The Rules

In 1995 a bestselling book proposed a simple dating strategy for women: Lose weight, wear bright colors and become a completely different person for the rest of your life.

Thanks to Moira Donegan (moiradonegan.substack.com) for helping us with this episode!

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Sources:
• From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America (press.jhu.edu/books/title/1626/front-porch-bac…)
• Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s essay, “Stuff Your ‘Rules’” (nytimes.com/2019/05/14/style/the-rules-book.html)
• The More Things Change: The Rules And Late Eighteenth‐Century Conduct Books For Women (tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00497878.2000.…)
• Shrinking Violets and Caspar Milquetoasts: Shyness and Heterosexuality from the Roles of the Fifties to "The Rules" of the Nineties (jstor.org/stable/3789817)
• From Mountain Peak to Total Woman: An Evolutionary History of Pre-feminist Dating Advice (link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-020-0…)
• The Mating Game: How Gender Still Shapes How We Date by Ellen Lamont (ucpress.edu/book/9780520298699/the-mating-game…)
• So Many Rules, So Little Time (nytimes.com/1996/10/23/garden/so-many-rules-so…)
• Abiding by The Rules: Instructing Women in Relationships (journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095935350…)
• What leads to romantic attraction: similarity, reciprocity, security, or beauty? Evidence from a speed-dating study (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19558447)
• "Playing Hard To Get": Understanding An Elusive Phenomenon (elainehatfield.com/uploads/3/4/5/2/34523593/38…)
• Egalitarian Daters, Traditionalist Dates (journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/019251398…)
• Aspirational pursuit of mates in online dating markets (science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.aap9815)
• Disintermediating your friends: How online dating in the United States displaces other ways of meeting (pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1908630116)
• Playing Hard To Get (web.archive.org/web/20081109093956/http:/www.t…)
Thanks to Mindseye (mindseye-music.bandcamp.com/track/the-place-be…) for our theme song!
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