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One face in the crowd meets another. Eyes lock, only to disappear again. Craigslist missed connections, a minor genre of the personal ad, reveal the imbrication of mediation and missing. They articulate anxieties over shifting relations in cityscapes and communication infrastructures. This article treats missing as an act and affect defined through mediation. Studying a vernacular narrative form such as the missed-connections ad offers insight on the significance of missing to urban life. The architecture of missed connections shows that they trace and generate connections among physical, transit, and media infrastructures. Articulating a moment of loss and hope for recuperation, missed connections look simultaneously backward and forward in time. They describe interactions at once mundane and unique, leaving gaps that invite projection. These entextualizations of in-person encounters inspire various forms of remediation. These acts come to reanimate cities as spaces where surprise moments of fleeting intimacy can reveal themselves at any moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The present work aims to study which factors are relevant in long-term mate selection from a lonely-hearts personal advertisement sample of Spanish-speaking consumers of Cosmopolitan Magazine, Colombian Edition. We analyzed One thousand four hundred sixty-eight publications (made by 770 men and 698 women) using a coding system based on the theories of sexual strategies, genetic quality indicators, and the preferences classification used in personal ads studies. Initially, we found trends as a greater predilection for psychological attributes and a greater demand to require more traits than offering them. In addition, the cross-cultural pattern demonstrated that men prefer women's physical characteristics, while women require status/resources by men. Finally, men tended to be more selective in the age range of 36-45 years, while women's selectivity decreased with age. The results replicate many of the patterns found in investigations related to human sexual selection, also bring enlightenment about new preference dimensions to study in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines phrenological tools as instruments of matchmaking and focuses on the personal ad as a site for producing and exchanging knowledge about individuals. It shows how cranial measurement produced character profiles for the purpose of judging suitable marriage partners and how users integrated those profiles into personal advertisements published in the Water-Cure Journal. A popular but contested science of the mind, phrenology maintained that one could truly know others and oneself through measuring "organs" of the mind via protrusions on the skull. While much has been written about phrenology, less attention has been paid to its focus on marriage and mating and to how users enrolled phrenology to find and judge the viability of a mate. Focused on the American context in the 1850s, this essay will show that notions of race and gender, heredity, and marital "relations" were embedded in the shorthand of phrenological measurements and personal ads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two important research questions in this context include how these farmers were singled out in the local community, thus being known by potential borrowers and how returns obviously earned on money lending were invested and passed over generations including both sons and daughters. Even though the wealth of certain farmers did not frequently become visible as conspicuous consumption, such as in the upper classes or local clergy, the existence of their fortunes was reasonably well-known. This was depicted by the vicar in his personals on deceased parishioners, which may be regarded as an outcome of urbi-pagan inter-human encounters. The theoretical subject is a concrete understanding of the importance of this credit machinery for private capital accumulation in the countryside, long before the establishment of banks. The sources are probate, church and judicial records, which are used to follow up individuals within the same family represented by one line of lay assessors ("nämndemän") over four generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a robust literature on agency in language, gender, and sexuality research, constraints on agency as seen through multiple layers of identity, conflict, or construct are less clearly discussed. Through an analysis of straight-identified men seeking other men on a popular internet personal advertisement forum, I examine the language that individuals posting in men-seeking-men online personals employ to balance a self-presentation as a straight male while simultaneously seeking same-sex partners. To do so, I build upon current conceptualisations of agency to focus on the linguistic manipulation and negotiation of the constraints to their agentive abilities to construct identities and desires. These discursive negotiations serve to separate one's identity from one's desires in terms of space, time, and agency and create a nuanced understanding of these men's sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

German political policies and social pressures before, during, and immediately after the National Socialist period had considerable impact on the process of Jewish family formation. Personal ads placed in several leading newspapers based in Berlin reveal changing attitudes and parameters for the creation of partnerships and marriages during these decades, illustrating the complicated Jewish experience of emigration, survival, and self-identification during and after the Holocaust. The rise of the Nazis intensely altered the parameters of the search for a partner, changing expressions of self-description and highlighting very different life goals, just as the effects of the Nazi period would echo in postwar ads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Founder of the most widely known matrimonial agency in postrevolutionary France, Claude Villiaume proved his talents as an enterprising ad man who exploited the uniquely commercial format of the Parisian Petites affiches to establish a virtual monopoly on the business under the Empire. Offering to serve as a conduit for men and women who pursued love anonymously in the Petites affiches, he skillfully marketed his "marriages by the classifieds" to lonely, uprooted individuals throughout imperial France. Villiaume pitched his unions as part of a new commercial and social world of movement in Paris. He sought to facilitate the circulation of capital and people by forging family alliances and love matches across multiple social and geographic borders. By linking marital choice and courtship to the vagaries of consumer capitalism, the agent transformed marriage into a form of commercial exchange associated with the new urban values of abundance, pleasure, and social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal for Educational & Vocational Guidance is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose - Using a framework of intersectionality, this chapter makes visible the realities of women of color who try to form relationships through the use of personal advertising. Methodological/approach - A discursive analysis of race and social class in personal ads using Phrase Tokens, and in-depth interviews with 14 women of color who participated in various forms of personal advertising, present the synergism of race and racism, sex and sexism, and sexuality and heteronormativity, and how these systems continue to pervade interpersonal relations. Finding - Patterns found in both texts and narratives illustrate how establishing relationships among women who are members of hetero-geneous collectivities continues to be located in systems of inequality. These data also illustrate how ad placers are unique individuals whose markers of race, class, gender, and sex identity, produce commonalities, yet how their narratives reflect diverse goals, experiences, and responses to those experiences. Women of color convey how personal advertising remains rooted in modern society where people choose their individual affiliations and continue to be defined by their group affiliations. Originality/value of chapter - Though the structural factors and social processes involved in personal advertising are relevant to the formation of interpersonal and social relationships, the phenomenon of personal advertising as a form of courtship has received relatively little attention by sociologists. In rethinking the intersections of race, gender, and social class in personal advertising this chapter includes participants' voices to more fully understand the motivations for personal advertising, how women 'do' identity, and how they experience personal advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Purpose of the study: Research on courtship patterns and romantic relationship in later life has not kept pace with the burgeoning number of older adults interested in dating. Design and methods: We conducted content analyses of themes arising from 450 personal ads written by middle-aged (40–54), young-old (60–74), and old-old (75+) participants. Results: Significant differences between the young-old and the middle-aged were few; those between the young-old and old-old were numerous. Compared to the old-old, the young-old and middle-aged were more likely to mention adventure, romance, sexual interests, and seeking a soul mate and less likely to mention health. Implications: This study increases our understanding of relationship goals in later life and highlights the error of treating all older adults as a homogeneous group. Practice and policy can benefit from more nuanced distinctions between age groups and an enhanced recognition of the vibrant emotional, romantic, and sexual lives of older adults. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses how advertisements placed in British Victorian periodicals specializing in promoting potential matrimonial prospects shed light on Great Britain's social history of its lower middle class. The popular culture street literature typically featured upwards of 500 advertisements by tradesmen and domestics searching for like-minded companions. The British matrimonial press was created during the mid-nineteenth century when newspapers ceased the practice of accepting personal advertisements.

The bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism (BDSM) community today uses online personal ads as a major way for members to meet. Such communities have designed their on-line experience around the format of the once prevalent newspaper/magazine personals ads and often feature physical descriptions, personal pictures, and special interests listings. This study examines personal profiles posted on an on-line BDSM community, which allows for the examination of the type and content of these ads that may be the impetus for them to be “successful.” As such, this approach goes beyond traditionally studied aspects of personal ads from other mainstream groups (Paul et al. 2010; Rajecki et al. 1991; Strassberg and Holty 2003). This is achieved through an experimental approach of creating profiles to see which attract the most viewers; such an approach is fairly unique, although not completely new (Goode 1996a; Sitton and Blanchard 1995; Strassberg and Holty 2003). Content-analysis is also performed on the viewers of the experimental profiles in order to gauge common characteristics/content that users have on their profiles for the purported purpose of making themselves attractive for more views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this study, we tested whether Buss and Schmitt's (1993) theory that mating strategies vary by sex and relationship duration could be applied to gay men and lesbians. We extended the findings of Gallant et al. (2011) with an analysis of 300 profile pictures from gay and lesbian personal advertisements. We found sex differences, effects for type of relationship sought, and masculinity/femininity effects. Lesbians smiled more, displayed more skin, and downplayed their height by using a downward camera angle in comparison to gay men. Lesbians displayed a higher number of total photos in their profiles than gay men, but both sexes displayed more photos when seeking a long-term relationship; gay men seeking a short-term displayed the fewest photos. Short-term relationship seekers of both sexes smiled less and wore less clothing than counterparts. Gay men and lesbians mentioned financial status more when seeking a long-term relationship. Lesbians rated as highly feminine smiled the most and wore the least clothing. Gay men rated as high in masculinity were more likely to exaggerate their height with an upward camera angle and flex their muscles in photos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the author examines articles within the issue on newspaper history and printed ephemera, emphasizing such topics as the historical importance of personals, Victorian-era advice columns, and library editions of 19th-century newspapers.

The essay presents and discusses up to now overlooked documents of the social life of German Jews in National Socialist Germany: classified ads placed by Jews of both sexes in a newspaper aimed at the broad German public. Indirectly, but yet very clearly, these advertisements expressed Jewish self-assurance or even pride and so contradicted the official propaganda in an important matter of ‘race’. At the same time these ads also revealed some of the dramatic social changes forced upon Germany's Jews by the racist policies of the Nazi regime. As the essay argues these documents offer not only interesting insights in Germany's social history and media history after 1933; at a more general level they also draw attention to the often overlooked or underrated character of newspapers as a form of two-way communication offering consumers opportunities to shape mass media content even in a totalitarian dictatorship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses personal advertisements in nineteenth-century American newspapers, focusing specifically on those published in the New York Herald. It argues that these advertisements are a crucial, although heretofore largely ignored, part of the development of penny press newspapers in America. By exposing intimate relationships in public, personals offered a way for urban dwellers to connect with and understand their neighbors in a city with a rapidly growing, and increasingly anonymous, population. They also became a new kind of ‘fiction’; often romantic, highly stylized, and sometimes even ongoing, personals functioned as short stories for the newspaper audience. However, for critics, the advertisements were dangerous, threatening to lead to the ruin of young people, girls especially. Their complaints reflect a growing concern in this era about the dangers of urban life and loss of control over morality and behavior in large cities. What was most fascinating to readers—the private, apparently illicit lives of neighbors—was the same thing that most frightened moral arbiters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines online women-seeking-women (WSW) personal ads that engage with tomboy identities and ideologies. This research demonstrates the importance of body and physicality among lesbian personal ads and the diversity of women using online personal ads. The meaning of “tomboy” in the language of WSW personal ads suggests major themes of use including: as an intermediate identity distinct within a butch/femme dichotomy, as a tempering agent for traditional femininity, as a fluid construct of personality, physicality, and body, as an understood descriptor of a particular aesthetic or physicality, and as synonymous with butch. To be a tomboy is to be simultaneously understood as a social stereotype, but also as complex, fluid, and of multiple meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this study is to investigate whether the mate-choice preferences predicted by the most common theories of the evolution of heterosexual (i.e., the Theory of Parental Investment; Trivers, 1972) and homosexual mating behavior (i.e., the Alliance Formation Hypothesis; Muscarella, 2000) are present in a sample of Romanian men. According to these hypotheses, heterosexual men should prefer younger partners, as they have a higher reproductive value, while homosexual men are expected to prefer older partners, as they seek social allies, and older men can offer more resources. These hypotheses were tested on a sample of same-age Romanian men, by performing a content analysis of online personal advertisements (N=53 homosexual men, mean age = 29.25 years, SD=8.45, and N = 59 heterosexual men, mean age = 31.10 years, SD=8.72). The results were mostly consistent with the above-mentioned theories. Romanian heterosexual men sought female partners who were significantly younger than themselves, and physically attractive. Romanian homosexual men preferred male partners who were significantly older than themselves, but they did not emphasize socio-emotional attributes more than the attributes related to physical attractiveness. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed. Further studies are needed that rely on large representative samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses advertisements seeking Jewish marriage partners placed in German newspapers during the early years of National Socialism (Nazism), 1933-1938. Several examples are cited of such personals inserts appearing in the same newspaper editions carrying anti-Semitic excerpts from Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. The author takes this situation of media visibility as evidence that the isolation and separation of Jews from Aryans occurred over some time in Nazi Germany until 1938. The ads are seen to contain coded references to life under Nazism, as well as to express a pride in Jewish identity counter to government propaganda.

This article focuses on the construction of one's relation to pornography in contemporary media by examining agony columns of young adult women's magazines. The analytical approach employed is a “close reading” from the perspective of queer theory, purposing both to “queer” the portrayals of heterosexuality and to critically review representations of non-heterosexuality. The focus is especially on the role of affects and emotions in moving subjects “toward” and “away” from porn and producing conceptions of gender and sexuality. On the one hand, the positive affects of excitement and interest are associated with men in the data corpus, whereas the negative affects of disgust and upset are usually connected to women. On the other hand, affects are absent when discussing queerness. The study thus offers an application of Ahmed's notion of the productive role of emotions both in expanding the idea of productivity from constituting ethnicity to establishing gender and sexuality and also in directing attention to the absence of affects or emotions in constituting norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Internet usage increases, its ability to provide almost instant connections and to pre-screen potential partners has made it a popular source for meeting people. To contribute to current literature, we examine differences in content between 187 men seeking men and 193 men seeking women in a sample of Romanian (Bucharest) personals in 2007. Results show that men seeking women provide more information about themselves than men seeking men. While the results also show that some Romanian men are more open about expressing their sexualities than others, there are still many obstacles affecting how men choose to share and express their sexualities in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few researchers of Internet sexual exploration have systematically compared variance of use across sexual orientations, with even fewer surveying bisexual respondents. In 2004, 15,246 individuals responded to an online survey of their use of Internet personals and adult websites. Gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals (GLBs) were more likely than heterosexuals to have exchanged correspondence, met others offline, and had sex with someone they met through personal ads. Whereas gay men and lesbians of all ages were most likely to have established along-term relationship as a result of personals, heterosexuals over age 40 were more likely to have established a long-term relationship than younger heterosexuals. Further, compared to men, women were approximately two times as likely to have established a serious relationship as a result of personals. Qualitative fIndings suggest that the Internet functions not only as a means of screening for desired characteristics, but also as a shield against prejudice in real-life encounters. GLBs and heterosexuals alike used online venues as a means of sexual identity development, sexual exploration, and community building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary psychologists generally combine sexual selection theory and empirical research to identify mating strategies in humans. The theory behind the current literature on human mating is the theory of parental investment (Trivers, 1972), which states that during mate search, given the asymmetry in parental investment of the two sexes, females should focus on attributes reflecting resources, whereas males should focus on indicators of health and fertility. Our study is an investigation of mating strategies reflected by the Romanian market of personal advertisements. We performed the content analysis of 400 personal advertisements placed online by heterosexual Romanian advertisers. Our findings are in agreement with Trivers's predictions and with other similar studies. Thus, Romanian men offered resources and were more interested in younger partners and in attributes signaling health and fertility. Romanian women were significantly more interested than men in older partners and in attributes reflecting wealth of the sought partners. Romanian women appear to be well attuned to their market value, whereas men overestimate themselves. Our study is, to our knowledge, the first one to investigate the Romanian advertisements market from an evolutionary psychological perspective, with a potential impact on the cognitive-behavioral therapy of couples and families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]