media platform they want to adopt, and that certainly can translate into a catalyst for us.”

A SLUGGISH economy and a tepid real estate market have done little to dampen the humming social scene that is the Hamptons. Lately, the loudest buzz on the East End of Long Island has been from Montauk, where shabby motels and quaint restaurants are being remade into boho-chic establishments. Yet the lavish seaside villages of the Hamptons have hardly slowed down. That’s especially true in East Hampton, arguably the center of the social swirl. A raft of luxurious boutiques and restaurants has opened. Beloved old hotels and barrooms have been renovated. And celebrities — most recently Madonna — are snapping up property in the area.

Friday

4 p.m.
1) SOCIAL CALENDAR

Want to plunge into the Hamptons social scene? Then your first order of business is to grab the free glossy magazines — Social Life, Hampton Life, Hamptons, Hampton Sheet, Dan’s Papers — for that weekend’s fete, charity event or oceanfront screening of “Jaws.” You’ll find them near the door of many boutiques in East Hampton, but perhaps the most indulgent place is Scoop du Jour (35 Newtown Lane; 631-329-4883), the ice cream parlor where waffle cones are stacked with cavity-friendly flavors like cake batter and cotton candy. This is also where you can buy Dreesen’s doughnuts, a Hamptons staple since the 1950s. Need a gift for a party host (or yourself)? Shops have sprouted along Main Street, including Balenciaga (No. 54), Hugo Boss (No. 46) and Roberta Freymann (No. 21).

7 p.m.
2) PIZZA PATIO

It’s not just socialites who flee to the Hamptons in summer. Restaurateurs migrate here, too. Among the latest new establishments is the Italian standby Serafina (104 North Main Street; 631-267-3500; serafinarestaurant.com). Yellow umbrellas poke up like daffodils from its sidewalk patio and vine-covered pergola. Fresh pastas and seafood are on the menu, though the brick oven pizzas — in more than two dozen varieties, including pesto — are among the most popular picks. On a recent evening, couples canoodled at the bar, while well-manicured families streamed into the dining room. Dinner for two, about $100. If your taste leans toward fried seafood, homemade chowder and frosty drinks, however, then head to Bostwick’s Chowder House (277 Pantigo Road; 631-324-1111; bostwickschowderhouse.com), which moved this summer to new indoor-outdoor digs. Dinner for two, about $50.

9 p.m.
3) WATER MUSIC

Watching boats glide along the horizon is perhaps the simplest and most peaceful of Hamptons pleasures. Happily, a favorite haunt, the Boathouse (39 Gann Road; 631-329-3663; easthamptonboathouse.com), has expanded and relocated to a secluded spot overlooking Three Mile Harbor, where Bostwick’s was previously located. The open-air decks of this gleaming restaurant are an idyllic perch from which to watch boats dock. But on weekends, as the night progresses, the Boathouse morphs into an indoor-outdoor lounge where the lithe and tanned sip and sway to beats from a D.J.

Saturday

10 a.m.
4) FARM FRESH

Before men in golf shirts roamed the Hamptons, it was the purview of farmers. Thankfully, there are still some left. Pick up fresh eggs, local produce and home-baked muffins and scones for breakfast at Round Swamp Farm (184 Three Mile Harbor Road; 631-324-4438; roundswampfarm.com). Be sure to buy enough for lunch so you can skip the interminable snack bar line at the beach.

11 a.m.
5) WHERE TO TAN

Choosing a favorite Hamptons beach is not unlike choosing a favorite child. Still, two beaches were among the top 10 named this year by Stephen P. Leatherman, director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University. Coopers Beach (in Southampton) captured the No. 1 spot, beating out beaches in Florida and California. And Main Beach (in East Hampton) took fifth place. Both are wide and clean and — very important — sell food. Many beaches require seasonal parking permits, though visitors can park at Coopers Beach for $40 a day. Parking at Main Beach is $20 a day, but weekdays only; on weekends visitors must walk or ride bikes. (For details, go to the Long Island Convention & Visitors Bureau’s Web site, discoverlongisland.com.)

3:30 p.m.
6) EAST END EXPRESSIONISM

The wetlands and dunes that draw pleasure-seekers today also inspired some of the greatest abstract and landscape artists of our time. Go see why at LongHouse Reserve (133 Hands Creek Road; 631-329-3568; longhouse.org), a sprawling but less-visited garden and sculpture park with works by Buckminster Fuller, Dale Chihuly, Willem de Kooning and Yoko Ono. Founded by the textile designer Jack Lenor Larsen (who still lives there, according to docents), the reserve’s nearly 16 acres are open to the public Wednesdays through Saturdays during the summer. Nearby is the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center (830 Springs-Fireplace Road; 631-324-4929; pkhouse.org), which Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner bought for $5,000 in 1946 and turned into their home and studio. Visitors must don booties to enter the barn because the floor is splattered with paint that Pollock dripped and flung for his masterpieces. In fact, some of his paint cans are still there.

8 p.m.
7) CLAMS AND COCKTAILS

Norman Jaffe, the American architect, designed the once popular (and now shuttered) restaurant known as Laundry. The space has a new life this year as Race Lane (31 Race Lane; 631-324-5022; racelanerestaurant.com) — a sleek yet cozy spot with a tree-shaded patio seemingly engineered for tête-à-têtes over breezy cocktails and clams from the raw bar. Inside, well-heeled couples dine at tables or on couches in the spare, airy space. Seafood dishes include red snapper with saffron and spinach ($28), baked salmon with a ginger glaze over shiitake mushrooms and snow peas ($26), and lobster salad with avocado ($29).

10 p.m.
8) NO VELVET ROPE

The Hamptons nightclub scene has quieted in recent years, with much of the latest action shifting to the Montauk waterfront. But there are still plenty of pleasures to be had after sunset. The music continues to thump at clubs like Lily Pond and, now, RdV East. For a chiller affair, head to the newly renovated c/o The Maidstone (207 Main Street; 631-324-5006; themaidstone.com). The hotel’s Living Room restaurant and lounge lure a lively, attractive crowd.

Sunday

11:30 a.m.
9) MORNING RUNWAY

Catch a tennis match or baseball game on flat screens while enjoying panini or frittatas at CittaNuova (29 Newtown Lane; 631-324-6300; cittanuova.com), a Milan-inspired cafe with a facade that peels back to provide indoor-outdoor seating along the village’s prime shopping strip. A backyard patio has more tables. The pretty space was jammed for the World Cup. Should there be no games to hold your attention, people-watching (O.K., fashion-policing) from the outdoor tables will. Brunch, about $25 a person.

1 p.m.
10) ARTFUL AFTERNOON

Many of the artists who settled in the Hamptons exhibited at Guild Hall (158 Main Street; 631-324-0806; guildhall.org), the region’s celebrated arts center. Barbara Kruger takes over the main exhibition space on Aug. 14. Meanwhile, performances are held all summer long.

2:30 p.m.
11) BEHIND THE HEDGES

Real estate is a blood sport here. And one of the most coveted addresses is Lily Pond Lane. Take a leisurely drive along the wide road where beyond the hedges you can glimpse houses that belong to the likes of Martha Stewart and Steven Spielberg. Grey Gardens, once the decayed home of Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter, can be found where Lily Pond meets West End Road. Along the way you’re likely to spot many material girls, but if you are desperately seeking the original, head over to Bridgehampton where Madonna owns a horse farm on Mitchell Lane.

IF YOU GO

East Hampton is about 105 miles from Manhattan, and depending on traffic, can take anywhere from three to four hours to drive during the summer. The Hampton Jitney (hamptonjitney.com; $53 to East Hampton round trip ) and Hampton Luxury Liner (hamptonluxuryliner.com; $78 round trip) run frequent buses. The Long Island Railroad (Montauk line) is often faster and cheaper (from $16.75 one way; $15.91 WebTicket). In any case, a car or bicycle is needed to get around.

c/o The Maidstone (207 Main Street; 631-324-5006; themaidstone.com) has 19 modish rooms, all recently renovated, and has vintage Scandinavian bicycles, beach parking permits and yoga classes (weekends only). Rooms from $495, with two-night minimum on weekends through August.

The 1770 House Restaurant & Inn (143 Main Street; 631-324-1770; 1770house.com) still feels like the private home it once was, with antique furniture and exposed beam ceilings. Rooms from $495; three-night minimum on weekends through August.