Labor of Love

Labor of Love Plot Summary

Introduction

The year was 1896 when the word "date" first appeared in print to describe romantic meetings. A Chicago columnist used it to depict young working-class people arranging to meet each other - a stark departure from the heavily chaperoned "calling" rituals of earlier generations. This shift represented a revolution in American romance, as courtship moved from private parlors into public spaces where money changed hands. The traditional model of courtship, where young men visited young women in their family homes under watchful eyes, was giving way to something entirely new. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, dating has transformed in ways that reflect broader societal changes. From the emergence of "treating" in the early 1900s to the swipe-right culture of today's dating apps, romantic rituals have evolved alongside changes in work, technology, gender roles, and economic systems. Rather than being merely a private matter, dating reveals profound truths about how we organize our society. The evolution of American romance offers a unique lens through which we can understand shifting power dynamics, economic pressures, and cultural values that have shaped our modern world.

Chapter 1: Treat or Transaction: The Birth of Modern Dating (1900-1920s)

When dating first emerged around 1900, it scandalized authorities. Young working women were leaving home to find jobs in factories, department stores, and offices in rapidly growing cities. These "women adrift," as they were known in Chicago, encountered potential romantic partners at work and during leisure hours. Unlike the chaperoned parlor visits of previous generations, these early dates took place in public venues like dance halls, movie theaters, and restaurants. This new form of courtship immediately raised suspicions. Police officers and moral reformers worried that young women who accepted treats from men—drinks, meals, entertainment—were essentially engaging in a form of prostitution. In many cities, women were actually arrested for going on dates. Vice investigators followed "charity girls" who traded companionship and sometimes sexual favors not for direct payment but for nights out on the town. The moral panic around dating reflected deep anxieties about women's growing independence and sexuality. The economics of early dating established patterns that would persist for decades. Since working women earned significantly less than men (about half the wages for the same work in 1900), they often couldn't afford entertainment without male sponsorship. This created a transactional dynamic where women offered companionship in exchange for access to leisure activities they couldn't otherwise afford. As one woman explained to a social worker in 1915, "If my boyfriend did not take me out, how could I ever go out?" Department store salesgirls became particularly emblematic of the dating revolution. These "shopgirls" used their retail positions to meet potential suitors, including wealthy male customers. They learned to present themselves attractively, developing what contemporary observers called "personality"—a set of mannerisms and appearances calculated to appeal to men. The famous "It Girl" concept popularized by Elinor Glyn in the 1920s described this magnetic quality that made someone desirable, requiring women to appear effortlessly appealing while actually working diligently on self-presentation. Dating commercialized romance in unprecedented ways. While courtship had always involved some material exchange, dating explicitly intertwined romance with consumption. A vast commercial infrastructure of restaurants, dance halls, theaters, and other venues emerged to facilitate dating. The slang that developed around early dating acknowledged this commercialization: "treating," "picking up," and references to women as "gold-diggers" all reflected the understanding that something was being exchanged. This commercial foundation would continue to shape American romance even as dating practices evolved in the decades that followed.

Chapter 2: Going Steady: Romance During Postwar Prosperity (1940s-1950s)

The post-World War II era saw dating transform from a series of casual outings with different partners to a new pattern called "going steady." Instead of the "rating and dating" complex that dominated college campuses in the 1920s and 30s—where students competed to be seen with the most popular partners—young people began pairing off exclusively for longer periods. The practice started among high schoolers around 1940 and soon spread to middle schoolers and college students alike. "Steadies" signaled their relationships through various tokens and rituals. A boy might give his girlfriend his class ring or varsity pin to wear. Some couples exchanged "pre-engagement" rings. Young women would proudly describe themselves as "Tom's girl" or "Bob's girl." The 1942 novel "Seventeenth Summer" by Maureen Daly captured the transformative experience of teenage steady dating, following the protagonist Angie through a three-month summer romance that she describes as making her "grow up." This shift occurred against the backdrop of unprecedented post-war prosperity. Between 1945 and 1960, per capita income increased by 35 percent, and the middle class doubled in size. Teenagers had more disposable income than ever before—by 1956, thirteen million teens averaged $10.55 per week in spending money. Companies eagerly marketed to these young consumers, creating products like "training bras" for girls as young as nine or ten. Similarly, going steady became a kind of "training relationship," preparing young people for future marriage. The steady dating era coincided with intense nuclear anxiety. In the shadow of potential atomic destruction, finding security in a relationship appealed to young people living through the early Cold War. As psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton noted, a silent "nuclear numbing" affected Americans in the 1950s, with polls showing most people believed their communities might soon be bombed. Against this uncertain backdrop, having a steady partner provided comfort—someone to face the apocalypse with if it came. Economic factors drove the shift toward steadies as well. In the 1920s, when economic times were good, wealthy college students could afford to take different partners to expensive venues. But during the Great Depression and the resource-constrained war years, pairing off became more economical. Post-war prosperity democratized dating—more young people could afford to go out dancing or to movies, requiring a more equitable distribution of partners. The drive to consume that characterized American society in this era extended to relationships, which followed a similar pattern to the "dynamic obsolescence" that General Motors pioneered with its annually updated car models. The era of going steady established the serial monogamy pattern that many Americans still follow today. While adults often criticized the practice—advice columnists warned it limited social development, and the Catholic Church even expelled students for exclusive dating—steadies also created the important concept of "breaking up." For the first time, ending a relationship became a recognized stage of romance, complete with its own rituals and emotional responses. This template of coupling and uncoupling would endure long after the age of steadies had passed.

Chapter 3: Liberation and Desire: Free Love in the Sexual Revolution (1960s-1970s)

The 1960s ushered in what came to be known as the "second sexual revolution" (the first being the flapper era of the 1920s). By 1964, Time magazine was reporting on "an orgy of open-mindedness" as young people questioned traditional constraints on sexuality. This era saw a radical reimagining of relationships, challenging the very concept of dating as a path to marriage and monogamy. Herbert Marcuse, a Jewish Marxist philosopher who fled Nazi Germany and taught at Berkeley, provided much of the intellectual framework for sexual liberation. His 1955 book "Eros and Civilization" argued that technological progress and increasing automation would free humans from labor, allowing more time for pleasure—including sexual pleasure. Marcuse challenged Freud's idea that sexual repression was necessary for civilization, suggesting instead that a new era of sexual freedom could transform society. The hippie movement put these theories into practice, especially during the 1967 "Summer of Love" in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Young people flocked there seeking liberation from what they saw as outdated sexual morality. "Free love" became a rallying cry, with activists like Jefferson Poland (who later changed his name to Jefferson Fuck) founding the Sexual Freedom League. Their philosophy was simple: "no rape, no regulation." Consent was the only limit they acknowledged on sexual activity. However, this sexual revolution often reinforced rather than dismantled gender hierarchies. As Joan Didion observed in her essay "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," the supposedly liberated arrangements in Haight-Ashbury frequently involved women cooking, cleaning, and providing sexual services for men who considered themselves beyond traditional responsibilities. One hippie named Max boasted to Didion about telling his "old lady" that he had been "balling some other chick," expecting her to accept this as part of his liberation. Meanwhile, women in the counterculture reported feeling pressured to prove they weren't "uptight" by consenting to sexual activities they might not have chosen otherwise. The sexual revolution coincided with important technological developments. The FDA approved the oral contraceptive pill, giving women unprecedented control over reproduction. Playboy magazine, launched in 1953, promoted a vision of consequence-free sex as a consumer pleasure. Helen Gurley Brown's bestseller "Sex and the Single Girl" (1962) and her transformation of Cosmopolitan magazine encouraged women to enjoy sex without marriage—but also emphasized that women should work tirelessly to maintain their desirability. The feminist movement complicated this sexual landscape. Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" (1963) encouraged women to pursue careers and meaning outside the home. Yet the popular version of feminism that emerged in women's magazines often reduced liberation to the right to be sexually available while maintaining one's value in the marketplace. Black feminists like bell hooks pointed out that this vision of freedom primarily addressed the concerns of white middle-class women, ignoring the experiences of women who had always worked outside their homes. By the late 1970s, the sexual revolution had permanently altered American dating patterns. While it didn't eliminate the pursuit of long-term partnership, it made premarital sex, cohabitation without marriage, and serial relationships normal rather than scandalous. Dating became less formalized, with "hanging out" replacing structured dates for many people. The revolutionary energy that had animated the counterculture was being absorbed into mainstream dating patterns that would be further transformed by the economic upheavals of the coming decades.

Chapter 4: Niche Markets: Dating as Consumer Choice (1980s-1990s)

The 1980s marked a dramatic shift in American dating culture as consumerism and market segmentation transformed romance. The Reagan Revolution didn't reverse the sexual freedoms established in the 1960s and 70s, but rather integrated them into a new economic vision where desire itself was increasingly commodified. Ivan Boesky captured this ethos in his infamous 1985 speech to Berkeley business students: "Greed is all right. I think greed is healthy." The film character Gordon Gekko would later extend this to "greed for life, for money, for love." Dating in this era was dominated by "yuppies" (young urban professionals), a demographic that emerged as manufacturing jobs disappeared and service industries expanded. Yuppies approached dating with the same consumer mentality they brought to other aspects of life. The bestselling satire "The Yuppie Handbook" (1984) described romantic relationships as "personal interfacing" with three phases: "getting into," "working on," and "getting out." Newsweek reported that romance struck when "you're sitting at a sales meeting, and this fabulous looking guy stands up and gives this really tremendous presentation." For the first time since dating began, America experienced strong "assortative mating" patterns—people increasingly paired with partners from similar educational and professional backgrounds. As more women entered corporations as associates and partners rather than secretaries, workplace dating pools became more homogeneous. By 2005, nearly half of men with university degrees married women with similar credentials, compared to just 25% in 1960. This trend intensified economic inequality, as dual high-earner households pulled further away from the rest. The time pressures of demanding careers created new dating challenges. Yuppies famously boasted about their lack of leisure time, making romance something to be scheduled efficiently. Dating services emerged to address this need, including video dating services like Great Expectations (founded 1975) and IntroLens (1979). These services charged between $500-$1,000 annually to match clients based on questionnaires and video interviews. Specialized services soon appeared for various niches: Soul Mates Unlimited for Jews, Partners for gays and lesbians, and Today For Singles Inc. for daters with herpes. Hollywood captured the era's dating dynamics in films that paired prostitutes with entrepreneurs. In "Pretty Woman" (1990), Richard Gere's character tells Julia Roberts: "You and I are such similar creatures. We both screw people for money." These films portrayed romance as an exchange where each person marketed themselves as a commodity. Bret Easton Ellis's controversial novel "American Psycho" (1991) took this to a horrifying extreme, featuring a wealthy investment banker who literally consumes the women he dates. The seeds of online dating were planted during this period. Early computer dating services like Operation Match (created by Harvard students in 1965) had existed for decades, but the 1980s and 90s saw these services multiply and become more sophisticated. By integrating computers, matchmakers could process more criteria and offer more specific matches. These developments prepared users for the internet dating revolution that would follow, teaching daters to think of themselves in terms of searchable attributes and compatible "matches" rather than chance encounters.

Chapter 5: Digital Protocols: From AIDS Crisis to Online Algorithms (1980s-2000s)

The AIDS epidemic fundamentally altered American dating culture beginning in the early 1980s. When the Centers for Disease Control first reported unusual cases of rare pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma among gay men in 1981, no one understood what was happening. As the death toll mounted and the Reagan administration remained largely silent, communities affected by AIDS had to develop their own protocols for safer sexual interactions. In 1983, gay writers Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz collaborated with Dr. Joseph Sonnabend to produce a landmark pamphlet, "How to Have Sex in an Epidemic." Unlike traditionalists who advocated abstinence, these authors provided detailed information about which sexual activities carried risk and which didn't. The pamphlet broke sex down into discrete acts with different risk levels, creating a menu-like approach to sexual choices. AIDS service organizations across the country adopted similar educational materials, encouraging precise communication about desires and boundaries. The AIDS crisis forced Americans to develop a detailed, explicit language for discussing sex. Eventually, mainstream public health officials adopted similar approaches. In 1988, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop mailed "Understanding AIDS" to 100 million American households, emphasizing the importance of talking openly about sexual history with partners. "If you know someone well enough to have sex," Koop wrote, "you should be able to talk about AIDS." This new frankness transformed sex education in schools and public discourse about dating. The emerging internet provided a seemingly safer alternative for romantic and sexual exploration. In the early 1990s, as AIDS fears remained high, chatrooms and early online forums allowed people to connect without physical contact. Deborah Levine, author of "The Joy of Cybersex" (1993), encouraged people to use computers to "flirt, start online relationships, and explore their farthest-fetched fantasies without taking real-world risk." Online dating pioneer Rufus Griscom predicted in 2002 that soon "the idea that someone looking for love won't look for it online will be silly." Dating platforms proliferated as internet access expanded. Match.com launched in 1995, with numerous competitors following. These services expanded on the questionnaire-based approach of earlier dating services but added search functionality, photos, and eventually messaging capabilities. The efficiency of online dating appealed to busy professionals who could now sort potential partners by specific criteria before investing time in meeting. As one dating coach explained, users were essentially "advertising" themselves, a product or service seeking compatible consumers. The specificity encouraged by AIDS education and online dating profiles contributed to a growing "niche" approach to romance. Internet communities allowed people with particular interests or sexual preferences to find each other more easily. Books like "The Ethical Slut" (1997) promoted polyamory and other relationship structures beyond monogamy. Sex columnist Dan Savage developed terminology for previously unnamed practices, helping readers articulate desires they might otherwise have struggled to express. By the early 2000s, these developments had created a dating landscape where communication protocols and personal algorithms governed romantic interactions. The old model of dating as a spontaneous, mysterious process was giving way to a more programmatic approach. While conservatives launched "purity balls" and abstinence pledges in response, these represented just another consumer choice in an increasingly segmented dating market rather than a return to earlier norms. Dating had become less about shared social rituals and more about finding individualized paths to connection.

Chapter 6: Economics of Affection: Dating in the Precarious Present

Today's dating landscape operates against a backdrop of unprecedented economic uncertainty. Since wages stagnated in the late 1970s, working-class families have faced increasing financial strain. The 2008 financial crisis accelerated these trends, pushing more Americans into part-time and contract work without benefits. A 2014 Gallup survey found that half of full-time American workers put in more than forty hours weekly, with nearly 40% working fifty hours or more. These economic pressures shape how we approach romance. Time constraints have transformed dating into something that feels more like work than leisure. Dating apps like Tinder, launched in 2012, responded to this reality by offering efficiency—the ability to evaluate potential partners quickly without leaving home. Some services go even further: Virtual Dating Assistants, founded in 2012, charges $1,200 monthly to manage clients' dating profiles and conversations. As their slogan states: "Online dating's a part time job—let our experts do it for you!" Women face particular pressures in this dating economy. Since the late 1970s, media has promoted the concept of the "biological clock," warning career women that delaying childbearing could mean missing their chance. Richard Cohen's 1978 Washington Post article "The Clock Is Ticking for the Career Woman" launched decades of anxiety-inducing coverage. This framing puts the burden of reproduction squarely on women, presenting it as a personal responsibility rather than a social one—despite evidence that male fertility also declines with age. The assisted reproductive technology industry emerged to monetize these anxieties. Beginning with sperm banks in the 1970s and expanding to in vitro fertilization after the 1978 birth of the first "test-tube baby," these technologies offered hope—at a price. Today's egg freezing procedures, costing $30,000-$80,000 plus annual storage fees, are marketed as "insurance" against missed opportunities. Tech companies like Facebook and Google now offer egg freezing benefits, which Time magazine called "the Great Equalizer" for female employees, though critics note this addresses symptoms rather than causes of gender inequality. Self-help literature aimed at daters has proliferated in this environment. Bestsellers like "The Rules" (1995) instruct women to hide their feelings and create artificial scarcity to increase their value. "He's Just Not That Into You" (2004) warns against investing too much emotional energy in uninterested partners. These books present dating as a marketplace where individuals must strategically manage their emotions and expectations. Meanwhile, "pickup artists" like those featured in Neil Strauss's "The Game" (2005) teach men to manipulate women by feigning indifference. Economic metaphors now dominate how we talk about dating. We "shop around" for partners, try to "seal the deal," consider the "low risk and low investment costs" of casual relationships, and conduct "cost-benefit analyses" of potential matches. Dating apps encourage users to think of themselves as searchable products with features that can be filtered and sorted. This commodification of romance reinforces the idea that love itself is scarce and must be earned through strategic self-marketing. Despite these challenges, many people continue to seek meaningful connections. Some reject the transactional approach entirely, questioning whether the pursuit of efficiency serves emotional needs. Others are developing new relationship models that explicitly acknowledge economic realities, from platonic co-parenting arrangements to intentional communities with shared resources. As one dating columnist noted, the question remains whether our romantic lives should conform to market logic or provide refuge from it.

Summary

Throughout American history, dating has evolved in response to economic and social conditions, revealing how intimately our romantic lives are connected to broader systems of power and production. From the early "treating" relationships of shopgirls seeking both pleasure and potential social advancement, to today's algorithm-driven dating apps, courtship has consistently reflected the economic organization of its era. The transactional aspects of dating that once scandalized authorities have become normalized, while new technologies have simultaneously expanded our options and commodified our desires. What emerges from this history is not merely a story of social liberation or technological progress, but a recognition that dating itself is a form of labor—emotional, physical, and increasingly digital. While we've gained freedoms unimaginable to earlier generations, many feel trapped in a marketplace mentality that reduces human connection to strategic transactions. Perhaps the most powerful insight this history offers is that alternatives are possible. By recognizing how economic systems shape our most intimate feelings, we gain the ability to imagine different arrangements—ones that distribute the labor of love more equitably and create space for desire that isn't determined by market forces. The future of dating might depend less on technological innovation than on our collective willingness to question the values that underlie our current approaches to finding connection.

About Author

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Moira Weigel

Moira Weigel is a historian and theorist of media technologies and a founding editor of Logic magazine. Originally trained in modern languages, including German and Mandarin Chinese, she now studies digital media in a global context, focusing on vulnerabilities and opportunities that arise from the translingual and transnational movements of texts, images, information, and human actors. She also has a strong secondary interest in feminism, gender, and sexuality. Moira’s first book, Labor of Love: the Invention of Dating (2016), countered widespread claims that the rise of mobile phones and social media were bringing about the “death of romance,” showing that modern courtship practices have consistently coevolved with consumer capitalism and other forms of gendered work. Labor of Love has been translated into five languages and appeared in dozens of outlets including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, NPR, CNN, and HBO. In the process of talking about it in public, Moira developed a keen interest in online misogyny, racism, and disinformation, that led her to her current book project. Tentatively entitled Politically Correct: The History of an Accusation, it tracks the rise of “PC” as an early meme and the role that debates about it played in the formation of a surprising range of digitally mediated counterpublics worldwide. Alongside her academic research, Moira is a cofounder of Logic magazine and Logic Books and co-editor of Voices from the Valley (2020), a collection of interviews with anonymous workers from across the Bay Area tech industry. She received her PhD from the joint program in Comparative Literature and Film and Media Studies at Yale University and spent 2017-2020 at the Harvard Society of Fellows. She is currently a Sociotechnical Security Fellow at the Data and Society Institute. In 2021, she will join Northeastern University as an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies.

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