(With an apology to Dorothy Parker, if she insists upon it.) Olin Miller expressed the same idea in Sunland Shorts, published in the Miami Daily News (Miami, Florida) of Friday 13 th September 1935:īut men often make passes at girls who drain glasses. David Murray queries-“ but how about girls who empty ’em?” It is Dorothy Parker’s theory that men never make passes at girls who wear glasses. The earliest that I have found is from the column On Broadway, by the gossip columnist Walter Winchell (1897-1972), published in the Reading Times (Reading, Pennsylvania) of Wednesday 9 th December 1931: Lines Written to Console Those Ladies Distressed by the Lines “ Men Seldom Make Passes, etc.”ĭorothy Parker’s poem has given rise to jocular extensions and variants playing on glasses in the sense of eyewear and glasses in the sense of drinking containers. poet Ogden Nash (1902-1971) in Hard Lines ( New York: Simon and Schuster, 1931): ![]() Glasses may be worn inconspicuously and often with distinction.ĭorothy Parker’s text inspired the U.S. For example, in her column Beauty and You, published in The Evening Gazette and Republican (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) of Saturday 8 th February 1930, Viola Paris used an impersonal verb to introduce it:īut no young woman needing spectacles should be discouraged by this rhyme. Very soon too, Dorothy Parker’s poem became an adage. Well, he, erratic fool that he was, had made passes at a girl who wore glasses! And he had won! And suddenly a Dorothy Parker verse started buzzing through his brain: Marie Anne Maitland! Why, he pondered unchivalrously, the girl was a dud, a washout. And he was going to marry-Marie Anne Maitland. Now he was filled with regrets and remorse. Very soon, this poem became a cultural reference-as illustrated by the misquotation in this passage from The Flirt, by Carol Bird, a short story published in the Tampa Morning Tribune (Tampa, Florida) of Sunday 26 th August 1928: ![]() poet, short-story writer, critic and satirist Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild – 1893-1967): This phrase originated as a two-line poem titled News Item, published in Enough Rope (New York: Horace Liveright, 1926), by the U.S. Originally and chiefly American English, the phrase men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses, and its variants, mean that men do not consider bespectacled women attractive.
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