Seeking Love in Modern Britain: Gender, Dating and the Rise of ‘the Single’

Description

Seeking Love in Modern Britain charts the emergence of the modern British single through an account of the dating industry that sprang up to serve men and women. It shows how – amid a period of unprecedented sexual and social change – ‘the single’ became a key unisex identity and lifestyle. From around 1970, a growing, cottage-style matchmaking industry in Britain was offering the romantically solo a choice between computer dating firms, such as Dateline or Compudate, introduction agencies and the lonely hearts pages of Private Eye, Time Out and others. Zoe Strimpel reveals how this rapidly expanding landscape of services was catering to a new breed of single people, and how – by the late 1990s – singleness had become the culturally mainstream, wholly expected part of the romantic life cycle that it is today. Refuting the widespread idea that the Internet invented modern dating, this book uses an eclectic and engaging range of first-person accounts and snapshots from the time to show that the story of contemporary romance, mediated courtship and singleness began in a time long before Tinder. This book provides the first full account of British heterosexual matchmaking services in the decades before the internet, offering a new, bottom-up take on the sexual revolution and the women’s liberation movement, as both were felt and discussed by Britons navigating the high-stakes, gendered arena of partner-seeking. Singles at the end of the 1970s faced a new, potentially free-floating individualism, informed by a post-Pill paradigm of sexual plenty and soaring divorce but also older enduring notions of romantic tradition. They represented a new market, too: by the end of the 1970s a growing, cottage-style matchmaking industry in Britain was offering singles a choice between the services of a computer dating firm such as Dateline or Compudate, one of many introduction agencies and the lonely hearts pages of Private Eye, Time Out and others. In this book, I show how this rapidly expanding landscape of services were catering to a new breed of single people, and how – by the late 1990s – singleness had become the culturally mainstream, wholly expected part of the romantic life cycle that it is today. In shifting the lens from couples to active daters, this book puts the emphasis on how people with everything to play for romantically negotiated their pursuit of a match. In doing so, it argues for a reformulation of the relationship between sexual change and feelings towards the opposite sex at the end of the 20th century as one of lag or ‘syncopation’ rather than either progress or stasis. Cover page Halftitle page Title page Copyright page Contents Figures Introduction A revolution in attitudes? The persistence of old feelings in new times Emotional pragmatism Intimacy and the business of romance Research context and dominant narratives The matchmaking industry Methods and sources Structure 1 ‘Live alone and like it?’ Singleness in late twentieth-century Britain1 Legal, social and cultural context Singles: an emerging group ‘The age of the meaningful relationship’: self and other The problem of loneliness Solutions: romantic self management 2 The matchmaking industry, 1970–2000 Context: the growth of the industry Personal ads Introduction agencies Computer dating 3 Representations of the mediated dating industry Anonymity, illegibility and peril: anxieties about dating strangers Mediated dating and social status A sexual gulf? Dating as antagonistic encounter 4 Mediated daters and the experience of matchmaking Mediated dating: motivations and usages Dating as consumption The date Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index