Q Dear Miss Abigail:
I am eighteen years old and have never had a boyfriend, not even a date. I haven’t even been kissed. Guys tell me I’m cute but don’t ask me out. I’m not the thinnest girl and I dont have the biggest breasts and I have glasses and I don’t dress sexy. So how do I attract a decent guy without going to a club. Also, I work a lot and don’t go out too much. Where are good places to meet a decent guy?
Girl that is boyfriendless
A Dear Girl:
Well, well, young lady. Seems like you should just give up all hope. Or, perhaps you prefer to think outside the box and take Nina Farewell’s advice, from this classic Every Girl is Entitled to a Husband (1963). Now granted, her statistics are from quite a few years ago, but something about this seems to ring true, don’t you agree?
1963: Do Not Remain Where Women Outnumber Men
Pack your suitcase (or your trunk) and Go! Run! Fly! Though it be painful to leave one’s home in a beautiful and exciting place like, let us say, Washington, D.C., to move to a remote backwater like, let us say, Lawton, Oklahoma, anyone who is serious about finding a husband will not permit sentiment or aesthetic considerations to hold her back.
Lawton is cited advisedly, for there you will find 100 males for every 71 females! (All sex ration figures given herein apply to population over the age of eighteen.) Our great capitol city, on the other hand, is so hopelessly undermanned, that if every bachelor inside its bounderies were forced to wed tomorrow, there would be tens of thousands of girls left without partners.
A deficiency of single men is the greatest evil that exists in our big cities. Even New York, queen of them all, rich and proud and peerless, has a meager supply, with only 88 males to every 100 females. This is a surprise to some people, who think that you can find everything in a large metropolis.
The census reports are full of surprises. One would hardly suspect for example, that the gigantic, virile state of Texas which seems the very synthesis of maleness, is more feminine than masculine in its population. Still, Texas has a kind of irresistible lure ~ no doubt because of all those oil wells ~ and the girl who really wants to go there should not be discouraged by the general picture. A perusal of the statistics (check and prove all figures, even mine, writing to the local Chamber of Commerce for verification) will reveal that individual places within the state have an excellent sex ration. . . .
A thorough investigation of the census is very rewarding. One should be acquainted with the figures on cities both near and far, including those of foreign lands. A girl with vision may see the wisdom of forsaking not only her State, but her Country, and even the Temperate Zone, in order to relocate where the sex ration is most favorable to her. . . .
Hardship accompanies every pioneering effort. Let us remember our heritage. Our forebears crossed an unfriendly ocean to settle in a wilderness; they froze and starved and forfeited their scalps in order to achieve their goal. Surely the daughters of such a people will not hesitate to uproot themselves to go in search of their heart’s desire.
Source: Farewell, Nina. Every Girl Is Entitled to a Husband. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company,1963.
~ pp. 42-46 ~