The Art of Manliness - #132： The History of the American Bachelor with Howard Chudacoff

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so whether you

00:00:18.960 are married with kids divorced a grandparent with grandchildren a widower or an unmarried man what

00:00:24.680 we all have in common as men is that at one point in our lives we have all been bachelors

00:00:29.540 that is an unmarried man it's funny we don't really refer to unmarried men as bachelors anymore

00:00:34.620 you know we also don't talk about unmarried women as spinsters we're going to talk about why today 1.00

00:00:40.020 well what's fascinating is that even though all men have been bachelors at one point in their life

00:00:44.120 there isn't a lot of history or sociology written about the culture of bachelorhood that grows up

00:00:50.040 around unmarried men because it's different from the culture of married men or grandparents or

00:00:55.320 divorced men it's completely different i found a few books one of my favorite is by brown history

00:01:00.200 professor howard chudikoff it's called the age of the bachelor creating an american subculture

00:01:04.820 and in it he explores the history of bachelorhood in america starting in the colonial days of america

00:01:09.480 going all the way to late 20th early 21st century but a big portion of the book is dedicated to the

00:01:15.540 culture of bachelorhood that sprung up during the late 19th early 20th centuries and it was during this

00:01:21.480 time that bachelors american bachelors and companies catering towards bachelors created what a lot of

00:01:28.720 the culture a lot of the aesthetic what we consider old school manly today so facial hair like mustaches

00:01:35.120 and the big beards it was big during that time american bachelors were pushing it the barber shop

00:01:40.200 exploded during the late 19th century early 20th centuries saloons billiards halls gambling became huge

00:01:48.600 it was all because of american bachelors popular men's magazines first got their start during this

00:01:53.520 time they were driven by and catered to american bachelors sports were huge particularly boxing

00:01:59.920 baseball and football john l sullivan the bare knuckle pugilist that is at the top of the art of

00:02:05.820 manliness header he was a huge american celebrity during this time and he was considered the king of

00:02:10.560 the bachelors even though he wasn't a bachelor for most of his life so yeah a lot of stuff we think of

00:02:15.680 as old school manly was started by bachelors during this time period so today on the podcast

00:02:20.400 professor chudikoff and i are going to discuss this golden age of bachelorhood and its influence that

00:02:25.580 we can still feel today on american masculinity you're a long-time art of manliness reader you love

00:02:30.700 the whole old school man thing you're really gonna enjoy this podcast because you're going to find out

00:02:34.500 a lot of great insights about where this stuff that you like sprung up and got its start so without

00:02:40.060 further ado professor chudikoff with the age of the bachelor howard chudikoff welcome to the show

00:02:53.240 thank you thank you for having me okay so you published a book a few years ago called the age

00:02:58.680 of the bachelor and a few years ago i did a series of articles on the site about the the cultural history

00:03:05.320 of bachelorhood in america and in my research i was surprised how few books there were on the topic

00:03:11.920 and still are uh yours is one of the the few i think there's like two others that i found why are

00:03:18.280 why haven't historians or anthropologists or sociologists why have they looked into this subculture or this um

00:03:25.800 this uh of of america um i don't know i can't speak for them i guess because they didn't think that it

00:03:33.400 was a popular enough topic or somehow i mean i think other stages of life have attracted more attention

00:03:44.680 maybe because people thought they were more consequential whether it was uh adolescence or

00:03:51.200 infancy or old age um and of course bachelorhood is tied up with issues of gender and and male

00:04:03.320 illness that you were interested in um and women's history and women's culture i guess was uh far more

00:04:14.760 uh attractive to a number of historians so uh i'm not really sure i guess those are what answers i can

00:04:24.680 think of sure well in your book um you call bachelors both a um a subgroup and a subculture

00:04:32.120 um what's the difference between the two and how does bachelorhood in america fit those two

00:04:37.320 definitions i'm not an anthropologist so i'm very using i'm using these definitions very loosely in

00:04:45.800 this concept so i probably uh am open to criticism on that you know a culture is often uh described or

00:04:56.440 defined as a way of life uh of a group of people their values their symbols their beliefs that they

00:05:05.320 pass on almost automatically from one generation to the next and the subculture of bachelorhood

00:05:14.520 is one that exists within male culture and i guess that i call it a subculture because maybe it

00:05:23.720 uh does not adopt all of the values of uh does not adopt all of the values of male culture uh and

00:05:31.720 therefore is a subgroup within it and i guess i'm maybe interchanging the uh the term subgroup and subculture

00:05:41.720 i don't recall how often i use the term subgroup but maybe i did i can't remember for sure well you you

00:05:49.960 raise an interesting point because throughout the book about that um bachelorhood is a subculture of

00:05:55.960 male culture and that there was a tension between bachelors and married men and um i mean what was that

00:06:05.160 tension was it a tension about what it meant to be a man did were bachelors seen as less of a man

00:06:09.960 i think it was not less behavioral in some ways and that is there's always pressure on men and women

00:06:19.160 to get married because it always has been historically that's been the uh the standard uh way of going

00:06:27.720 through adulthood so there's tension there not that bachelors were necessarily uh opposing males uh married

00:06:38.680 males but uh especially because most bachelors eventually did get married as i said in my book every male

00:06:46.440 is a bachelor for at least some part of his life but the bachelor subculture has always been associated

00:06:54.520 with a kind of alternative and sometimes oppositional behavior that the more um uh settled and traditional

00:07:06.920 men who are married and uh raising families sometimes feel is um too uh deviant too far out too uh unacceptable

00:07:23.000 so the bachelor subculture sometimes uh pushes the extremes of of behavior and in doing so um causes some

00:07:33.640 tensions between the unmarried and the married what was the um the status of the bachelor in early

00:07:41.240 american history you know from colonial times up until you know the mid-19th century one of the factors

00:07:48.200 of course that affects bachelorhood uh probably as much as any if not more is the marriage market that is

00:07:58.120 in many early american uh communities there was an excess of men uh going over well into the 19th century

00:08:09.640 as the country moved westward a lot of the societies and territories of the united states had uh large

00:08:20.200 majorities of men so bachelorhood in some respects was the consequence of their

00:08:27.080 just not being enough women to marry or at least to marry in the traditional legal way there of course lots of

00:08:35.800 stories of men uh having quasi-marital arrangements with native americans or uh african slaves but the uh formal

00:08:50.360 marriage structure was affected by these uh sex ratios

00:08:57.160 and during this time too if i recall uh in early american history there were taxes

00:09:02.360 sometimes levied against bachelors or they're called bachelor taxes

00:09:07.560 yeah right because in order to have an established community you need to have established families that are

00:09:15.000 appropriating and raising a new generation and those men who

00:09:21.160 were not married at least beyond a certain age were deemed to be not contributing to the community

00:09:29.240 in a way that was desired so there were taxes levied against them uh as a means to

00:09:38.440 induce them to marry and penalize them for not being married

00:09:42.040 yeah and i also think it's interesting some of the uh the pamphlets and and other essays put out by

00:09:47.960 some of the founding fathers were like benjamin franklin uh had was kind of harsh on bachelors

00:09:53.800 uh for some reason he he's really a proponent of the married life i think he called them rogue elephants

00:09:59.000 is that correct yeah i remember that yeah rogue elephants uh i mean that

00:10:03.800 uh really uh goes uh goes back to what i was saying about the uh supposed deviant behavior of

00:10:12.760 bachelors especially any kind of wild carousing activities that they might have been uh

00:10:21.880 engaging in uh so uh benjamin franklin called them rogue elephants as uh these outliers of the community

00:10:32.040 so early american history there were probably a lot of bachelors because of the marriage market 0.98

00:10:38.680 because men were usually the first ones to arrive to new territory to settle an area and then the

00:10:43.000 women followed a couple years later but it seemed like in the 19th century middle of the 19th century

00:10:48.840 late 19th century there was a boom in the number of bachelors uh how did this why did this bachelor boom

00:10:55.960 happen in the mid 19th century the boom in bachelors happened i think because marriage the uh marriage was

00:11:06.280 postponed it wasn't that there was a big boom in the the number of proportion of committed bachelors

00:11:15.240 that is bachelors who never married but uh as marriage age rose and i'm sorry i don't have the figures at

00:11:22.440 hand um it meant that men were and women too were staying unmarried for a longer period of time than

00:11:30.760 they had been in the past now there are several reasons for explaining the rise in the age of

00:11:39.560 marriage i'd like to think that it was because there were simply alternatives to marriage that is

00:11:47.080 there were reasons not to get married because uh both economically some men couldn't afford it

00:11:56.120 and uh those men who could afford it uh had diversions that kept them unmarried for a lot

00:12:04.040 remember this is beginning of the flowering of community of consumer uh culture and the beginnings of

00:12:12.120 mass entertainment the beginnings of diversions that men and women could participate in outside of

00:12:22.440 marriage and uh were uh accepting and buying into that postpone their marriages for sometimes two three

00:12:34.360 four five years did the uh influx or the migration to urban areas contributed to that as well yeah yeah

00:12:42.760 yes and i think it's interesting too how you talked about uh people delayed marriage this time and i think

00:12:48.760 it's funny how today we we sort of wring our hands about how young people are putting off marriage longer

00:12:54.040 and longer but then you if you go back to their great great grandparents and they were it's basically

00:12:58.760 about the same age that people are getting married late 20s um and i guess the 50s and 60s was sort of an

00:13:05.480 anomaly in american history about marriage age right um yeah today the average age of marriage is higher than

00:13:16.280 it's ever been um but of course the circumstances under which that occurs today are a lot different in the past

00:13:25.320 because there are large numbers of people who live in marital arrangements but are not formally married uh as

00:13:37.000 you know with licenses and and vows and everything else that uh accompanies formal marriage so it's a little bit

00:13:46.680 difficult to make comparisons between the present and the past because of the circumstances of today

00:13:55.720 of marriage couples uh or quasi married couples uh or quasi married couples but not formally married couples

00:14:04.520 and so the age of formal marriage is now um much higher than it had been now back in the 1950s and 60s

00:14:15.800 there was of course pressure by society for people to get married and pressure on uh families to have

00:14:23.160 children and primarily the um circumstance in which children were born then was to a married couple

00:14:34.520 and um the sooner that men and women got married then the sooner that they would begin having children

00:14:44.680 so um let's let's go back to the 19th century so there's all these things going on we have um a

00:14:49.320 booming bachelors because people are putting off marriage an influx of young people to urban centers

00:14:55.080 urban areas cities we have the rise of mass consumerism the rise of mass um entertainment

00:15:03.000 mass media and all of this sort of brewed together to create

00:15:08.040 the bachelor culture and you call the 19th century the age of the bachelor

00:15:11.240 bachelor and as i was reading this i thought it was interesting that a lot of the things that we

00:15:15.240 consider manly today right if you look at the web art if you've seen our website we sort of like this

00:15:19.640 vintage aesthetic it came from this period of time so what were some of the bachelor institutions that

00:15:25.480 developed during this period that we still see remnants of today sports for one thing yeah the rise of

00:15:33.880 mass sports and the rise of commercial institutions uh like saloons barbershops which barbershops are real

00:15:46.520 hangouts for uh unmarried men um the boarding house that was the place where bachelors lived when they moved 0.93

00:15:56.440 into the cities um and uh commercial amusements amusement parks and then later movie theater movies uh these

00:16:07.800 sorts of things were the establishments that unmarried people uh patronized quite a lot yeah and as i think

00:16:17.400 you mentioned uh pool halls as well was another and pool halls yeah yeah right and i think what's

00:16:23.080 interesting is that all of these what they have in common is sort of that again going back to that

00:16:27.800 idea that bachelors are somewhat social deviants right so it's saloons pool halls where there's lots of

00:16:33.400 drinking gambling uh smoking going on uh these are sort of the institutions in it i guess the the

00:16:40.760 tension between married men and the rest of society increased between bachelors and them during this

00:16:46.920 period yeah i i my research uh didn't focus on getting any hard evidence of of that but there are

00:16:55.240 certainly hints about that yes yeah um so yeah going back to sports too this was the rise of

00:17:02.760 professional sports and i guess it was primarily bachelors who were participating in watching uh

00:17:09.400 like baseball was one and then boxing was the biggest if i remember correctly i think yeah boxing and

00:17:16.760 horse racing have to include that yeah and uh baseball yeah yeah football was primarily still a

00:17:24.520 college sport then and there weren't a lot of uh people in college at the time so i think it was

00:17:32.040 primarily baseball boxing and horse racing and then we are speaking of boxing uh you know on our

00:17:39.080 website the sort of the unofficial icon is john l sullivan he became during this period he was like

00:17:44.600 america's first celebrity in a lot of ways and he became sort of the king of the bachelors

00:17:50.600 he was in the sports world anyway as a celebrity uh and even though he was formally married he led a

00:18:00.360 what many people would call a bachelor's life of carousing and womanizing and traveling around and

00:18:08.360 brawling uh and earning and spending money on himself and others instead of developing a family

00:18:19.480 so he's a married man living as a bachelor yes yes and so one of the another interesting

00:18:26.760 um topic you delved into which i was aware of this magazine for some reason i don't know i came across

00:18:34.280 a whole bunch of old copies one time um but the national police gazette oh yeah it's a defunct magazine

00:18:42.760 but at the time it was considered the the bachelor bible can you tell us a little bit about the national

00:18:48.760 police gazette and the content that young men would find in this magazine i described the national

00:18:56.360 police gazette as a combination of sports illustrated um national inquirer and playboy because it focused on

00:19:07.560 all three well as well as true detective i mean it started off um as an urban publication um

00:19:17.400 um publishing stories of sensational crimes abductions and murders and uh even rapes and these kinds of things

00:19:29.000 um but in the back of the newspaper was always sporting news that um the publisher richard j fox expanded over

00:19:41.480 the years he even himself became a boxing promoter and even promoted some of the fights that john l sullivan

00:19:49.560 was involved in although he had a stormy relationship with uh sullivan but um and then on the some of the

00:19:59.320 inside pages there were gossip stories or uh drawings and then later photographs of what were called

00:20:07.960 those soubretts that i guess we would today call uh starlets young women young attractive women of the stage 0.97

00:20:16.920 whose uh pictures were published simply to appeal to the prurian interests of men there were also drawings

00:20:25.800 and illustrations of these crimes against women uh with uh these drawings of men trying to abduct women and

00:20:37.320 their the women's clothing falling off their shoulders um but also a lot of stories of how women took

00:20:44.200 revenge against men against cheating husbands and boyfriends and that sort of thing uh so it was a

00:20:51.960 it's a fascinating publication it's very hard to estimate how many men actually read it because

00:21:01.000 the subscription figures don't tell the whole story uh it was um delivered weekly to most saloons and

00:21:14.440 pool halls and barber shops in urban areas and therefore sat on the table and men who were just there to

00:21:21.880 hang out or waiting for a haircut um would read it and so every issue had multiple readers

00:21:31.320 most of whom of course were men and i'm sure a great proportion of those men were unmarried men so they

00:21:39.400 were exposed to all these different kinds of uh exciting stories and um sporting news and all of the rest

00:21:49.080 yeah richard j foxwell he was a a savvy businessman the way he promoted that that magazine first with the

00:21:56.360 using promote promoting the boxing matches i think for a while the national police police gazette

00:22:01.240 they're the ones who determined the world champion boxer uh for a period of time and then yeah using

00:22:08.040 the um distributing the magazine to barber shops i think he had a section i thought was really nice

00:22:13.160 it seems like tonsorlioris is that the word for yes it's like the barber of the week yeah barber of

00:22:19.640 the week and i guess that encouraged barbers to subscribe so they can possibly be a the barber of

00:22:23.960 the week i think he also if i remember correctly i could be wrong uh also did the same thing for

00:22:30.440 bartenders that's correct you did i don't know if you've never seen it yeah i've seen that as well

00:22:35.160 and uh yeah so if you're listening to this i think that you can find some uh facsimiles online we did a

00:22:42.920 post about it a few years ago but some of the stories you're going to find in it it's just some of them

00:22:47.000 are just outrageous some of them are just really funny there was they had this common a series going

00:22:52.440 on about women doing manly things so they they'd have an illustration of a woman wearing pants to

00:22:58.680 church and everyone's looking scandalized uh women smoking women playing baseball and remember there 1.00

00:23:05.720 also were uh ads in the publication for male oriented products that's true for uh sexual uh

00:23:17.480 aids for playing cards and gambling uh materials for tonics of variety of sorts and uh those sorts of

00:23:26.200 things that were only uh to be consumed by men and it seems like i guess things haven't really changed

00:23:32.840 that much because if you go to the back of most men's magazines today you're going to find advertisements

00:23:37.960 for products that can enhance sexuality or improve virility same thing happened 150 years ago yes that's

00:23:46.920 right interesting so um what's the legacy of the age of the bachelor um did the status of the bachelor

00:23:55.400 change during the early part of the 20th century or did a lot of what began in the 19th century carry

00:24:01.720 over into the early part of the 20th well i think it carried over as i said and as you suggested

00:24:08.760 yourself in the immediate post-world war ii era with the baby boom was of course preceded by a marriage

00:24:16.600 boom and there were um there's a lot of social proscription against bachelorhood and encouragement 1.00

00:24:25.720 to get married but by the time you get to the late 60s and early 70s the the notion of the swinging

00:24:35.000 single becomes far more uh appealing in american society and i attributed to some uh to some extent

00:24:45.960 in any way with the rise of popularity of playboy which of course replaced the national police gazette

00:24:54.680 as the bachelor's main uh organ the main publication and playboy celebrated all of those uh different

00:25:05.400 qualities of singlehood bachelor behavior with wine and women and sports and uh

00:25:16.200 all of the sexuality and all of the rest that helped to reinforce this swinging single image

00:25:25.480 of man in american society that actually that hasn't really subsided i don't think yeah i mean so i

00:25:32.920 guess would it be safe to say that in the early part of american history and even up through the 19th

00:25:37.640 century bachelorhood was something that happened because you know the marriage market it wasn't a choice

00:25:43.480 oftentimes did it slowly and over time become more of a choice people just decided i'm going to be

00:25:49.480 single and that's what i'm going to do well i want to be single for a longer period of time yes

00:25:57.000 right and what's the status of the bachelor today i mean it seems like people don't i don't think i've

00:26:02.120 ever heard a man referred himself as a bachelor um no you don't it's interesting yeah why is that do we

00:26:09.800 just not identify with that anymore is it just a a word from a bygone era i think it is i'm you know

00:26:17.080 i've moved on to research and other things so i haven't given this much thought and i'm trying to

00:26:23.800 process that myself um there are probably others more qualified to uh speak about that than i am but

00:26:34.280 of course you know i think it's because being unmarried has become much more acceptable in american

00:26:43.000 society and just as you don't hear the term bachelor used very much how many times you hear the word

00:26:50.920 spinster used very much anymore you don't so i guess they've become um pejorative what's the word

00:26:59.000 sort of insults that we don't use yeah politically yeah politically incorrect well president chudikov

00:27:08.680 this has been an interesting discussion thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure

00:27:12.840 well thank you very much i've really enjoyed speaking with you and saying hello to your audience

00:27:18.520 our guest today was howard chudikov he's the author of the book the age of the bachelor

00:27:21.960 creating an american subculture if you are a history buff definitely pick up this book it's a

00:27:26.600 fun fun read and you can find on amazon.com

00:27:32.520 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:27:37.000 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy

00:27:40.520 this podcast you get something out of it i'd really appreciate it if you go to itunes or stitcher

00:27:44.840 give us a review also please share us with your friends the more the merrier your reviews your

00:27:49.320 shares i really appreciate that thank you so much and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to

00:27:53.640 stay manly

00:28:14.840 you

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The Art of Manliness - August 24, 2015

#132： The History of the American Bachelor with Howard Chudacoff

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