All About Boys by Betty Cornell

[telophase]

...published 1958

(According to the list of publications in front, she also wrote Betty Cornell's Teen-Age Knitting Book but, alas, we do not have a copy.)



The book isn't so egregious about How Boys Really Are, but that's because, despite the title, it's not actually about boys. It's about teen-age girls and how they should dress, act, and behave in order to get a boy and, once they've gotten the boy, how to tell if it's love, how to break up gracefully, answer the question of how long they should wait until marriage, etc.

Betty Cornell does not, apparently, believe in either sex or the danger of it. The worst that might happen in the Land of Betty Cornell is that you might fall in with a "fast" crowd, defined as being on a double-date with a couple your date knows but you don't, who may drink a little alcohol, drive a little too fast, and indulge in necking. Or you may attend a party where there is a lot of necking and lowered lights.

But despite her warnings about this sort of date or party - her advice is that the boy who took you to such a thing is most definitely not your type - she blithely assumes that when you go away to College Weekends, you will be in no danger at all and that you will not be supervised or chaperoned. A College Weekend is a weekend in which you go to visit a college-age date on his campus. There's probably a dance of some sort on Saturday night, or perhaps a football game or some such, and you may be put up in a dorm room with other girls. But quite often boys turn their own rooms over to visiting girls, and after the visit has concluded, would prefer not to find powder on the bureau drawer, lipstick on the bedspread, and one of his school pennants missing because the girl took it as a souvenir.

There's a few paragraphs devoted to visiting West Point or Annapolis on college weekends, and she reassures both you and your parents that as there's no liquor served to midshipmen at Annapolis or to cadets at West Point, there's no need to worry about getting mixed up in any wild parties.

I mmmmight be a wee bit skeptical that college boys will be perfectly gentlemanly and courteous to high school aged girls without supervision, and that midshipmen and cadets won't party hearty.

I have, after all, been to college.

Elswhere, in the section on the first date, if you are invited to a sports event it assumes that you don't actually know or care anything about such event, but that you can't pass up the opportunity to sit next to this boy for an entire afternoon. You should learn a little about the game if you have time before the date, and your father, brother, or some sympathetic male other than your date will probably be happy to coach you.

Now, assuming you have absorbed the fundamentals of the game, rule number two is: don't treat your date to your interpretation of them. He wants you to know a little something, but nowhere near so much as he does, and he certainly doesn't want to be distracted from what's happening on the field by your scholarly dissertation. Some actresses have a very effective trick of "throwing a line away" -- that is, saying something important in a low-voiced, offhand manner, as though it weren't important at all. This is a technique I recommend highly for a girl watching a sports event. One brief, offhand (but accurate) comment about a play or player will impress a boy with your intelligence a thousand times more than interminable chatter, no matter how learned it may seem.

And what is wrong with saying "I don't know anything, can you explain what's happening?" to your date? Betty Cornell advises that you do so if you haven't had time to find a sympathetic male to teach you about the game beforehand.

Advice on dances:

Men are full of the herd instinct. If, by the sheerest accident, three boys arrive simultaneously to cut in on one girl at a dance, someone in the stag line will notice and the word will go around that the girl is a "real queen." It doesn't matter that one of the three was her father, the other her brother, and the third a boy who stumbled on his way to the exit. Men are not that closely observant, so this girl's evening is an assure success.

By the same token, if some Joe Friday in the stag line noticed that a girl has been dancing for fifteen minutes with a boy who isn't her steady, this mighty observer will feel it's his duty to inform the rest of the stag line that this girl is a "dog." Anyone who has been planning to cut in on her will quickly revise his plan. Stag lines are not noted for taking any unnecessary chances.

Finally, in the back of the book are a bunch of charts to rate your date and yourself, along with a sample set filled out. I reproduce the sample set here, so that you may take them and enter them into your own spreadsheet, for your convenience:

How Does HE Rate as a Date?	Date's name:			Bob R.
	Where we went:			Football Dance
	Yes	No	Maybe	Remarks
Did he ask for the date in plenty of time?		X		Only 2 days ahead -- embarassing
Did he give you all the important info beforehand? time? place? etc.?		X		Why didn't I ask?
Was he neat and tidy when he rang your bell?	X			Except for his orange tie!
Was he attentive to you all evening?	X			VERY!
Was he overly possessive?			X	He could get to be
Did he dance well?		X		He's eager to learn
Were you proud to be seen with him?			X	Almost
Did he bring you home at the agreed time?	X			On the dot.
Is he now the man of the hour?	X			But it's not love.
Do you want another date with him?	X			But not only him.

How Do YOU Rate as a Date?	Date's name:			Bob R.
	Where we went:			Football Dance.
	Yes	No	Maybe	Remarks
Did I accept his invitation graciously, without fishing for it?	X			But maybe too eagerly
Was I ready on time?	X			So early I got too excited
Did I introduce him to my family?	X			But not little brother
Was I neatly and appropriately dressed?	X			Neat new dress
Was I pleasant and attentive?	X			Tried hard anyway
Did I watch out for his pocketbook?			X	He talked as though he had a lot of $.
Did I flirt with other boys?		X		Didn't have too much of a chance
Was I nice to his boy friends and the other girls in his crowd?			X	Didn't like his boy friends.
Did I tell him what a nice time I'd had when he took me home?	X			Sweetly.
Did he ask for another date?			X	I think he will.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

o m g those charts are really something else.

[telophase]

I envision a shared database.

[lady_ganesh]

Ticky boxes!

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

I need to know more about Betty Cornell now. Who was she and what made her the expert on teenagers? Is there an "about the author" blurb? A quick look at Google didn't turn up anything useful.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

She was a model at the time the books were ghost?written, and that's all the info that's contained about her. Well, other than a few all-identifying-information-removed stories about her modeling, like how when she started at 14 or 15, she was posing for "tubby teen" pictures, and then she got her act together and slimmed down.

Presumably a teenage girl in the 1950s would have heard of her? Since her name is in the title?

ETA: There's a reference to a "Betty Cornell Huston" being in EILEEN FORD'S BEAUTY NOW AND FOREVER. Secrets of Beauty after 35, pub 1977, here (http://www.iluvmags.com/fbk.html).

ETA2: And there's a pic of the (original) cover of the Teen-Age Popularity Guide here (http://www.annabellemagazine.com/annabelle%20issue%209/08REN.html).

ETA3: A review of her knitting book! (http://www.string-or-nothing.com/CommentView,guid,0899bbfc-b966-36f5-7459-0007e96ddfa0.aspx)

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

Wow, that knitting book is complicated. Good freaking grief, those are some advanced looking patterns!

I laughed like a loon over the comments on the dry nature of the military campuses. Yeah, right.

[seajules]

she reassures both you and your parents that as there's no liquor served to midshipmen at Annapolis or to cadets at West Point, there's no need to worry about getting mixed up in any wild parties

::DED OF LULZ::

Okay, no, seriously. Had the woman ever met a brand new military man in her life?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think she lived in an artist's impression of the 1950s, rather than the actual 1950s.

[pseudo_tsuga.livejournal.com]

Are the answers in the spreadsheets from the books?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yes; the two charts above are the sample charts from the book.