When I ask you to describe the 1950s, what comes to mind? You might talk about the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, how famous Elvis Presley was in the 1950s, or the first satellites to orbit around the Earth. You might not have thought about how magazines told women in the 1950s to get guys to like them. Kim Marx-Kuczynski from Madison, Wisconsin, recently sent me a 1958 story from McCall's called "129 Ways to Get a Husband." It shows how much things have changed since then.
The text starts with the sentence, "There are 16 million women over the age of 17 who are not married in the United States today," which shows that most of them would like to be married by that age. The writer asked 16 people to develop ideas for how lonely women could get men's attention. Some of these tips sound good and make sense, like ordering rare steaks, not gossiping, crying in the corner of the room, and getting a hunting license. Other tips, like crying in a corner of the room and buying a hunting license, seem very strange. In defence of the author, the magazine says that they did tell the people who took part to stop being critical and write down their honest views.
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