According to Nichi Hodgson, the author of the book, “The Curious Case of Dating: From Jane Austen to Tinder,” select pubs in London started to earn reputations as safe havens for LGBTQIA+ people at the time, and while “courting” was still alive and thriving amid the lesbian community, gay men tended to “hook up” more than date.

Additionally, the US was experiencing an era that historians now refer to as the ” Pansy Craze” in the late 1920s and early 1930s; an openly gay era in which LGBTQIA+ people were performing on stages and throwing parties across the country (though especially in Chicago ).

“Massive waves of immigrants from Europe and the American South were arriving in American cities so that white middle-class urbanites became fascinated with exploring the new communities taking place in their midst, whether immigrant, bohemian, black, or gay,” University of Chicago history professor George Chauncey told Chicago Magazine.

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Popularity became the key to dating success in the 1930s and mid-1940s.

American historian Beth Bailey explained in a Mars Hill Audio report called ” Wandering Toward the Altar: The erican Courtship ” that in the period leading up to World War II, one’s perceived popularity and status epitomized one’s dating success, instead of one’s personality, attributes, or interpersonal skills.

Men’s popularity was not at that time measured by how much sex they could have, or by whether or not they got married, but instead by the material objects they owned, and by whether or not they had a fraternity membership.

Women’s popularity, on the other hand, was determined by how “in demand” they appeared to be at any given time , and whether or not they managed to be “seen” in public with a desirable man.

Society’s perception of single women was still narrow-minded and exclusionary, though.

For further insight as to how society viewed single women in the 1930s, look n o further than the illustrated guide that Click-Photo Parade magazine published back in 1938, as shared by Mashable.

Among some of the magazine’s tips to straight, single women were to prioritize a man’s interests lest he find you boring (“Please and flatter your date by talking about the things he wants to talk about”), to refrain from using the car mirror for make-up application (“Man needs it in driving, and it annoys him very much. ), and to take care not to pass out from over-drinking at the bar (“Chances are your date will never call you again!”).

Because so many men were drafted to war in the 1940s and ’50s, an end game to dating was reintroduced: securing a spouse.

“With half the war won, men are coming home to America, but not enough of them,” The New York Times Magazine wrote in June, 1945, alluding to the gender imbalance that would strike America after World War II. Women were pressured, from as early as their adolescence, to secure husbands – and yet, public regard for women was never lower.

Women were widely denigrated in the ’40s and ’50s. The media reinforced the notion that a woman could mostly earn value via a successful union: married women were worthwhile , because they, at least, might manage to overcome their exasperating stupidity and do something useful for their husbands.

Despite the pressure put on women to marry, dating protocol at the time stripped them of their agency.

Even though their livelihood was on the line, women were still expected to wait on men to initiate a relationship, lest they be regarded as easy. For women, being publicly portrayed as being in a monogamous and committed relationship was a matter of utmost importance. The term “going steady” therefore gained traction, and these unions were usually broadcast via tokens: a Letterman jacket, or a class ring.