This compelling history,from courtship to Tinder and hook-up culture, shows how each transition in dating has produced a scandalised condemnation of increased promiscuityTinder became one of the dominant dating apps in a field already thick with such apps, and thanks to the following insight: dating needed to be more like a game. Things that are genuinely fun don’t need to be turned into games – no one needs to swipe right on a picture of an ice-cream cone to be convinced to eat it. Dating,on the other hand, something that we do to ensure our happiness and pleasure, and can manufacture us miserable. Stressful,time-consuming, emotionally taxing, or frequently disappointing: it can feel like work. Moira Weigel’s Labor of Love,a historical survey of dating in the 20th century, advances the common-sense argument that dating feels like work because it is work, or,like work, it is subject to market forces.Using a wide variety of sources – newspaper cuttings, and research studies,non-fiction books, novels and movies – Weigel winds her way from the 1900s to the present, and outlining the popular mode of American dating in each decade and how it reflects that moment’s economic conditions. She begins in the 1900s,when dating began. Courtship has always existed, but dating – assembly up with a potential romantic partner in a public space – started only when enough women were working external of their homes to come across outlandish men without the oversight of friends and family.
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Source: theguardian.com