Pauline Phillips, more commonly known as the columnist Dear Abby, died on Wednesday. You can read her NY Times obituary here. Not having grown up in the US, she wasn’t a big part of my cultural background, but I’d certainly seen and enjoyed her writing.
Reading advice columns is always a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. It’s fun to either feel smug at coming to the same conclusion as the columnist or indignant at how foolish their advice is. Not to mention the ‘sightseeing at the asylum’ element of occasionally encountering a nutty letter from a bewildered person in a strange situation. Dan Savage, writing in his tribute to Dear Abby, quoted what is by far the best and most concise response I’ve ever seen in an advice column.
Dear Abby: Two men who claim to be father and adopted son just bought an old mansion across the street and fixed it up. We notice a very suspicious mixture of company coming and going at all hours—blacks, whites, Orientals, women who look like men and men who look like women. This has always been considered one of the finest sections of San Francisco, and these weirdos are giving it a bad name. How can we improve the neighborhood? — Nob Hill Residents
Dear Residents: You could move.
In tribute to those women who dress like men and vice-versa, here’s an entertaining image I found on the sex is not the enemy tumblr. Personally I always appreciate a woman in a sharp suit.
I’m afraid I don’t have an original attribution for the image.
