March 11, 2013 • 33 mins
The Athenian Mercury was history's first advice column, and since then advice columns have become a staple of modern publishing -- but how? And why are most advice columns written by women? Tune in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how stupp
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline and Caroline. We are kicking off
a two parter on advice columns, which might seem excessive.
(00:23):
How on earth could these women talk about advice columes
for two podcasts? I have no idea. I mean, it's
not like there's a long history or anything. Is there
there is? Tell me surprise, surprise, advice columns that a
hidden history that we were unaware of. Yeah, it goes
(00:46):
all the way back to the seventeenth century. Who knew
some guy in the seventeenth century had a problem and
he was like, well, I'm too embarrassed to talk about it,
So I was going to start advice column in a newspaper.
It's funny how that happens. And that problem was that
one Mr John Dunton, who was a London bookseller, was
(01:06):
having an affair. Yeah, and someone of his social standing
couldn't just go around talking about it. So in sixteen
ninety Dunton starts The Athenian Mercury. And he doesn't just
start the Athenian Mercury, he also creates a society, And
basically the society is made up of quote unquote experts.
(01:29):
And I say quote unquote because they weren't all real,
they didn't all exist, And it was basically just a
group of Dunton's friends who would get together in a
local coffee shop and talk about people's problems. What advice
they would give them, because they would have people right
in in the in the same format as we think
of today with advice columns. They would read the letters,
(01:50):
they would answer the letters, and they were published in yes,
the Anthenian Mercury. But can I tell our listeners it's
full name. Hit me with the full name, because it
was an entire publication. It wasn't just one column that ran,
say in a newspaper at the time, although of course
that would come out of this. So get a load
of this in six ninety Dungeon starts, and I'm sure
(02:11):
that this must have been a lot for the printer
at the time, The Athenian Gazette colon or Casuistical Mercury,
resolving all the most nice and curious questions proposed by
the ingenious of either sex. See, they were equal opportunity
even then women women folk could write in But yeah,
(02:31):
I think it's incredible. I mean, people there must have
been a real thirst for this kind of thing, being
able to ask questions anonymously, because he and his society
answered more than six thousand questions during the paper's ten
year run. And you know, so we have this anonymous
factor right off the bat that people are able to
send in their questions anything from political to environmental, to
(02:56):
love and sex and all that stuff. Yeah, and you
can imagine that this must have been a godsend at
the time because in communication was so limited. I mean,
we were such a far cry from having the Internet
with Google, where we can just go on there and
ask whatever we want. Um, but can we talk about
(03:18):
a couple of the original questions? Yeah, there was one
that was really pressing, very important, and and today it
might even it might even you know, strike a chord
with some people, and that that question is why is
horsepoop square? Why is horsepoop square? Yeah? I wish that
I had the exact wording with me, but it was
(03:39):
essentially saying, horses, but but the poop is square. Here's
here's uh, here's the answer. They are formed quadrilane quadrilangularly
in the rectum by pretension and compression upon one another
as any other round or obla. The substances which are
(04:01):
soft would be if they were thrust together. Answering the
hard hitting questions from day one? Can you get more
poetic about horsepoop? I don't think so. I submit that
you can. But in the same publication, when they're asking
about horsepoop and we're like, oh, those seventeenth century fuils,
(04:22):
they are asking questions that are still asked today in
advice columns, such as whether it is lawful for two
unmarried persons each consenting to cohabit, et cetera, since marriage
was a thing set up by man essentially, ken, is
it cool if we live in sin together? Can we
shack up? And that be a okay? Yeah? But I
also like, I mean, I read some of the other
(04:43):
questions that were very superstitious in nature, like one guy asking,
you know, why are frogs and ravens and you know
other animals considered evil? Like why are they such bad luck?
And they do? They offer very common sense answers to
some of these questions, like or maybe you're just noticing
them when you're having a bad time, right. John Dundon
dud a bit of a bit of a sassy attitude,
(05:05):
which is the same thing too that we see throughout
the history of advice columns, especially as it becomes this
regular thing that pops up in newspapers. But before we
fast forward too much, uh, we should mention that in
these first advice columns, these first vice publications, they were
(05:27):
largely run by men. For instance, in seventeen four we
have Daniel Dafoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, who came
across Denton's column and he wrote his own essays about
manners and moralities under the identity of the Scandalous Club,
prompting more than forty letters a week from readers. And
I think did he did he get on board with
(05:49):
the Athenian Mercury. I don't think so. I think he
was running his own thing. Yeah, because it became a
pretty a pretty hot thing to do among these thinkers
at the time. Because it was also a time when
people were really starting to exchange ideas, the idea of
you know, salons, people getting together to to talk about
(06:09):
different issues that were coming up. Yeah, these early advice
columns that were run by a newspaper publishers and editors,
because I guess back then you could just like wake
up in the morning and decided to start a newspaper.
But the aspirations were really larger than just talking about
relationships or marriage or sex questions, things like that, or
you know, even things that we would think of as
as our more modern you know, advice column topics. And
(06:33):
just like Kristen said, a lot of it had to
do with bringing people together. So this is coming from
David Gonalinus's book Confidential to America, Newspaper Advice Columns and
Sexual Education. He talks about how in the seventeenth and
eighteenth century the advice column was really solidified in urban London.
This is a time when citizens were searching for a
common channel to share information and engage in debates in
(06:56):
a quickly modernizing environment. There was no Internet. There were
only these newspapers and pamphlets and things that people could
publish their problems in and then read responses. And it
was a way not only to get advice or maybe
you know, glean advice from somebody else's problem, but also
find out what's going on in your own community. Yeah,
(07:16):
this gave people a platform to address their community. Um.
He calls it the quote mobilization of the public sphere,
and people were pretty active with writing into newspapers. And
while this also facilitated letters to the editor, which we
still have today in newspapers and magazines and even websites
(07:36):
as well. But then there were some that that weren't
that wouldn't necessarily fit into letters to the editor because
they didn't deal directly with something that the publication had printed.
So then you have those excess pieces becoming more fodder
for advice columns. Yeah. Well, this definitely was not just
happening in Europe and London. This is also happening in
(07:59):
early America, where Benjamin Franklin offered practical advice through his
character Silence do Good because you can't use your real name,
and these advice columns. Yeah, that is another thing from
the get go is we really love the idea of
writing to this anonymous persona because it makes them seem
maybe bigger, more, all knowing and able to help if
(08:22):
if they're not just thought of as some schmuck from
down the street answering questions from their living room in
their pajamas. Yeah, because you know John Dunton, bookseller who
is having a trouble with an affair is not quite
as alluring as Oh the the this Mercury Athenian person
(08:42):
society is answering my question. He knows why square, he
must be smart. Well, no, yeah, I do think it's
interesting that he to solidify his you know, his reason
for answering these questions, his authority. He ends up inventing
all of these people, like we have a German and
a Dutchman, and a Spaniard, and an Englishman and a
(09:04):
priest educators. Like he said, all of these different people
were in his society just so you would feel, I guess,
like they had the authority to answer questions. Of course, yeah,
we want expert advice. Well, moving forward past Benjamin Franklin
into you know, the turn of the century. The first
u S General advice column launches in the New York
(09:26):
Evening Journal at the turn of the century, and character
advice columns hung around well into the twentieth century. Yeah.
For instance, one of the popular character advice columns that
pops up around this time is in the San Francisco Examiner,
the Dingelspiel Answer Some Letters column, which was a forum
(09:50):
for German humor as the time. So I bet it
was very funny. Yeah, well, I mean you have all
these you have all these groups of people coming to
America and they're looking for a connection. Just like we said,
you know, the advice column was not just you know,
can I live with someone before marriage? Why the horses
(10:10):
poop square? It was it was really a way to
connect with your community. And so if you felt like
you were homesick for Germany, you could turn to you
could reach the dinkle Spiel. Yeah, advice column. Historians have
also called out a Benttal Brief which started in nineteen
oh six and it was launched in the newspaper the
(10:32):
Jewish Daily Forward, and it was really part of the
birth of the modern columns. And it was such a
good example of what you were talking about in terms
of having a an expert voice, in terms of assimilation,
of learning how to how to navigate this brave new world.
It was also one of the few modern columns written
(10:54):
by a man, because at this point, you know, as well,
we'll go back to some early pioneers of women written
advice columns, but this, uh, the Bental Brief drew on
the tradition of wise men rather than the Mother Confessor,
which we'll talk about um. But you know, a lot
of Jewish immigrants would have in their native countries turned
(11:15):
to a rabbi or someone else in their community to
seek advice. So this advice column was just kind of
the written version of that turning to a wise man
to answer these questions about how do I adjust to
life in America. But once advice columns really get going
in terms of seeing them not only just in the
major newspapers but also in magazines and specifically women's magazines,
(11:41):
they become this feature that is a voice by and
for women in a lot of ways. Yeah. In October twelve,
Jessica Weisberg wrote a really informative story that was kind
of a jumping off point for me to do this
this research for The New Yorker. She says that the
traditional vice column was designed to be playful, and the
(12:03):
modern advice column columns really emerged as a figure who
wrote mainly for female audiences and encourage propriety, manners and practicality.
So these columnists were really kind of enforcing social rules
and helping readers decide what was required of them. Yeah,
if you look at these advice columns that start really
(12:26):
in the Victorian era women's magazines and trace them up
through today. You can chart women's history in a lot
of ways because they first start out in women's magazines,
really sticking to matters of the domestic sphere, how to
raise your kids, how to tight lace corsets, when braziers
(12:46):
came into braziers, when bras came into fashion and women
stopped wearing courses, that was a big thing that was
taken up in these advice columns of saying is this okay? Um?
And it was a lot of telling when men how
to live. And then as feminism starts to come in
in gender roles begin to change, you see the nature
(13:09):
of the columns looking at more interpretive things of whether
or not it's okay to live your life in in
certain ways, not just how to do things, but why
are we doing certain things? Yeah, and there's the quote,
the advice column is a site of sexuality. Discourse did
not emerge until women rescued the format from male editors
(13:32):
and publishers. So, just like you're saying, as society moves
along and we are more open with our talk of
sexuality and gender and all this stuff, the advice columns
move with it. And one of the reasons that women
staked such a huge claim in advice columns is because
in the nineteenth century, not surprisingly and even today, female
(13:54):
journalists were relegated to social reporting with topics such as abolition, temperance,
and the stuff fridge movement. And as the female readership grew,
the newspapers at the time said, hey, you know what
the ladies like to read, lady riders, so we should
bring them on and have them write these advice columns.
See which, yes, which, in a British accent, is the
(14:15):
thought process and down Nabbey when Lady Edith goes to
write a column bringing it all back, ladies and gentlemen,
that's right, um. And thanks to the yellow journalism wars
between Hearst and Pulitzer, we have the emergence of the
Sob Sisters, who were these female reporters that were sent
out to give an emotional spin on news stories of
(14:37):
the time, and also female columnists, the the advice columnists
of the era. Yeah, in Pulitzer's World Newspaper launched one
of the first women's pages, and by nineteen hundred most
papers had one, and looking at that nineteen hundred census
of the thirty over thirty thousand journalists in the United
(15:00):
Dates two thousand, one hundred and ninety three were women.
And so it's around this time that they're like, like
Kristen said, Okay, well maybe maybe it is good business
to have more women writers on staff. But aside from
the SOB sisters, you know, who were out there writing important,
long stories, they were emotional, there wasn't so much hard
hitting female journalists, right. But nevertheless, those women's pages were
(15:23):
such boons to these newspaper empires because advertisers loved them.
It's the same story that we see today in terms
of the value of women to advertisers because we're doing
all the shopping. And it's funny, we don't see women's
pages necessarily in large publications like the New York Times today.
(15:45):
But what is it? It's the style section. Yeah, it's
still the same, you know, it's similar versions of the
same old thing. But one of the big names to
come out of all of this was Elizabeth Merryweather Gilmour,
whose name you might not have heard of, but you
might have heard of her pseudonym Dorothy Dix. Yeah, Dix
and or Gilmer got her start actually to support her
(16:06):
mentally ill husbands was at the end of the nineteenth century.
And yeah, she was one of the four original SOB sisters,
who included Ada Patterson who was a herst journalist, Nixila
Greeley Smith who was a writer for the New York
Evening World, and Winifred Black a k a. Annie Lori
and Dix is an interesting figure. She um wasn't a
(16:28):
very happy marriage, as you can imagine, and she really
just pushed forward. She went after this career. Uh started out,
you know, writing tales of murder and crime and all
this stuff before making all of her wealth and fame
through her column yeah listeners in New Orleans. She gets
her first advice column at the Times Piccune in New
(16:50):
Orleans because the editor is all like, hey, you're a lady.
These columes written by ladies with advice. That's a good idea,
and Dorothy Dix was like, okay, I'll do that. In
the fun fact, she picked her pseudonym Dorothy Dix because
apparently alliteration was very fashionable at the time in names.
So Chris in Conga, maybe I should have been an
(17:12):
advice columnists. There you go. I have no I have
no alliteration, Caroline Curvin, Okay, I'll take it, um. But
her first column, as she launched in The Times, pick
you and was called Sunday Salad, which I very much
enjoy and she became known as the mother Confessor two
(17:33):
millions because her column became widely syndicated and people loved
her advice. Yeah. By forty this is mind blowing by
Dorothy Dix talks. Her column was published in two seventy
three newspapers with an estimated worldwide readership of sixty million. Yeah.
(17:55):
Some sample titles just to get an idea of what
Dix wrote about was our you good company to yourself,
which sounds like something you would read today about dating yourself,
keeping young yep. Was still we're still reading about that.
And our lives are what we make of them, which
is essentially every inspirational poster summed up into one advice column.
(18:16):
And she was hugely famous. I mean you mentioned all
of the newspaper syndications and her readership, but in New
Orleans also started Dorothy Dick Stay. There were popular songs
about her. Uh. There was even an incident when she
traveled to Japan and when she got off the train,
she was bombarded by a group of Japanese girl Scouts
(18:39):
who were so pumped to meet her, and there were
even Dorothy Dick's impostors out there trying to capitalize on
her name. And as this is going on, just on
a side note for lit fans out there, in nineteen three,
Nathaniel West publishes Miss Lonely Hearts, which was a popular
novel at the time about a uspaper advice columnist who
(19:02):
was get this, Caroline a dude that was hilarious but
also kind of sad. Now, going back across the ocean
to where we first started, this is going on in
the UK too, but they weren't called sob sisters. They
were called agony ants, which I think, I don't know
that sounds to me, that sounds awful, Yes it does.
I just pictured them like there's much gnashing of teeth
(19:23):
and tearing of hair. Well there were, I mean in
in British papers at the time. There was a column
on the front page of every edition which was the
problem Page, and people loved it and it turned into
the advice column where these women, the agony ants, would
would write about it. And maybe British listeners can fill
(19:43):
us in on this because it does seem like a
very negative nickname. I think they still use it though. Yeah,
the United States was simply taking a queue from Britain
in a lot of ways with advice columns, because for instance,
this is coming from Never Kissed a Man in a Canoe.
Words of Wisdom from the Golden Age of Agony Ants
(20:05):
by Tanneth Carrie, who writes that by the seventeen forties,
the popularity of Mrs Eliza Haywood, who was a romantic
novelist and editor of The Female Spectator, and Francis Moore,
who was editor of the Old Maid magazine, which Caroline,
I think you and I should really revive establish the
tradition of advice columns as a primarily female preserve. So
(20:28):
this was already happening over there. And Carrie says that
the Golden Age of the agony Ants and the problem
pages starts in the mid to late nineteenth century, which
was coinciding with rising literacy rates and popular journalism. To
see these two things happening in tandem, right, So at
the same time that Dorothy Dix is over there getting
really popular with all of her writing in New Orleans,
(20:50):
this stuff is going on in England, and you know,
speaking of Dorothy Dicks through like as part of the
framework of her time, you know, the time in when
she was writing, she did in her own way campaign
through her columns for women's education and right to employment.
You know, she herself was not in a very happy marriage,
but she still believed in traditional values and all of
(21:12):
these things, and so she used her column to advocate
for the proposed nineteenth Amendment and for women's right to
go work outside the home support the family. Yeah, even
though at the time she was in favor of the
institution of marriage, she was very frank about her own
marriage and kind of how she did it because it
(21:32):
was the thing to do. And there was a column
that she published called the Ordinary Women, and it reminded
me a lot of bettyfor Dan's feminine mystique, because while
she wasn't saying drop your brooms and get out of
the house, women, she was saying that there needed to
be greater recognition of the value of women's work, which
(21:53):
was a pretty powerful statement at the time. And even
though in the women magazines, the Victorian era women's magazines,
it might not seem so revolutionary telling women how to
set tables and ignore their kids and please their husbands
and all of that. In more mainstream publication, the agony
(22:17):
aunts and uncles and the advice calumnists in the US
were often liberal voices like Dicks, especially in terms of
women's role. So even though their voices were relegated often
to women's pages, and we might think of advice columns
as these silly little things, you know, that we kind
of read for entertainment, the voice of these women was
(22:37):
nevertheless very powerful at the time. Write a history of
these advice columns, and the Daily Mail from February talks
about how a lot of these more modern columns ended
the silence, so to speak. It really brought ordinary women's
problems and secrets into the open, helping readers know that
they weren't alone. So not only are they dealing with
(22:59):
problems that maybe you wouldn't hear talked about on the
street in public, you know, it's it's really bringing to
the forefront. Oh, other people are dealing with this too.
This isn't just a shameful secret that I have to
deal with. Right, Even in those Victorian problem pages, as
Tanneth Carey writes about um, a lot of the questions
were full of women seeking to decipher romantic signals for
(23:23):
men because they couldn't openly talk to them at the time.
And then looking at Dorothy Dix's career, her column spans
fifty years worth of social changes. So in the beginning
of her column, women are writing and asking whether or
not she should marry this man who you know is
a good fit, you know, and she's that's what she
(23:44):
should do, right, Whereas by the end of it, women
are asking and saying, is it okay if I like
go off on a romantic weekend with this duty's not
my husband, but that'd be cool, right, and her just
being like, well, go ahead, go ahead. Uh yeah. It
really stopped being about morality and the advice columnist, uh,
(24:09):
dictating morals and all that stuff. Because in the nineteen seventies,
as we're moving along, you know, societies moving along in
their views of feminine feminism and sexuality, there was more
of like a sympathetic tone, not like you should do
this because it's right for society. It was more like, Okay,
here's what you're dealing with, let's talk about it. And
so these advice columnists started tackling the big issues of sex,
(24:31):
birth control, abortion, all these things there were otherwise delicate topics. Yeah,
you can see how and advice columns. The personal is
becoming political talking about sex, birth control, abortion, rape aging.
I believe it was Marjorie Proofs, one of the leading
agony ants over in Britain, and perhaps our British listeners
(24:54):
can correct me, but she, for instance, in the nineteen
seventies publicly advocated for um rape victims to be treated
a lot better if they were going into, say, the
police department to report a crime UM and in hospitals
actually set up rape suites where they could have the
(25:16):
rape kids carried out in more comfortable surroundings. UM. Also
Peggy Makins, who is another popular agony and talked about
how in the nineteen fifties when she started out, she
could not use the word bottom, even if it referred
to something innocent, right, as in the bottom of the
drawer contains papers, because of course papers and drawers comes
(25:41):
up a lot and advice. But she, yeah, she couldn't
use bottom at all. But then you know, twenty years
later she's talking about sex and everything starts to really
open up. And of course, by the nineteen seventies and eighties,
advice columns are not just in newspapers. You have sex
columns popping up in places like penthouse, um, and you know,
(26:02):
people are it is opening up dialogues. Yeah, because the
advice column. You know, as we've touched on, the advice
column has traditionally been kind of a safe space. It's anonymous,
you're writing to somebody with you know, an illiterate, alliterative name.
Uh So it's it's it's safer you can write in
something that's that's more sensitive and Okay, So hundreds of
(26:26):
years ago that might have been a question of politics
or horse poop, but now moving forward, it's more like, okay, no, no,
let's let's get real. Let's talk about sex, abortion, politics,
all these things. And throughout all of this time, it's
facilitating dialogue because a you're finding out that and this
(26:48):
is something that we hear from listeners of the podcast
as well, you're finding out that, oh, other people are
wondering these exact same things that I am. So there's
a sense of community, there's a sense of validate, and
especially if we're talking about women's issues in quotes and uh,
there's a sense that it is okay to to think
(27:09):
about and to talk about what might seem taboo and
break down those barriers in that way. So, so where
does that leave us with? Part one of advice Columns
talked about the women, the female crusaders who came in
and and how men started it because because they were
(27:30):
having affairs, they were too proper to be able to
talk about their affairs in public. And then then women
come in. So next up in our part two of
advice Columns, we get more modern, because what what's the
world to do now we have the Internet. It's fascinating
a that we have more advice columns, I would argue
(27:50):
than ever before. Um, but there was We got to
talk about a pair of sisters, twin sisters who really
change things advice wise in the United States. So tune
in for that. It's coming up next on stuff Mom
never told you. But in the meantime, send us your
(28:12):
letters on advice columns or if you would like to
ask advice from us, will be your stand in agony ants. Sure, Mom,
stuff a Discovery dot com is where you can send
your emails. Well, we've got a couple of letters here
in response to our vaginal plastic Vaginal Rejuvenation Designer Vagina episode,
(28:36):
and these two are intentionally from male listeners because we
have heard a lot from the fellows on this episode,
and it's all it's pretty it's pretty good stuff women
in terms of guys above across the board saying no,
don't please, don't do that. But anyway, Nathan has a
little bit of a different perspective on this. He writes,
(29:00):
as usual, I enjoyed your latest podcast. It brought up
a few moments of introspection, which I think is always beneficial.
One of those moments was when I remembered something from
the bowels of the Internet called a gland zectomy. I
realized that circumcision is effectively a hoodectomy, referring to clitteral
potectomy on a mail personal info, I'm a male who
(29:21):
is circumcised. I had my first son circumcised. I didn't
have my second son circumcised. The part of this that
is weird to me is the turmoil involved in that
decision making. I had no problem with my first son
being circumcised, but with my second I feel that I
struggle for weeks over it. Why is it totally acceptable
to have this cosmetic surgery done to a newborn baby,
but not go against the norm. In the media, the
(29:44):
only scandal around circumcision appears to be the possibility of
a rabbi with herpes using his mouth to clean the wound. Yikes.
So this is what I ask. Should we be surprised
women and girls are doing something about their irrational fear
of a deformed vagina when it is millennia old behavior
to say a penis is shaped wrong. I am going
(30:08):
to respond briefly to that by saying that cosmetic surgery
for laby of plassy and vaginal rejuvenation, tightening of the
vagina largely for the sexual pleasure of another person, is
vastly different from male circumcision. I know that that could
raise some controversy among some people, because there are a
(30:30):
lot of folks these days saying that male circumcision just
as wrong as female circumcision. But and yes, there are
nerve endings in the foreskin that that do reduce sexual
pleasure in a way. But a hood ectomy um is
(30:51):
far different physically than a clipping of the foreskin, and
I think that it syndicative. The rise of vaginal rejuvenation
is indicative of a far different problem than something that
grew out of cleanliness standards in a religion and not
(31:17):
just in Judaism. Yeah, I totally agree with you. So
I think we're in apples and orange is territory. That's
all I'll say about it now. I'd be curiously here
though from other listeners about that is comparing vagin plasty
to male circumcision accurate at all moment A two cents Well.
Sean wanted to add his two cents also to the
(31:39):
designer vagina discussion. He says that, as someone who does
not have a vagina of his very own, I can
say that the vast majority of men are happy to
be in the vicinity of a friendly vagina. No matter
how it looks. That man should say hooray of vagina,
pleased to meet you. If that man says you have
a strange looking vagina, he should be immediately deprived of
(31:59):
that vagina interaction and be made to be on his
best behavior during future vagina interactions. Overall, genitalia looks strange,
both male and female. Any attempt to make them cute
or pretty is going to end an unnecessary medical procedures.
And that just made me think of a penis with
a tiny top hat on it. Hey, it's the death
(32:25):
Dancing testicles. So thank you Sean for that wonderful image
in my head, and to all of you who have
written into mom stuff at discovery dot com. Of course
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(32:45):
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works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how stupp
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline and Caroline. We are kicking off
a two parter on advice columns, which might seem excessive.
(00:23):
How on earth could these women talk about advice columes
for two podcasts? I have no idea. I mean, it's
not like there's a long history or anything. Is there
there is? Tell me surprise, surprise, advice columns that a
hidden history that we were unaware of. Yeah, it goes
(00:46):
all the way back to the seventeenth century. Who knew
some guy in the seventeenth century had a problem and
he was like, well, I'm too embarrassed to talk about it,
So I was going to start advice column in a newspaper.
It's funny how that happens. And that problem was that
one Mr John Dunton, who was a London bookseller, was
(01:06):
having an affair. Yeah, and someone of his social standing
couldn't just go around talking about it. So in sixteen
ninety Dunton starts The Athenian Mercury. And he doesn't just
start the Athenian Mercury, he also creates a society, And
basically the society is made up of quote unquote experts.
(01:29):
And I say quote unquote because they weren't all real,
they didn't all exist, And it was basically just a
group of Dunton's friends who would get together in a
local coffee shop and talk about people's problems. What advice
they would give them, because they would have people right
in in the in the same format as we think
of today with advice columns. They would read the letters,
(01:50):
they would answer the letters, and they were published in yes,
the Anthenian Mercury. But can I tell our listeners it's
full name. Hit me with the full name, because it
was an entire publication. It wasn't just one column that ran,
say in a newspaper at the time, although of course
that would come out of this. So get a load
of this in six ninety Dungeon starts, and I'm sure
(02:11):
that this must have been a lot for the printer
at the time, The Athenian Gazette colon or Casuistical Mercury,
resolving all the most nice and curious questions proposed by
the ingenious of either sex. See, they were equal opportunity
even then women women folk could write in But yeah,
(02:31):
I think it's incredible. I mean, people there must have
been a real thirst for this kind of thing, being
able to ask questions anonymously, because he and his society
answered more than six thousand questions during the paper's ten
year run. And you know, so we have this anonymous
factor right off the bat that people are able to
send in their questions anything from political to environmental, to
(02:56):
love and sex and all that stuff. Yeah, and you
can imagine that this must have been a godsend at
the time because in communication was so limited. I mean,
we were such a far cry from having the Internet
with Google, where we can just go on there and
ask whatever we want. Um, but can we talk about
(03:18):
a couple of the original questions? Yeah, there was one
that was really pressing, very important, and and today it
might even it might even you know, strike a chord
with some people, and that that question is why is
horsepoop square? Why is horsepoop square? Yeah? I wish that
I had the exact wording with me, but it was
(03:39):
essentially saying, horses, but but the poop is square. Here's
here's uh, here's the answer. They are formed quadrilane quadrilangularly
in the rectum by pretension and compression upon one another
as any other round or obla. The substances which are
(04:01):
soft would be if they were thrust together. Answering the
hard hitting questions from day one? Can you get more
poetic about horsepoop? I don't think so. I submit that
you can. But in the same publication, when they're asking
about horsepoop and we're like, oh, those seventeenth century fuils,
(04:22):
they are asking questions that are still asked today in
advice columns, such as whether it is lawful for two
unmarried persons each consenting to cohabit, et cetera, since marriage
was a thing set up by man essentially, ken, is
it cool if we live in sin together? Can we
shack up? And that be a okay? Yeah? But I
also like, I mean, I read some of the other
(04:43):
questions that were very superstitious in nature, like one guy asking,
you know, why are frogs and ravens and you know
other animals considered evil? Like why are they such bad luck?
And they do? They offer very common sense answers to
some of these questions, like or maybe you're just noticing
them when you're having a bad time, right. John Dundon
dud a bit of a bit of a sassy attitude,
(05:05):
which is the same thing too that we see throughout
the history of advice columns, especially as it becomes this
regular thing that pops up in newspapers. But before we
fast forward too much, uh, we should mention that in
these first advice columns, these first vice publications, they were
(05:27):
largely run by men. For instance, in seventeen four we
have Daniel Dafoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, who came
across Denton's column and he wrote his own essays about
manners and moralities under the identity of the Scandalous Club,
prompting more than forty letters a week from readers. And
I think did he did he get on board with
(05:49):
the Athenian Mercury. I don't think so. I think he
was running his own thing. Yeah, because it became a
pretty a pretty hot thing to do among these thinkers
at the time. Because it was also a time when
people were really starting to exchange ideas, the idea of
you know, salons, people getting together to to talk about
(06:09):
different issues that were coming up. Yeah, these early advice
columns that were run by a newspaper publishers and editors,
because I guess back then you could just like wake
up in the morning and decided to start a newspaper.
But the aspirations were really larger than just talking about
relationships or marriage or sex questions, things like that, or
you know, even things that we would think of as
as our more modern you know, advice column topics. And
(06:33):
just like Kristen said, a lot of it had to
do with bringing people together. So this is coming from
David Gonalinus's book Confidential to America, Newspaper Advice Columns and
Sexual Education. He talks about how in the seventeenth and
eighteenth century the advice column was really solidified in urban London.
This is a time when citizens were searching for a
common channel to share information and engage in debates in
(06:56):
a quickly modernizing environment. There was no Internet. There were
only these newspapers and pamphlets and things that people could
publish their problems in and then read responses. And it
was a way not only to get advice or maybe
you know, glean advice from somebody else's problem, but also
find out what's going on in your own community. Yeah,
(07:16):
this gave people a platform to address their community. Um.
He calls it the quote mobilization of the public sphere,
and people were pretty active with writing into newspapers. And
while this also facilitated letters to the editor, which we
still have today in newspapers and magazines and even websites
(07:36):
as well. But then there were some that that weren't
that wouldn't necessarily fit into letters to the editor because
they didn't deal directly with something that the publication had printed.
So then you have those excess pieces becoming more fodder
for advice columns. Yeah. Well, this definitely was not just
happening in Europe and London. This is also happening in
(07:59):
early America, where Benjamin Franklin offered practical advice through his
character Silence do Good because you can't use your real name,
and these advice columns. Yeah, that is another thing from
the get go is we really love the idea of
writing to this anonymous persona because it makes them seem
maybe bigger, more, all knowing and able to help if
(08:22):
if they're not just thought of as some schmuck from
down the street answering questions from their living room in
their pajamas. Yeah, because you know John Dunton, bookseller who
is having a trouble with an affair is not quite
as alluring as Oh the the this Mercury Athenian person
(08:42):
society is answering my question. He knows why square, he
must be smart. Well, no, yeah, I do think it's
interesting that he to solidify his you know, his reason
for answering these questions, his authority. He ends up inventing
all of these people, like we have a German and
a Dutchman, and a Spaniard, and an Englishman and a
(09:04):
priest educators. Like he said, all of these different people
were in his society just so you would feel, I guess,
like they had the authority to answer questions. Of course, yeah,
we want expert advice. Well, moving forward past Benjamin Franklin
into you know, the turn of the century. The first
u S General advice column launches in the New York
(09:26):
Evening Journal at the turn of the century, and character
advice columns hung around well into the twentieth century. Yeah.
For instance, one of the popular character advice columns that
pops up around this time is in the San Francisco Examiner,
the Dingelspiel Answer Some Letters column, which was a forum
(09:50):
for German humor as the time. So I bet it
was very funny. Yeah, well, I mean you have all
these you have all these groups of people coming to
America and they're looking for a connection. Just like we said,
you know, the advice column was not just you know,
can I live with someone before marriage? Why the horses
(10:10):
poop square? It was it was really a way to
connect with your community. And so if you felt like
you were homesick for Germany, you could turn to you
could reach the dinkle Spiel. Yeah, advice column. Historians have
also called out a Benttal Brief which started in nineteen
oh six and it was launched in the newspaper the
(10:32):
Jewish Daily Forward, and it was really part of the
birth of the modern columns. And it was such a
good example of what you were talking about in terms
of having a an expert voice, in terms of assimilation,
of learning how to how to navigate this brave new world.
It was also one of the few modern columns written
(10:54):
by a man, because at this point, you know, as well,
we'll go back to some early pioneers of women written
advice columns, but this, uh, the Bental Brief drew on
the tradition of wise men rather than the Mother Confessor,
which we'll talk about um. But you know, a lot
of Jewish immigrants would have in their native countries turned
(11:15):
to a rabbi or someone else in their community to
seek advice. So this advice column was just kind of
the written version of that turning to a wise man
to answer these questions about how do I adjust to
life in America. But once advice columns really get going
in terms of seeing them not only just in the
major newspapers but also in magazines and specifically women's magazines,
(11:41):
they become this feature that is a voice by and
for women in a lot of ways. Yeah. In October twelve,
Jessica Weisberg wrote a really informative story that was kind
of a jumping off point for me to do this
this research for The New Yorker. She says that the
traditional vice column was designed to be playful, and the
(12:03):
modern advice column columns really emerged as a figure who
wrote mainly for female audiences and encourage propriety, manners and practicality.
So these columnists were really kind of enforcing social rules
and helping readers decide what was required of them. Yeah,
if you look at these advice columns that start really
(12:26):
in the Victorian era women's magazines and trace them up
through today. You can chart women's history in a lot
of ways because they first start out in women's magazines,
really sticking to matters of the domestic sphere, how to
raise your kids, how to tight lace corsets, when braziers
(12:46):
came into braziers, when bras came into fashion and women
stopped wearing courses, that was a big thing that was
taken up in these advice columns of saying is this okay? Um?
And it was a lot of telling when men how
to live. And then as feminism starts to come in
in gender roles begin to change, you see the nature
(13:09):
of the columns looking at more interpretive things of whether
or not it's okay to live your life in in
certain ways, not just how to do things, but why
are we doing certain things? Yeah, and there's the quote,
the advice column is a site of sexuality. Discourse did
not emerge until women rescued the format from male editors
(13:32):
and publishers. So, just like you're saying, as society moves
along and we are more open with our talk of
sexuality and gender and all this stuff, the advice columns
move with it. And one of the reasons that women
staked such a huge claim in advice columns is because
in the nineteenth century, not surprisingly and even today, female
(13:54):
journalists were relegated to social reporting with topics such as abolition, temperance,
and the stuff fridge movement. And as the female readership grew,
the newspapers at the time said, hey, you know what
the ladies like to read, lady riders, so we should
bring them on and have them write these advice columns.
See which, yes, which, in a British accent, is the
(14:15):
thought process and down Nabbey when Lady Edith goes to
write a column bringing it all back, ladies and gentlemen,
that's right, um. And thanks to the yellow journalism wars
between Hearst and Pulitzer, we have the emergence of the
Sob Sisters, who were these female reporters that were sent
out to give an emotional spin on news stories of
(14:37):
the time, and also female columnists, the the advice columnists
of the era. Yeah, in Pulitzer's World Newspaper launched one
of the first women's pages, and by nineteen hundred most
papers had one, and looking at that nineteen hundred census
of the thirty over thirty thousand journalists in the United
(15:00):
Dates two thousand, one hundred and ninety three were women.
And so it's around this time that they're like, like
Kristen said, Okay, well maybe maybe it is good business
to have more women writers on staff. But aside from
the SOB sisters, you know, who were out there writing important,
long stories, they were emotional, there wasn't so much hard
hitting female journalists, right. But nevertheless, those women's pages were
(15:23):
such boons to these newspaper empires because advertisers loved them.
It's the same story that we see today in terms
of the value of women to advertisers because we're doing
all the shopping. And it's funny, we don't see women's
pages necessarily in large publications like the New York Times today.
(15:45):
But what is it? It's the style section. Yeah, it's
still the same, you know, it's similar versions of the
same old thing. But one of the big names to
come out of all of this was Elizabeth Merryweather Gilmour,
whose name you might not have heard of, but you
might have heard of her pseudonym Dorothy Dix. Yeah, Dix
and or Gilmer got her start actually to support her
(16:06):
mentally ill husbands was at the end of the nineteenth century.
And yeah, she was one of the four original SOB sisters,
who included Ada Patterson who was a herst journalist, Nixila
Greeley Smith who was a writer for the New York
Evening World, and Winifred Black a k a. Annie Lori
and Dix is an interesting figure. She um wasn't a
(16:28):
very happy marriage, as you can imagine, and she really
just pushed forward. She went after this career. Uh started out,
you know, writing tales of murder and crime and all
this stuff before making all of her wealth and fame
through her column yeah listeners in New Orleans. She gets
her first advice column at the Times Piccune in New
(16:50):
Orleans because the editor is all like, hey, you're a lady.
These columes written by ladies with advice. That's a good idea,
and Dorothy Dix was like, okay, I'll do that. In
the fun fact, she picked her pseudonym Dorothy Dix because
apparently alliteration was very fashionable at the time in names.
So Chris in Conga, maybe I should have been an
(17:12):
advice columnists. There you go. I have no I have
no alliteration, Caroline Curvin, Okay, I'll take it, um. But
her first column, as she launched in The Times, pick
you and was called Sunday Salad, which I very much
enjoy and she became known as the mother Confessor two
(17:33):
millions because her column became widely syndicated and people loved
her advice. Yeah. By forty this is mind blowing by
Dorothy Dix talks. Her column was published in two seventy
three newspapers with an estimated worldwide readership of sixty million. Yeah.
(17:55):
Some sample titles just to get an idea of what
Dix wrote about was our you good company to yourself,
which sounds like something you would read today about dating yourself,
keeping young yep. Was still we're still reading about that.
And our lives are what we make of them, which
is essentially every inspirational poster summed up into one advice column.
(18:16):
And she was hugely famous. I mean you mentioned all
of the newspaper syndications and her readership, but in New
Orleans also started Dorothy Dick Stay. There were popular songs
about her. Uh. There was even an incident when she
traveled to Japan and when she got off the train,
she was bombarded by a group of Japanese girl Scouts
(18:39):
who were so pumped to meet her, and there were
even Dorothy Dick's impostors out there trying to capitalize on
her name. And as this is going on, just on
a side note for lit fans out there, in nineteen three,
Nathaniel West publishes Miss Lonely Hearts, which was a popular
novel at the time about a uspaper advice columnist who
(19:02):
was get this, Caroline a dude that was hilarious but
also kind of sad. Now, going back across the ocean
to where we first started, this is going on in
the UK too, but they weren't called sob sisters. They
were called agony ants, which I think, I don't know
that sounds to me, that sounds awful, Yes it does.
I just pictured them like there's much gnashing of teeth
(19:23):
and tearing of hair. Well there were, I mean in
in British papers at the time. There was a column
on the front page of every edition which was the
problem Page, and people loved it and it turned into
the advice column where these women, the agony ants, would
would write about it. And maybe British listeners can fill
(19:43):
us in on this because it does seem like a
very negative nickname. I think they still use it though. Yeah,
the United States was simply taking a queue from Britain
in a lot of ways with advice columns, because for instance,
this is coming from Never Kissed a Man in a Canoe.
Words of Wisdom from the Golden Age of Agony Ants
(20:05):
by Tanneth Carrie, who writes that by the seventeen forties,
the popularity of Mrs Eliza Haywood, who was a romantic
novelist and editor of The Female Spectator, and Francis Moore,
who was editor of the Old Maid magazine, which Caroline,
I think you and I should really revive establish the
tradition of advice columns as a primarily female preserve. So
(20:28):
this was already happening over there. And Carrie says that
the Golden Age of the agony Ants and the problem
pages starts in the mid to late nineteenth century, which
was coinciding with rising literacy rates and popular journalism. To
see these two things happening in tandem, right, So at
the same time that Dorothy Dix is over there getting
really popular with all of her writing in New Orleans,
(20:50):
this stuff is going on in England, and you know,
speaking of Dorothy Dicks through like as part of the
framework of her time, you know, the time in when
she was writing, she did in her own way campaign
through her columns for women's education and right to employment.
You know, she herself was not in a very happy marriage,
but she still believed in traditional values and all of
(21:12):
these things, and so she used her column to advocate
for the proposed nineteenth Amendment and for women's right to
go work outside the home support the family. Yeah, even
though at the time she was in favor of the
institution of marriage, she was very frank about her own
marriage and kind of how she did it because it
(21:32):
was the thing to do. And there was a column
that she published called the Ordinary Women, and it reminded
me a lot of bettyfor Dan's feminine mystique, because while
she wasn't saying drop your brooms and get out of
the house, women, she was saying that there needed to
be greater recognition of the value of women's work, which
(21:53):
was a pretty powerful statement at the time. And even
though in the women magazines, the Victorian era women's magazines,
it might not seem so revolutionary telling women how to
set tables and ignore their kids and please their husbands
and all of that. In more mainstream publication, the agony
(22:17):
aunts and uncles and the advice calumnists in the US
were often liberal voices like Dicks, especially in terms of
women's role. So even though their voices were relegated often
to women's pages, and we might think of advice columns
as these silly little things, you know, that we kind
of read for entertainment, the voice of these women was
(22:37):
nevertheless very powerful at the time. Write a history of
these advice columns, and the Daily Mail from February talks
about how a lot of these more modern columns ended
the silence, so to speak. It really brought ordinary women's
problems and secrets into the open, helping readers know that
they weren't alone. So not only are they dealing with
(22:59):
problems that maybe you wouldn't hear talked about on the
street in public, you know, it's it's really bringing to
the forefront. Oh, other people are dealing with this too.
This isn't just a shameful secret that I have to
deal with. Right, Even in those Victorian problem pages, as
Tanneth Carey writes about um, a lot of the questions
were full of women seeking to decipher romantic signals for
(23:23):
men because they couldn't openly talk to them at the time.
And then looking at Dorothy Dix's career, her column spans
fifty years worth of social changes. So in the beginning
of her column, women are writing and asking whether or
not she should marry this man who you know is
a good fit, you know, and she's that's what she
(23:44):
should do, right, Whereas by the end of it, women
are asking and saying, is it okay if I like
go off on a romantic weekend with this duty's not
my husband, but that'd be cool, right, and her just
being like, well, go ahead, go ahead. Uh yeah. It
really stopped being about morality and the advice columnist, uh,
(24:09):
dictating morals and all that stuff. Because in the nineteen seventies,
as we're moving along, you know, societies moving along in
their views of feminine feminism and sexuality, there was more
of like a sympathetic tone, not like you should do
this because it's right for society. It was more like, Okay,
here's what you're dealing with, let's talk about it. And
so these advice columnists started tackling the big issues of sex,
(24:31):
birth control, abortion, all these things there were otherwise delicate topics. Yeah,
you can see how and advice columns. The personal is
becoming political talking about sex, birth control, abortion, rape aging.
I believe it was Marjorie Proofs, one of the leading
agony ants over in Britain, and perhaps our British listeners
(24:54):
can correct me, but she, for instance, in the nineteen
seventies publicly advocated for um rape victims to be treated
a lot better if they were going into, say, the
police department to report a crime UM and in hospitals
actually set up rape suites where they could have the
(25:16):
rape kids carried out in more comfortable surroundings. UM. Also
Peggy Makins, who is another popular agony and talked about
how in the nineteen fifties when she started out, she
could not use the word bottom, even if it referred
to something innocent, right, as in the bottom of the
drawer contains papers, because of course papers and drawers comes
(25:41):
up a lot and advice. But she, yeah, she couldn't
use bottom at all. But then you know, twenty years
later she's talking about sex and everything starts to really
open up. And of course, by the nineteen seventies and eighties,
advice columns are not just in newspapers. You have sex
columns popping up in places like penthouse, um, and you know,
(26:02):
people are it is opening up dialogues. Yeah, because the
advice column. You know, as we've touched on, the advice
column has traditionally been kind of a safe space. It's anonymous,
you're writing to somebody with you know, an illiterate, alliterative name.
Uh So it's it's it's safer you can write in
something that's that's more sensitive and Okay, So hundreds of
(26:26):
years ago that might have been a question of politics
or horse poop, but now moving forward, it's more like, okay, no, no,
let's let's get real. Let's talk about sex, abortion, politics,
all these things. And throughout all of this time, it's
facilitating dialogue because a you're finding out that and this
(26:48):
is something that we hear from listeners of the podcast
as well, you're finding out that, oh, other people are
wondering these exact same things that I am. So there's
a sense of community, there's a sense of validate, and
especially if we're talking about women's issues in quotes and uh,
there's a sense that it is okay to to think
(27:09):
about and to talk about what might seem taboo and
break down those barriers in that way. So, so where
does that leave us with? Part one of advice Columns
talked about the women, the female crusaders who came in
and and how men started it because because they were
(27:30):
having affairs, they were too proper to be able to
talk about their affairs in public. And then then women
come in. So next up in our part two of
advice Columns, we get more modern, because what what's the
world to do now we have the Internet. It's fascinating
a that we have more advice columns, I would argue
(27:50):
than ever before. Um, but there was We got to
talk about a pair of sisters, twin sisters who really
change things advice wise in the United States. So tune
in for that. It's coming up next on stuff Mom
never told you. But in the meantime, send us your
(28:12):
letters on advice columns or if you would like to
ask advice from us, will be your stand in agony ants. Sure, Mom,
stuff a Discovery dot com is where you can send
your emails. Well, we've got a couple of letters here
in response to our vaginal plastic Vaginal Rejuvenation Designer Vagina episode,
(28:36):
and these two are intentionally from male listeners because we
have heard a lot from the fellows on this episode,
and it's all it's pretty it's pretty good stuff women
in terms of guys above across the board saying no,
don't please, don't do that. But anyway, Nathan has a
little bit of a different perspective on this. He writes,
(29:00):
as usual, I enjoyed your latest podcast. It brought up
a few moments of introspection, which I think is always beneficial.
One of those moments was when I remembered something from
the bowels of the Internet called a gland zectomy. I
realized that circumcision is effectively a hoodectomy, referring to clitteral
potectomy on a mail personal info, I'm a male who
(29:21):
is circumcised. I had my first son circumcised. I didn't
have my second son circumcised. The part of this that
is weird to me is the turmoil involved in that
decision making. I had no problem with my first son
being circumcised, but with my second I feel that I
struggle for weeks over it. Why is it totally acceptable
to have this cosmetic surgery done to a newborn baby,
but not go against the norm. In the media, the
(29:44):
only scandal around circumcision appears to be the possibility of
a rabbi with herpes using his mouth to clean the wound. Yikes.
So this is what I ask. Should we be surprised
women and girls are doing something about their irrational fear
of a deformed vagina when it is millennia old behavior
to say a penis is shaped wrong. I am going
(30:08):
to respond briefly to that by saying that cosmetic surgery
for laby of plassy and vaginal rejuvenation, tightening of the
vagina largely for the sexual pleasure of another person, is
vastly different from male circumcision. I know that that could
raise some controversy among some people, because there are a
(30:30):
lot of folks these days saying that male circumcision just
as wrong as female circumcision. But and yes, there are
nerve endings in the foreskin that that do reduce sexual
pleasure in a way. But a hood ectomy um is
(30:51):
far different physically than a clipping of the foreskin, and
I think that it syndicative. The rise of vaginal rejuvenation
is indicative of a far different problem than something that
grew out of cleanliness standards in a religion and not
(31:17):
just in Judaism. Yeah, I totally agree with you. So
I think we're in apples and orange is territory. That's
all I'll say about it now. I'd be curiously here
though from other listeners about that is comparing vagin plasty
to male circumcision accurate at all moment A two cents Well.
Sean wanted to add his two cents also to the
(31:39):
designer vagina discussion. He says that, as someone who does
not have a vagina of his very own, I can
say that the vast majority of men are happy to
be in the vicinity of a friendly vagina. No matter
how it looks. That man should say hooray of vagina,
pleased to meet you. If that man says you have
a strange looking vagina, he should be immediately deprived of
(31:59):
that vagina interaction and be made to be on his
best behavior during future vagina interactions. Overall, genitalia looks strange,
both male and female. Any attempt to make them cute
or pretty is going to end an unnecessary medical procedures.
And that just made me think of a penis with
a tiny top hat on it. Hey, it's the death
(32:25):
Dancing testicles. So thank you Sean for that wonderful image
in my head, and to all of you who have
written into mom stuff at discovery dot com. Of course
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While you're at it, you can tweet us at Mom's
Stuff podcast, and if you are a tumbler er or
(32:45):
on there as well, Stuff Mom Never told You dot
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