Advice Columns

[ldiggitydawg]

Critique their responses here!

I make a habit of reading advice columns, such as Savage Love, The Vine (though I'm getting sick of the list days), Miss Manners and occasionally the Dear Abby/Dear Margo/etc cluster.

Heh. I like the headline beneath that one: When news about your underpants is not helpful.


"Her Mother Could Be on the Mt. Rushmore of Bitches" Now, that, my friends is a sig line if I ever saw one.

[satellite]

The NY Times started a new advice column called Social Q in the Miss Manners mode. I don't really see the point of it, but whatever. I always like reading The Ethicist in the NY Times magazine.

[batmom]

I love Ask Amy but especially Carolyn Hax. She's so good and I think that her writing is quite good, too, although I sometimes wonder if she hasn't made her point to subtly and that the person writing in for help might miss the point.

[chonies]

I often quarrel with my sister about Carolyn Hax. I love her column, but my sister hates that Hax "doesn't answer the problem people wrote in about." So, yeah, I think sometimes she is too subtle, but my sister can also be a little too letter-of-the-law sometimes. I read Carolyn Hax's book until it fell apart, and I love that there's the discussion board AND weekly online chat.

I know it's not really advice, but I also love Ask a Mexican.

[dwanollah]

They have Gustavo on our local radio station every month or so. He's awesome (even though I initially questioned the "Ask a Mexican" segment... it's actually ended up being less inflamatory/racist than I thought it would)!

I simply adore advice columns (which was problematic when I was 12 and lacked critical thinking skills and read Dr. Joyce Brothers), and have to read several a day as I'm gearing up to hunker down to work. Margo's been bugging me more than usual; she's been even more self-involved, and it's nice, Margo, that you want to chat about ___ or ___ of yours, but ANSWER THE QUESTION! Ask Amy, for some reason, bugs the crap out of me, but I haven't figured out why yet, so batmom, can we put off the rumble for a little while...?

I haven't checked out The Vine in a while. I lost interest when all the Guest Viners started showing up.

Secretly, I wanted to be an advice columnist for many years when I was in my teens. Thankfully for the rest of the world, I got over that....

[chonies]

I generally like Ask Amy, but there's something that bothers me about her, too. I can't tell if it's the "related to Emily Dickinson!" bit or what, but she seems kind of nervous and gawky, like she still hasn't found her voice. I think part of it is that she has a certain Year 2008 Modern Lady sensibility, but she still has to answer the same dumb question Ann Landers would have gotten. I think. I also get the sense she's not entirely confident in her advice.

I had erased my own early pubescent dependence on Dr. Joyce Brothers. Thanks, Dwan. Now I have to go look for some old columns...

[Malle Babbe]

Ask Beth kept me sane in my teen years. For those of you who don't like the rambling, vague, digressive advice columnist, don't ever read Cary Tennis at Salon. com. I really get annoyed when someone in obviously a lot of distress writes to him, and he goes off on a paragraphs-long bout of textual masturbation before cutting to the chase.

Dan Savage is fun to read, but I really get annoyed when he drops the ball on female sexual health issues, or whines about having to look up cunnilingus techniques for his readers. Dan, a great many straight guys are still in the "girls are icky" phase, you aren't impressing anyone. Once a reader sent a letter to him where she was clearly showing symptoms of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, and he blew her off. Granted, a disturbing number of physicians are uninformed about PCOS, but they probably went to med school back in the day when the diagnosis for everything was "It's all in your head, dear.". What's Dan's excuse?

[Mugsy]

Does anyone remember the Ann Landers' Sex Test? You answered a bunch of questions about dating, making out, sex, drinking, drugs, etc. and got points. The more risky the behaviour, the more points. At the end was a scoring chart, and the higher your score the more of a warning you got that you should tone down your behaviour.

I had one especially wild year in my teens and took the test during that time - I was proud of my higher score. Snerk.

[chonies]

I just found Ask a Korean[/color], which is kind of interesting, although not really about advice per se.

I looked up the column Malle Babbe referenced about PCOS, and it looks like Dan posted a correction. He seems genuine in his apology; the comments from readers are often my favorite parts of his columns, especially about sexual techniques. Several years ago he ran a column about performing cunnilingus, and each response contradicted the previous, which I thought was hilarious--his message, of course, being "ask your partner what she likes and don't rely on a newspaper column!"

ETA: I read the original letter, and although Dan is clearly uninformed about PCOS, the other part of the letter was pretty spot-on, I think. I know everyone has different relationships with the memories of their earlier selves, but sometimes remaining true to the twelve year old version of yourself is deeply injurious.

[Deleted]

I LOVE Dan Savage. I think his column is hilarious and most of the advice pretty dead-on. Although the whining about girly parts does get to be irritating. His is the only advice column I read regularly.

I used to read Dear Abby all the time as a kid, but stopped following that one a while ago. Although, if I come across it in the paper, I'll read it.