We could go to a singles event but we had to look like we were only there incidentally even though it was a singles event, and those usually attract a pretty specific audience of people who have decided that they do, in fact, want companionship. The instructions were simple: We could go to a dance (I guess there were dances) but we could not ask a man to dance. “Men like women who are neat and clean.” It advised, “If you have a bad nose, get a nose job color your gray grow your hair long.” This was your training montage. “So try to change bad habits like slovenliness,” the book beseeched us. We were to prepare ourselves for our new husband-forward philosophy - to become a “Rules girl,” in their vernacular - by getting in shape and learning how to like ourselves, even when the reality of our own countenances made that impossible. The rules that were outlined in the book ranged from “Don’t Stare at Men or Talk Too Much” (rule 3) to “Don’t Accept a Saturday Night Date after Wednesday” (rule 7) to “Don’t Tell Him What To Do” (rule 16). Do you understand how many women have tanked a deal in the making by appearing to want love too badly? By revealing themselves? By openly wanting sex and companionship? By wanting it at all? By having it all? A hunter has to believe his prey doesn’t want to be feasted upon, right? (Right?) So how do you pretend you don’t want something you do want? “The Rules” was the answer. The key was to not appear as though you needed love that was the only way to get it. Don’t worry: Even if you are a mieskeit, if you put yourself together enough, if you act mysterious enough, you will ignite the heart of a man who is so consumed by the chase that he’ll never really notice that you are incompatible or you are desperately needy or you have untreated clubfoot or your eyes are too close together or you get poppy seeds stuck in your teeth or you have irregular periods or your bikini line is unwieldy or you are a child-hater or your slight but apparent case of untreated scoliosis or you are ambivalent about your religion or you don’t know who you will vote for yet or you do not know how to cook or you have seasonal allergies or you sometimes feel a dark yearning about what you are supposed to be doing on this earth or are similarly vile. Make them want you you are doing them a favor when you are withholding. It is not efficient to list all the rules of “The Rules” here, but they came down to: Don’t chase men. The book’s authors, Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, promised a generation of women who were at war with themselves (not all of us, but enough of us) that we could find the husbands we dreamed of if only we could control ourselves for a few months (a year tops), sublimate our desires and follow 35 simple rules for attracting and securing a man. In 1995, on Valentine’s Day no less, presented as an ivory-and-gold colored self-help book for the heteronormative, covered with soft paintings of roses and ribbons (ribbons!) and a diamond ring right smack in the middle, almost like a warning: You were not entering subtle territory. This is how “The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Read more about the tech, music, style, books, trends, films and pills that scream Gen X. Had we alienated the men with all our independence? There were so many mixed messages, and the women I knew were at war to maintain their independence but also still traditional enough to think about the families they’d been engineered to want. Colleges were giving out condoms, not just to the men but to the women. The women’s magazines encouraged us to take initiative, to ask the guy out. We worked and talked endlessly about things like balance. The battles had been fought we owned property and voted. The ’90s woman, confused by how her ambition was supposed to be compatible with her want for a family, nodded her head emphatically, her Rachel shimmering around her face.īecause it was also a time when we were supposed to be newly empowered. It was a time when the Learning Annex featured seminars on how to find a husband in 30 days, and no kidding this seminar came with a CD to listen to while you slept. It was a time when even subversive-seeming characters on “Sex and the City” could only be happy when they finally found husbands (except, of course, for Samantha, who was too much of a derelict to acquiesce and too old to have kids so what’s the point?). It was a time when almost every single movie ended with a wedding, no iota of nuance to be found anywhere, even if the woman in the movie had just spent 83 minutes prior making a case as to why she didn’t want to be or shouldn’t be married. It was the worst of times just trust me on this.
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