Dating, Dancing, and Riding in Cars
A Scrapbook Archive of Teen Culture in the 1930s
exhibit g.
dorothy dix's letter box
Dorothy Dix (born Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer) was a popular advice columnist in first half of the 20th century. At the time of her death in 1951, she was America’s highest paid female journalist and had achieved international fame as her column was syndicated around the world (Vella). Dix was perhaps best known for her household advice and recipes. In the 1920s, however, she began addressing teen and family issues more exclusively (Vella 207). She was known for her straightforward, no-nonsense replies to her readers’ letters, apparently unafraid to directly answer questions pertaining to husband-wife relations, smoking and drinking in teens, and the plights of lower classes (Vella).
Jane saved two Dorothy Dix clippings in her scrapbook, both of which deal primarily with questions regarding dating, popularity, grooming, and marriage. Since both of the clippings were from 1931, two years prior to when Jane started her scrapbook, I am inclined to believe that they must have been important to her. She must have really liked Dorothy Dix's advice to have kept the clippings for so long.
For more on the personal life and career of Dorothy Dix, I recommend reading the Dorothy Dix chapter, authored by Christina Vella, in Louisiana Women: Their Lives and Times.
1 Dorothy Dix’s Letter Box
2 What to Do and What to Avoid to Become Popular
3 With Boys—Joyous Young Girl Whose Parents
4 Want Her to Wait 4 Years for a Missionary—Rush-
5 ing It.
6 DEAR MISS DIX—What are the do’s and don’ts for girls who want a
7 lasting popularity with boys? SUE AND JANE.
8 ______
9 ANSWER:
10 Well, here are some of the do’s: Make
11 yourself as attractive-looking as you can
12 by keeping yourself well groomed and scru-
13 pulously clean and by wearing the clothes
14 that emphasize your best points. Half of a
15 woman’s beauty is in the way she dresses.
16 ______
17 Learn how to do things. Learn how to play a
18 good game of bridge and how to play tennis and
19 how to swim, how to do the things the other young
20 people of your set do. That way you will fit in
21 with any crowd and not be a spoilsport. You will
22 never be asked to make a fourth at bridge if you
23 trump your partner’s ace. No boy will ever cut in
24 on your dances if you step on his toes or have to
25 be hauled around like a loaded truck. On the
26 other hand, if you are an expert at anything, you will always be sought
27 after.
28 ______
29 Learn how to talk. Read the newspapers religiously every day
30 so that you will know what is going on in the world and have
31 some topic of interest to discuss. Read books, but don’t try to
32 talk to a boy about a high-brow subject unless he introduces the
33 topic first. Talk, but don’t talk too much. No one is so bore-
34 some as the girl who just babbles along like a brook that noth-
35 ing can stop.
36 ______
37 Be a good listener. In one of Henry James’ novels he tells of a
38 woman who was a great success, although she was neither beautiful nor
39 brilliant, but simply because she possessed the ability to look as if she
40 was absolutely hypnotized by the individual who was talking to her.
41 That plan never fails to work. Try it.
42 ______
43 Wear the smile that won’t come off, but don’t giggle and
44 don’t laugh too much. Men don’t like laughing women. They
45 are always afraid they are laughing at them. And don’t wisecrack.
46 If you think of a witty comeback, swallow it. Men will forgive
47 you anything else on earth except being funny at their expense.
48 No woman humorist is ever a belle.
49 ______
50 When boys take you out appear to be having the time of your life.
51 It is the least return you can make for the money they are spending on
52 you. Never make invidious comparisons. Never tell the boy who takes
53 you to the movies that some other boy took you to the opera. When a
54 boy treats you to a sandwich don’t regale him with the story of how
55 somebody else took you to some ritzy place where you had a ten-course
56 dinner. The girl who makes a boy feel that she considers him a cheap
57 sport never gets asked a second time.
1 When a boy comes to see you ask him some time to spend
2 the evening in your home and make fudge or a Welsh rabbit or
3 something that won't cost him any money. Few boys are mil-
4 lionaires and they appreciate a girl's going light on their pockets.
5 Not long ago in this column I said that girls would have
6 more dates if they would do a little of the entertaining at home
7 themselves and the article was cut out and pasted on the bulle-
8 tin board in a big high school. Within ten minutes nearly 200
9 boys had put down their names under it as approving the plan.
10 ______
11 Here are some of the don'ts:
12 Don't run after boys. The more a girl chases a boy, the harder her
13 sprints away from her.
14 ______
15 Don't telephone a boy in working hours. The chances are
16 that if you do you will lose him his job. Don't write to a boy
17 until he opens up the correspondence. Don't write two letters
18 to his one and don't write anything you wouldn't be willing to
19 have his mother and his sisters and other girls and chamber-
20 maids read.
21 ______
22 Don't hint. Eat enough before you leave home to last you until you
23 get back. Don't have but one birthday a year and don't express a de-
24 sire for something expensive at Christmas. Don't kiss every Tom, Dick
25 and Harry. It is the kiss a boy doesn't get that he values.
26 ______
27 Don't drink. A girl who is stone sober isn't half so likely
28 to do something foolish and that she will spend the balance of
29 her life regretting as one who has had a few swigs of bootleg
30 liquor. Don't buy your good times at too high a price. Many a
31 girl has paid for one wild party with a lifetime of shame.
32 ______
33 Above all, don't believe any boy is in love with you until he asks
34 you to marry him and names the day. All the balance is hooey.
35 DOROTHY DIX.
36 ______
37 DEAR MISS DIX— I am a girl 18 years of age. My family have chosen
38 a missionary, who is faithful but silent, for my future husband, but
39 I must wait four years for him while at the time I am dying to get out
40 and go places and do things. Do you think I should sit home reading
41 his letters while all the time I am humming dance tunes? Do you think
42 any man has the right to expect a girl to stand around and wait, giving
43 up all her male companions, admiring and adoring, just because a hun-
44 dred thousand days from now he will ask her to become his wife? Why
45 should I give up my good times just because he is not in a position to
46 marry? A GIRL IN TROUBLE.
47 ______
48 ANSWER:
49 I should certainly advise you not to wait for the missionary,
50 because, obviously, you are not cut out for a missionary's wife,
51 and that is no reflection on you nor on him.
52 ______
53 No greater misfortune can happen than for two people of different
54 types and temperament to marry. They destroy not only each other's
55 happiness but each other's usefulness because they oppose each other at
56 every turn and neutralize each other's efforts. The only way in which
57 a marriage can be a success is for the husband and wife to do team-
58 work.
1 ______
2 There is no harm in a young girl like you craving laughter
3 and enjoyment and in wanting to dance and run around with
4 young people of her own age and have a good time. It is per-
5 fectly natural and right and it belongs to your time of life, but
6 it would ill accord with the serious work of a missionary. Far
7 better for him, as well as for you, for him to pick out some se-
8 date maiden who prefers hymn tunes to jazz and whose feet will
9 happily tread the hard and narrow path of duty instead of itch-
10 ing for a ballroom floor.
11 ______
12 And certainly parents commit a crime when they pick out their
13 daughters' husbands and select some man who accords with their own
14 taste instead of the girl's. They forget that it is the girl who is going
15 to have to live with the man and that whether she is happy or misera-
16 ble will depend not upon the man's moral principles but upon whether
17 he is congenial to the girl. Don't let your parents drive you into this
18 unsuitable marriage. Break it off without waiting for the hundred thou-
19 sand days to pass and run along and play as much as you like with
20 your affectionate and adoring male companions. DOROTHY DIX.
21 ______
22 DEAR MISS DIX— I am a boy 19 years of age in love with a girl of
23 about the same age. She wants to get married, but I think I am
24 too young. I want to go through the country and see some of the world
25 until I get a few years older, but she insists on getting married right
26 away. I don't know what to do, so I am writing to you for advice.
27 JAMES.
28 ______
29 ANSWER:
30 Well, if you will take my advice, James, you certainly won't
31 marry at 19 and you will take that trip around and see the world
32 before you settle down.
33 ______
34 Don't let any girl rush you into marriage before you are ready for
35 it. If you do you will be miserable. Marriage lasts a long time, anyway,
36 and it seems longer if you go into it before you have the money to sup-
37 port a wife on and before you have any freedom yourself.
39 DOROTHY DIX.
39 Copyright, 1931, for The News.
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