Labor of Love (35 page)

Authors: Moira Weigel

BOOK: Labor of Love

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I should probably thank everyone I have dated or who spilled the secrets of their own dating lives to me. But they know who they are.

The real inspiration for this book was my friendship with Mal Ahern. It grew out of a period of intense collaboration that we spent reading, writing, thinking, talking, and often staying together. Mal contributed key ideas, salient facts, astute edits, and spot-on jokes; from the beginning,
Labor of Love
was her labor, too. I cannot imagine what my life would be like if I had not met Mal. Thank you.

I also want to thank
The New Inquiry
, which published the essays that grew into this book, and everyone associated with it. I feel very fortunate to have encountered people with their ambition, generosity, and intelligence. I am especially grateful to Atossa Araxia Abrahamian for being a top-notch editor, interlocutor, and running partner, and to Sarah Leonard and Rachel Rosenfelt for their friendship and support.

Thank you to my agent, Chris Parris-Lamb, who understood at once what I wanted to do with this project, helped me see it more clearly, and shepherded it along. I am so glad that Emily Bell, my brave and brilliant editor, took it on. She steered me deftly through the tricky process of revising and refining heaps of research, and her vision for the book gave me confidence. I feel lucky to have had her by my side.

I wrote this book in the New York Public Library's Frederick Lewis Allen Memorial Room. Thanks to Jay Barksdale and Melanie Locay for making my time there possible. Thank you also to my advisers at Yale University, who put up with my working on this alongside my PhD, and particularly to Dudley Andrew, Harold Bloom, and Katie Trumpener, who stunned me by reading a monster first draft within days and offering detailed, helpful feedback.

My mother-in-law, Mathea Falco, was an unfailingly enthusiastic and insightful first reader; her encouragement kept me going. When my delightful father-in-law, Peter Tarnoff, laughed at something, I knew I had to keep it in.

My dear friend Hesper Desloovere endured my talking about historical dating endlessly, generously read and commented on chapters, and provided invaluable moral support. Rebecca O'Brien and Lauren Schuker Blum did the same. Mike Thompson was just the cheerleader I needed when I needed reassurance.

Thank you to Marco Roth for having always encouraged my writing and, though he probably does not remember it, telling me long ago that I should try my hand at love and polemics. To Shirin Ali for keeping me sane. To Ava Kofman for reading and helping me get my facts straight. To Joanna Radin and Kate Redburn for offering expert insights and advice. Jenna Healey generously offered guidance on researching the history of the idea of the biological clock. Other women contributed their intelligence and experience in many ways: Ana Cecilia Alvarez, Kate Siegel, Tess Takahashi, and Tess Wood.

I owe my parents, Bill and Kathy Weigel, big-time for falling in love, bringing me into being, and then reading more books to me than any human should have to read to another one. I am deeply grateful, as I am sure they were, to Eileen Folan for teaching me to read myself. Ever since I declared my intention to become a writer of historical fiction at age six or seven, these people have supported and believed in me even though I didn't. My younger (and cooler) sister, Julia Weigel, has been my steadfast partner in crime and beloved consultant on psychology, biology, and Kids These Days.

Only Ben Tarnoff can know how much I owe him. For gamely discussing the ins and outs of my most arcane finds and cockamamie theories. For being my go-to American historian and policy expert, not to mention in-house editor. Smarter, kinder, and funnier than I imagined a person could be before I knew him, Ben makes every day of work into a joy.

INDEX

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

abortion

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,
see
AIDS

Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man
(Harvey)

Ade, George

Advice to a Young Tradesman, Written by an Old One
(Franklin)

Advocate, The
(magazine)

Against Love
(Kipnis)

AIDS; and black community; and Centers for Disease Control; communities' response to; education; Kaposi's sarcoma as sign of; and Latino community; service organizations; and sexual discourse; women with;
see also
human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)

Amazon.com

America Online (AOL)

American Pie
(film)

American Psycho
(film)

American Revolution

American Society for Reproductive Medicine

Amsterdam News

anarchists

Anderson, Chester

Angell, Robert Cooley

Angels, the

Aniston, Jennifer

Ansari, Aziz

Anticlimax
(Jeffreys)

Apatow, Judd

Arthur (discotheque)

Ashley Madison

Ask for It
(Babcock and Laschever)

Associated Press (AP)

Astaire, Fred

Atlantic, The

Atomic Age: anxieties of;
see also
Cold War

attraction; signals of

Austen, Jane

Autostraddle (blog)

baby boomers

Baby Project

Backpage

Back to the Future
(film)

Baltimore Afro-American

Bambara, Toni Cade

Bankhead, Tallulah

Barker, Colin

Barnard College

Beach Boys

Beats

Beauty a Duty
(Cocroft)

Bedford Reformatory

Bee, Molly

Behr, Peter

Behrendt, Greg

Berea College

Berkeley Barb

Berkeley, University of California at

Berkowitz, Richard

Berlin, Irving

Berlin Wall

bestiality

Beverly Hills

Beverly Wilshire Hotel

Biderman, Noel

Big Brother and the Holding Company

Biological Clock, The
(McKaughan)

Birds of America
(Moore)

birth control

birthrates

Bischoff, Dan

bisexuality

Black and White Men Together (BWMT)

Black Bear Ranch

Black Cat CafÃ©

Black Panther Party

Black Power movement

Blake, Doris

Boesky, Ivan

Bogle, Kathleen

Bond, Pat

Boston

Boston Globe

Bourdieu, Pierre

Bow, Clara

Brag!
(Klaus)

Brenner, Richard

Briggs, Charlie

Broadway Brevities
(film shorts)

Brown, Helen Gurley; conventional attitude of

Brown, Louise

Bryn Mawr College

Buchanan, Patrick

Buckley, William F.

Bucknell University

Buick

Bureau of Investigation (BOI)

Bush, George H. W.

Bush, Nathan

Buster T. Brown's (singles bar)

Callen, Michael

“calling”

Calling Class

Calling Era

Campus, The
(Angell)

Canby, Henry Seidel

Capote, Truman

Career Girls

Career Women

Carmichael, Stokely

Carnegie, Dale

Cavanah, Claire

Centers for Disease Control; AIDS crisis response of

Challenges
(Girls Club of Santa Barbara)

chaperones

Chaplin, Charlie

Charity Girls

Charmers,
see
Shopgirls

cheating

Cheetah (discotheque)

Chicago; sex education in

Chicago Eight

Chicago Record, The

Chicago Tribune

Chicago, University of

Chicago Zoo

child care

Childs (cafeteria)

Choices
(Girls Club of Santa Barbara)

Chotzinoff, Samuel

Christopher Street
(magazine)

Cincinnati

Citibank

civil rights movement

Civil War

Clap, Thomas

Clark, Dean

climate change

Clinton, Bill

Clock-Watchers

Cocroft, Susanna

Coeds

Cohen, Richard

Cold War

College Men

Columbia University; Health Education program

Coming of Age in Samoa
(Mead)

Compton's Cafeteria

Conceive
(magazine)

conservatives; Christian; on in vitro fertilization

consumerism; eroticized; and sex products

contraception,
see
birth control

Cooper Do-nuts

Cory, Donald Webster (Edward Sagarin)

cosmetics

Cosmopolitan
;
Cosmo
girls

Coyote, Peter

counterculture; sexual exploitation in

Covey, Stephen

Craigslist

Crotchet Castle
(Peacock)

Cruise, Tom

culture wars

Cusack, John

Daily Mail

Daily Princetonian

Daly, Maureen

dancing; controversial; in the street

Danson, Ted

Dateline NBC
(TV show)

dating: advice literature on; AIDS impact on; as allegedly dead; anonymity in; and automobiles; and breaking up; as cause of moral harm; changing sexual mores of; in cities; cohabiting while; in college; competing definitions of; early practices of; economic underpinnings of; as exclusionary; film portrayals of; as foundation of community; “going steady” while; in high school; interracial; leading to marriage; as liberating; likened to prostitution; and looking for The One; metaphorical language of; middle-class; origins of; as recreation; as romantic; selection patterns in; services; as “shopping around”; sitcom portrayals of; sources of advice on; speed; “sugar”; taste as driver of; as theater; time pressures of; as transaction; video; as work; working-class; in the workplace;
see also
calling; going steady; hooking up; monogamy; online dating; polyamory

Davis, Angela

Davis, Bette

DeBartolo, Joseph

Definitions fitness studios

deindustrialization

DeLillo, Don

Delta Airlines

desire; communicating; female; fetish; as liability; s
ee also
wanting

desirability; as driver of work ethic

Detroit

Dewey, John

Deyo, Rabbi Yaacov