Dating is now is a cakewalk compared to how it used to be. In the 1950s, for instance, a guy could hardly look at a girl until dad said okay and flirting wasn’t so much about finding someone who likes you for you as it was about convincing a guy that you were pretty and poised enough to make a good wife.
Ladies Home Journal listed 129 ways to get a husband, with suggestions like “attend night school—take courses men like,” “get lost at football games,” and “wear a Band-Aid” because “people always ask what happened.” Oh, and if you want him you can “stumble when you walk into a room that he’s in” or “stand in a corner and cry softly” because “chances are good that he’ll come over to find out what’s wrong.” Giveth me a break LOL!!
The bad boys of the decade were on a different level and lining the streets looking for girls to catcall. It was also said that there were certain boys talking to a girl while disrespectfully hanging on their bicycle, one leg over the crossbar. Oh the horrors!!
Advice was given that girls not out of her teens would do better to avoid a dinner engagement but a career girl, from her twenties onward, can accept such an invitation, but she should not stay beyond 10 or 10:30. These social norms were put in place to protect children “from their own possible foolishness, and from destructive gossip.”
In the ’50s and ’60s, though, women were taught to worry more about their appearances and getting a guy’s attention than they were about actually finding a person they connected with. Advice included things like “buy a full-length mirror and take a good look before you go to greet him” and “go on a diet if you need to.”
“The twin-bed seems to have come to stay,” proclaimed the Yorkshire Herald in 1892, “and will no doubt in time succeed the double bed in all rooms occupied by two persons”.
The proclamation may have proved less than accurate, but for almost a century between the 1850s and 1950s, separate beds were seen as a healthier, more modern option for couples than the double, with Victorian doctors warning that sharing a bed would allow the weaker sleeper to drain the vitality of the stronger.
By the 1920s, twin beds were seen as a fashionable, modern choice. “Separate beds for every sleeper are as necessary as are separate dishes for every eater,” wrote Dr Edwin Bowers in his 1919 volume, Sleeping for Health. “They promote comfort, cleanliness, and the natural delicacy that exists among human beings.” They had also been promoted as part of that constellation of social and cultural configuration comprising modernity” Whoa………………
My grandparents for as long as they were alive had twin beds. I never questioned it as the TV families all had them– so it must be okay.. or maybe they had the ‘jimmy legs”. 🙂
Dating A Farmer — It’s Not All Hearts And Cow Tails
Just Like Internet Dating?— Circa 1913
lindaseccaspina 