Woman's Own November 27 1957 Page 20/21

Page 20-Page 21 below

Monica Dickens

THE WAY I SEE IT

Who says ‘going steady’ is fun? 

TEENAGERS are at war, They are fighting their parents, and most of the adult world, over what looks like becoming one of the most vexed and violent questions of these confused times: Going Steady. 

There was a time when a boy or girl liked to go about with a crowd and have a lot of light-hearted flings without getting too deeply involved with anyone person. But nowadays it seems to be just the opposite. 

In America, they start going steady at 13 or 14. Over here, where we mature later, 15 or 16 is about the age when a girl confronts her dismayed family with the news: ''I'm going steady with John, so don't expect me to go out with anyone else-ever." 

" Not ever?" her mother gasps faintly, "Don't tell me this means you are going to marry John." 

"This has nothing to do with getting engaged," explains her daughter. "You don't understand. We're just-going steady!' 

Everyone does it 

LET'S run after thatgirl as she slams out of the room, away from her mother's worried questioning, Let's pin her down, and make her answer one very important question: "Why do you want to go steady?" 

I imagine she would not answer: "Because I'm in love with John," or: "Because I like to be with him more than with anyone else." 

If she told the truth, she would probably say: "Because everyone else is doing it."

There, in a nutshell, you have the key, not only to this whole modern problem, but to the reason why it is a problem, 

Going steady, when you are very young, is wrong and dangerous, and a sad waste of what should be the most carefree years of your life. 

But how is this wrong ever going to be put right if girls are so sheeplike that they must follow this precocious fashion?

I realize that their contemporaries make it difficult for them to break away from this modern custom. One girl, who is going steady with a boy with whom she obviously has nothing in common, admitted to me: 

"Teddy's a conceited bore, and we fight most of the time, but you must have a boy friend of your own or you're a flop, 

Two great dangers

 "OLDER people tell me I'd have more fun at parties if I were free, but would I? The girls who aren't going steady feel out of it, because most of the others at the party are, It's almost as if you don't belong." 

Not much of a party, I'd say, if everyone is strictly paired off. I don't know why they have a party at all, if it is only to show off the fact that they have already got steady dates.

But I do know this. There are two great dangers in going steady, and these are the reasons why I, like all parents, am so dead against it. 

The first is that when two young people are in each other's company all the time, there is a risk of them pursuing their intimacy to its fullest extent; teenage morals are safest in a crowd.

The second is that a girl who ties herself down to one boy when she is young is lessening her chances of marrying the right man when she is older. 

It's a craze

FOR the boy with whom you go steady at 16 is most unlikely to be the boy you would want to marry at 20.

If you stick like a leech to him, and never get to know any others, how are you ever going to be experienced enough to know what kind of a man you want to spend the rest of your life with? 

The craze for going steady, as we may find out in about ten years time, could lead to a whole crop of unhappy marriages. 

Another complaint that parents make, is that these close alliances between boy and girl lead to agonizing emotional upsets when the alliance breaks up, 

"I hope you never have to live through it,” one father told me, "When Julie went steady with Phil it was bad enough, because she behaved like a creature obsessed-wore his sweaters all the time, and wouldn't go anywhere without him. 

"But when the big renunciation scene came, it was far worse, She wouldn't eat, She couldn't do her homework, She burst into tears if you looked at her, 

"Finally, we had to encourage her to go back to Phil, to save our sanity, I never thought I'd be so glad to see her wearing his awful striped sweater again."

Mark of ownership 

WEARING each other's clothes is one of the rituals attached to going steady, which seems to be a condition that requires such emblematic signs to hold it together,

The boy often gives the girl a bracelet with his name on it, to mark his ownership. If the girl still likes the bracelet, after she has ceased to like the boy, she can cover his name with a piece of sticking plaster. 

In co-educational America they also practise such idiosyncrasies as putting their clothes on back to front, and tying their shoes from top to bottom, To further mark their 'togetherness,’ they may dye their hair some startling colour. 

I can't help thinking that going steady must be rather boring if you have to resort to gimmicks like this to keep the fun going. 

But perhaps fun is the wrong word, There doesn't seem to be much fun about this business, 

Fun is something that teenagers used to have when they danced and played with a carefree crowd, and the phrase 'Going Steady' had not yet been invented. 

ANOTHER ARTICLE BY MONICA NEXT WEDNESDAY
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 Don’t Pity Me 

continued on page 23

Woman's Own School of Cookery 

conducted by Philip Harben

Cooking with Wine
Two old French dishes with a very special flavour
  COQ AU VIN. This is a famous French dish which literally means 'Cock cooked in wine.'
 A certain romantic aura clings about the very notion of dishes cooked in wine.
 Indeed a large number of cookery books have been written on this subject alone; the basic assumption being that if all the dishes in the book- are cooked in wine, then all the dishes in the book must be marvellous, because wine is marvellous.
 What is more, the French (so the belief runs) cook all their dishes in wine, all French dishes are marvellous, so there you are again!
 It is a lovely thought. But, alas ! it just isn't true.
 To begin with, the French do not cook all their dishes in wine. Only a very, very small proportion of the dishes in the classic repertoire of French haute cuisine use any wine at all, and then only very sparingly.
 For a French chef to cook a dish entirely in wine is very rare; almost the only example of' such a dish that I can think of, off-hand, is Coq au Vin! (CHICKEN IN WINE)
 Then again, however marvellous wine may be, it completely ceases to be wine, or anything remotely resembling its original self, by the time you have cooked it. Its alcohol is evaporated, its volatile esters driven off, its whole character violently altered.
 Nevertheless, the use of wine does have two effects upon the dish, and one of these effects is very important. It imparts a certain distinctive, remarkable and unmistakable taste to the dish; and, this is the important thing, it has a very definite tenderizing effect.
 This is due to the slight acidity which even a sweet wine possesses, and acidity helps to break up and soften meat tissues during long, slow cooking.
 Some recipes for Coq au Vin require the use of the blood of the bird for thickening purposes, but this is neither easy to obtain nor pleasant to use. The recipe that follows (a very, very ancient one, by the way) is quite straight forward.
 Coq au Vin. Cut a tender chicken up into pieces. Fry some chopped bacon, and some whole shallots or 'spring' onions, in butter, and when they have begun to take colour, add the pieces of chicken, some crushed garlic, and (optional) a few button mushrooms washed but not peeled. A good pinch of mixed herbs and some pepper.
 When the chicken has had some 10 minutes cooking, pour a glass of brandy into the pan and set light to it.
 Now transfer the whole contents of the pan to a saucepan and add half a bottle of red wine. Cook the chicken for another 10 minutes and it should be quite done.
 Pour off the liquid and thicken it with flour and butter roux (this is explained below). Dish up the chicken and pour the thick wine sauce over it.
  Filets de Sole au Vin Blane (Fillets of sole in white wine). When you buy the fillets of sole from the fishmonger, ask to have the bones as well. Make some fish stock by cooking these bones, together with a bay leaf and a few slices of onion, in a mixture of equal parts white wine and water, with the juice of a lemon. This lemon juice is to help the colour: without it the final sauce is apt to go a dingy grey.
 Having made this fish stock with wine, poach the sole fillets in it gently for 5 minutes. Pour off the liquid and thicken it into a sauce with flour and butter roux. (For 1/2 pint sauce melt 1 oz. butter, stir in 1 tablespoonful flour, slowly work in the liquid. stir and boil till it thickens.) Check the seasoning. 
Range the fillets in a shallow serving dish, pour the white wine sauce over,( Decorate with shrimps and parsley).