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The History of Dating
Before people balked at Tinder, they were balking at joyrides and blind dates.
Moira Weigel, Brooklyn-based author of Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), traces the history of dating, from the late Victorians to today, and the controversies and problems of each era.
Weigel said with the invention of dating as we known it today, which happened in the 1920s when women began flocking to big cities in search of work, people have always lamented about the demise of dating.
"You get authority figures and advice columnist in every generation fretting about the ways that courtship rituals are changing," she said. "And I think that has a lot do with the difference between dating as a form of courtship and older forms where parents and community leaders — your priest, your rabbi, your aunts; the sort of Jane Austen scenario — supervised courtship. And there stricter protocols with a clearer end goal, which was supposed to be marriage. And dating is much more ambiguous. So I think this sense of crisis is perennial."
→ Hear more: Weigel will be speaking at Bookcourt in Brooklyn today, May 18th, at 7pm (click here for details) and at Book Culture on 112th Street on May 20th (details forthcoming - check here!).