From Front Porch to Back Seat
A History of the Date
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12129121 |
|---|---|
| Authors | B Bailey, Byron J Bailey (0000-0002-6934-2362, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 23-26 |
| Publication date | 2004-07-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | OAH Magazine of History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0882-228X • E-ISSN: 1938-2340 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/maghis/18.4.23 |
| OpenAlex | W2332609462 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
One day, the 1920s story goes, a young man came to call upon a city girl. When he arrived, she had her hat on. The punch line is completely lost on twenty-first-century readers, but people at the time would have gotten it. He came on a “call,” expecting to sit in her parlor, be served some refreshments, perhaps listen to her play the piano. She expected to go out on a date. He, it is fairly safe to surmise, ended up spending a fair amount of money fulfilling her expectations (1). In fact, the unfortunate young man really should have known better. By 1924, when this story was current, “dating” had almost completely replaced “calling” in middle-class American culture. The term appeared in The Ladies' Home Journal, a bastion of middle-class respectability, several times in 1914—set off by quotation marks, but with no explanation of its meaning. One article, written in the then-exotic voice of a college sorority girl, began: One beautiful evening in the spring term, when I was a college girl of eighteen, the boy whom, because of his popularity in every phase of college life, I had been proud gradually to allow the monopoly of my ‘dates,’ took me unexpectedly into his arms. As he kissed me impetuously I was glad, from the bottom of my heart, for the training of that mother who had taught me to hold myself aloof from all personal familiarities of boys and men (2)
Art · Art history · Front (military · Girl · Meaning (existential · Media studies · Middle class · Piano · Political science · Porch · Sociology · Engineering · History · Law · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society
| Citations per year | 0.21 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2012 - 2026 (15) |
| Highly cited | No |