Shrinking violets and caspar milquetoasts: Shyness and heterosexuality from the roles of the fifties to the rules of the nineties

In this article, I explore the implications for heterosexual power dynamics of changing representations of shyness for white middle-class women and me n. Using popular self-help, etiquette and advice books as my source of evid ence, I show that as ideas about how to achieve emotional intimacy in heter osexual relationships have changed, so, too, have ideas about white middle- class women's and men's ideal relationship to shyness. What has not changed is the idea that women are primarily responsible for performing the emotio nal labor deemed necessary to achieve intimacy. In the 1950s, when the aren a of courtship was regarded as the last bastion of male privilege, young wo men were expected to adopt certain shy behaviors to build up young men's se lf-esteem. In the mid-1970s, when feminists were challenging male privilege , mutual self-disclosure was established as the new standard of intimacy. Y et given that white middle-class men were increasingly afflicted with a shy ness labeled "reserve," women were still considered responsible for perform ing relationship-sustaining emotional labor. In the more conservative 1980s and 1990s, mutual self-disclosure continued to be herd up as an ideal, but men were frequently absolved of this responsibility by authors who argued that men were biologically predisposed to be reserved.