Monday, January 20, 2014

'Still Single After Age 30?' From Good Housekeeping Magazine, 1943

Elle magazine has an article from 1943 on single women on its website

By Ruth Lyons from the November 1943 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine.

Thirty seems to be a magic number. Up to then, if a woman's single, no one raises an eyebrow. After that — well, this is what happens:

I am on my way to have tea with three women from my home town, who arrived in the city this morning and who are dying to see me. It's been years since we've all gotten together.

I inspect myself in the mirror, pleased with my chic black suit, my little hat, which is of the type called amusing. I take a last look around my charming, comfortable apartment, and I am feeling a little proud of myself and my accomplishments, about which I can brag ever so discreetly to the folks from home. I certainly will not let them see that I might think they lead stodgy lives, because I am very fond of them, and I will be careful not to say anything that will make them envy me — the only one of the group who is still single and who lives and works in an exciting big city.

We meet in a great flurry of greetings and exclamations. "Darling!" we scream.

Sooner or later, one of them looks at me — with the certain smile that invariably goes with the statement — and says, "So you never married."

And there it is. My accomplishments are suddenly of a great nothingness. My smart suit and amusing hat are all at once merely the giddy substitutes to satisfy an emotional hunger; my charming apartment, the barren nest of a frustrated old maid. Or so their eyes tell me.

I have a natural urge to say tartly: "No, but not that I haven't had plenty of chances. Well, anyway, a few."
But this is not considered good form. And besides, it would give the impression that I am protesting too much, and also give them a chance to say later: "A likely story. Why didn't she snap up one of them then?"


Read more: Single and Unmarried - Advice for the Single Girl from 1943 - ELLE
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