"Must A Girl Pet To Be Popular?"



This advice article appeared in Screenplay Magazine July, 1959
"I've been going with Johnny now for almost six months and he says I'm a real cube whenever I stop him for going too far"........
"My boyfriend says I don't really love him because I won't pet with him every time we go out".......
"I was really crazy about him, so crazy that I let him do things he shouldn't when we parked. He said it was all right and nobody would ever know. He said all the girls did it. But I still felt guily about it. I felt even worse when the boys at school started to snicker every time I walked past. And once I even heard one of the say.....'She's a pushover'. when I heard that I knew that I had to stop dating Ronnie. When I told him that I was going to stop seeing him, he got very mad and said he was going to get even with me. Since then, I haven't dated him....but I haven't dated anybody else either. Well, I did date couple of fellows who only wanted to park and were very disappointed when I made them take me home. It's a real mess. Even some of my girl friends act very cool these days. What can I do to get back my good reputation?"

We've gotten so many letters asking about the problem of petting that we finally decided to seek the advice of one of your favorite teen-agers... a girl who has been in every type of situation and still maintains her reputation and her dates...Sandra Dee.
"I know," she said sympathetically, "I get letters about necking and parking all the time, too. Some girls even write to ask me if I have a special phrase to use when I turn down a boy who's trying to get too wild. The only phrase I've ever used successfully," she related, "is a firm, loud no."
"I don't know why girls think they have to pet to be popular," she mused. "Maybe it's because a lot of them aren't very sure of themselves and think they can hold onto their men better by letting them do whatever they want. That sounds pretty confused, doesn't it?" she laughed. "What I mean is; a girl should never think she can hold on to a guy by letting him have his way in everything--by always making concessions. A boy likes her to be independent--to show some spirit. Especially in the matter of petting--or necking or whatever you want to call it. Men like to talk a big game about all the conquests they've made, especially when they're with pals, but when it comes right down to it, men marry the nice girls."
The cute, blonde star also had some advice to give to the girl who had written us the letter printed earlier in this story: "This girl really has made herself miserable," Sandra agreed with us. "But so far she's done the right thing. She's stopped seeing the boy. She could have gotten into even worse trouble if she wasn't smart enough to see the position she was getting into. Now she's just going to have to stick to her guns. She's going to have to say 'no' until she's sick of the word. And sooner or later, people will forget. Even in a small town, people forget things more quickly than you think. Why, Hollywood is one of the smallest big towns I've ever been in when it comes to gossip," Sandra added. "But I've seen a lot of girls that started off on the wrong foot, get back on the track and become big stars."
"It's funny," Sandra went on, "but I've seen a lot of girls gain popularity through easy moral standards. And when I think back over what finally happened to them, most of them either wound up in trouble or in unhappy marriages.
"I guess the best way to be popular is first to make yourself as attractive as you can be, in thoughts and conversation as well as personal appearance and then just be confident. Hold your head up and respect yourself. Then, others will also respect you.
"An old friend of our family used to tell me: 'Sandra, never do anything in private that you would be ashamed to see on the front jpage of your local newspaper the next morning.' I guess there's nothing I can add to that."

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