what’s your score? 👀

"If you don't meet new people how are you gonna get dates?" Karolina, don't hit me like that

I love how part of the boys quiz is just like "do you think woman are people???"

"gentlemen, is taking care of your ladies gay?" a 1950s ancestor of a reddit user😭😭😭

"1955 RIZZ QUIZ" IM CRYING

I love how this is a fascinating combination of genuinely good common sense and the book being unbelievably judgy. 😂

With only two possible answers for each question, this is not so much a dating quiz or a personality test as it is a teaching of proper etiquette for the era. Nudging readers towards “correct” behavior, in the form of an engaging quiz, is quite clever!

I'd argue that the "are you good at dancing" question is only in the boy quiz becouse most dances were expected to be lead by the men.

I mean - it wasn't like we had endless supplies of film to portray the kids who weren't well-spoken and the teens who weren't squeaky clean and well dressed. I think there's a sample bias here when we think about eras most of us don't remember. I'm 100% sure there were children who couldn't give eloquent street interviews and teens who stank and dressed like slobs, but people just weren't paying attention to them in the books, film reels, and magazines that survive to this day.

I find this surprisingly fun. I still love that one question was basically just "are you a pick me or a girl's girl?"

So interesting! My Mum was a teen in the 50s and taught me that if I was on a date in a restaurant, to ask my date what he was ordering. Then look up how much that was on the menu, and make sure what you ordered cost the same or less. "A boy that can't afford steak, won't say he's ordering steak"

i don't need a test to know i'm undateable, my personality is 3 neurodivergent racoons in a trench coat.

I find it interesting today’s US “alpha male” boys talk about how men used to be men and almost none of the “be interesting, considerate aspects” of this test from the mid 1950s would be considered by them to be alpha. But also funny that they all think they are all alpha (and it was a flawed study in the first place). But I digress. I must now go learn the art of “the dance.”

I can add a bit of info for you. My mom was dating in the 50's. Yes, it was super casual. She typically went on double dates and it wasn't uncommon in that situation for teenagers to discover they liked the other person more. (This actually happened and resulted in my mom marrying her date's best friend (my father), lol. All 4 people involved remained friends to their dying day despite living on opposite sides of the US.)
Dancing: my mom went to MANY dances and military balls. Dancing was very popular, even with teenagers, and there were several ballrooms around. (I'm from Chicago.) Not tacky dance halls but legit gorgeous ballrooms. It wasn't uncommon for a guy to ask a girl to a ballroom and it not be a date. They just liked the dancing. But the guy was expected to go all out for the occasion (nice steak dinner, wrist corsage for the girl, etc.) To me it sounds like a very formal  type of "a date" but my mom always insisted it wasn't and was just something girls did as long as they weren't going steady with someone. You also had a dance card and could dance with other guys while you were there. But you better leave with the guy that escorted you there or you were a hussy.
Posture, appearance and being well-spoken: oh, this was a big one with my mom! She was always telling me not to slouch and refused to use any form of "baby talk" with me. That resulted in me being able to conduct fairly good conversations with adults as a small kid. She always dressed me in fairly nice dresses as a child (we're talking late 70's here) and whenever there was a party, whether for a family member or a kid at school, she would put me into what would be deemed today as a princess dress, lol. She'd do my hair up in curls too. I literally looked like a kid from the 50's. 😂

The quiz is surprisingly wholesome, it considers much more soft skills and intelligence I expected. And maybe I missed it but it seems like there’s no question like “do you know how to cook and clean” for girls!
With the “thank you” letters - in my friend group we often text each other after a hangout something like “thank you for the evening, it was a blast!” or something like that.
If it was a party it’d be great to credit the host in the photos you’ll probably post later, or directly text them a short thank you message. I don’t think anyone would consider it weird, I’m pretty sure they will be happy to know their effort was appreciated

Imagine if this was modus operandi for Gen Z.
Most of this is basically "How well-adjusted are you?"

All girls, in America, in the 50’s would’ve taken home economics. A large part of that was about sewing - fabrics and colors. They would’ve expected that styles would last 2 - 3 years or longer.

I was a young teen in the mid-60s and I bought a book that was similar to this! As an ignorant rural girl with no older sisters, it gave me ideas for how to navigate an expanded, urban social system. One very useful bit of advice was: if you feel awkward or alone, look for others who seem to feel the same and reach out them, strike up a conversation. I did this to a new girl in 8th grade, beginning a life-long friendship!

I'm pretty sure the "Have you washed your favourite sweater in the last month" question, while sounding utterly outrageous to us, has a lot to do with the fact that a sweater in the 50's was likely still made out of 100% wool. I have two 100% wool sweaters myself, and I am always shocked by how seldom I need to wash them. Wool has antibacterial properties and is water resistant, so it won't absorb the sweat and bacteria as easily, and I truly only wash my sweaters once or twice a winter (sounds disgusting, but I promise they don't smell and it's actually better for the fibers to wash less often). Granted, I'm not a sweaty teenage boy, but I think this is probably what's behind that question lol.

"Written by Gay Head"