I haven't been of dating age for forty years, and I was sort of long in the tooth for it then (33 years old at the time), so I can only say that I know it has experience a sea change since my misspent youth.

Back in those dear, dead days beyond recall young ladies (yes, they still used that term) were supposed to be passive, or at least to seem so. I'm reminded of an advice-to-young-ladies song I wrote about forty-five years ago, which went (to a sort of calypso beat) like this:

Come all you young ladies and listen
And gain some instruction from me.
Be modest, demure and retiring
And chase not the bachelor so free!

Oh, do not act bold, free, and brazen;
Be modest, retiring, and shy.
Men flee from the woman who chases
And the brazen young lady pass by!

[instrumental or whistling break]

But the modest girl catches a husband
As doubtless you have been aware
For the modest girl does not chase bachelors
As the beartrap does not chase the bear!

Some few of you have heard me sing this on HearMe.

Dave Oesterreich