Excerpts from “129 Ways to Find a Husband [Updated]”
Small Updates to the 1958 McCall’s Etiquette Classic
“The day has passed when a reasonably pretty girl can sit, hands folded, on her front veranda waiting for Mr. Right to come along…Getting married today is a problem in social engineering.” -McCall’s, 1958.
WHERE TO FIND HIM:
1. Go to a showing of the latest Star Wars installment. No luck? Go to the next showing. Sit through as many showings as it takes until a guy talks to you, even if he’s just asking if you could move over two seats so he could sit with his engineering buddies.
3. Move to Silicon Valley. Become a software analyst. Work for a company that insists that “women have to earn their spot.”
5. Make an appointment to have your prostate checked.
7. Take an improv class. When paired with your funnier, more dynamic male classmates, let them initiate scenes where you end up making out with them.
9. Join every single dating app. List your hobbies as “drinking bourbon, smoking meat, and playing Fortnite.”
11. Sit on a park bench and feed the pigeons, while spying on a lacrosse game in the distance.
15. Answer every Craigslist ad for someone trying to sell a motorcycle.
16. Attend a Louis C.K. comedy show.
17. Ask all your married friends to set you up with their single friends, even if they’re described as “broken.”
21. Look in the census reports for places with the most single men. Then move to McMurdo Station in Antarctica, a trading floor at a brokerage firm, or a prison.
22. Join the writers’ room for a late night talk show.
23. Go see a man about a horse. If that doesn’t pan out, go see another man about an alpaca.
24. Post a scathing review of the latest superhero movie. Read the comments on your post. Engage the trolls to see if any of them are single.
HOW TO LET HIM KNOW YOU’RE THERE:
31. Rub beef jerky behind your ears and in your decolletage.
32. Memorize Dave Chappelle’s old stand-up routines. Quote them in daily conversation.
34. Get a tattoo of Stewie from Family Guy on your lower back.
37. Smoke cigars suggestively.
39. Set your own car on fire, then ask him for a ride home.
42. Trip in front of him to get his attention. Shatter every bone in your legs. Flirt with the dreamy orthopedic surgeon resetting your femurs.
43. Hang a Big Lebowski poster above your bed, but definitely don’t masturbate to it.
47. Burn your face with a branding iron. After people initially recoil in horror, it’ll become a great conversation-starter!
50. Hang out in the nearest hospital. Pull the plugs of all the women on life support, then linger nearby to snag one of their newly-widowed, deeply-bereaved spouses.
51. Stand in a corner and cry softly. When he asks what’s wrong, tell him that you’re still choked up over the ending of Avengers: Infinity War.
HOW TO LOOK GOOD TO HIM:
62. Get your psoriasis treated; men don’t like girls without functional skin tissue.
63. Coordinate your outfits to match your man’s. Cut and dye your hair just like his. Transform yourself into his doppelganger. Pass yourself off as him at the next board meeting and see if they take your ideas more seriously.
64. Soak yourself in heavy perfume; men like it when you smell like an elderly woman who died in a tropical rain forest.
71. Learn to apply make-up like a Kardashian moonlighting as a geisha.
79. Have yourself surgically altered to look like Margot Robbie.
80. If he’s gifted you any trinket or jewelry, wear it, even if his wife’s name is still engraved in the band.
83. Make sure you fluctuate your weight to keep up with current body type trends.
90. If you look good in ugly Christmas sweaters, wear one on every single date.
92. Don’t share your opinions on any topic; remember- a girl with a voice is no one’s choice!
HOW TO LAND HIM!:
94. Make sure to refer to your job as a “hobby,” and his job as a “career.”
95. Be the girl who’s up for anything, even if it means winding up on a crime spree in the Ozarks.
96. Don’t make yourself too available! Block his number. Ghost him on social media. Change your name and move out-of-state. Fake your own death.
97. Men like girls who get on well with their family. Massage his mother’s bunions. Lend his dad money to play the slots. Sleep with his brother.
100. Laugh at all his jokes, even the ones that seem super-offensive.
103. Don’t play games, unless it’s a sexy version of Settlers of Catan.
104. Tailor your interests to align with his. For instance, if you love Hamlet, ask him to show you the entire series of Sons of Anarchy.
107. Buy him a small present for no reason, like a PlayStation 4 Pro, or a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Pay off his law school debt. Purchase his apartment when his building goes co-op.
109. Don’t talk about your old boyfriends, especially the ones you’re still sort of dating.
115. Learn taxidermy and have his childhood dog exhumed and stuffed.
122. Tell him you definitely never want to get married or have kids. Prove it by amputating your ring finger and having your tubes tied.
129. Point out to him that the death rate of single men is twice that of married men, laugh good-naturedly, then suddenly let your smile drop. Murmur “death rate” over and over until you get that ring!
Bio: Ali Solomon is a cartoonist from Queens, NY. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, McSweeney’s, the Huffington Post, and Scary Mommy, among others. You can find her illustrations on Instagram @AliSolomain.
