Deja Vu

July 26, 2012

Where the Men Are

Tags:

Canada,

colonization,

filles du roi,

France,

marriage

2012: New York women, fed up with the competitive dating scene in Manhattan, are increasingly flocking to upscale suburban communities in hopes of finding a mate. The New York Post interviews several women regularly making the trek to nightclubs and events thirty miles outside the city in the hopes of meeting like-minded, marriageable men:

Some of the city’s most eligible bachelorettes told the Post the trend developed when they grew fed up with immature city men who aren’t willing to commit. Instead, the women would rather hop on the commuter train to Westchester County, Greenwich, Conn., Nassau County and New Jersey hot spots that are now teeming with available mates.

High-end matchmakers said it’s a matter of time before heading to the suburbs is no longer considered a trend — and becomes the norm. “I don’t see it going away,” said Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker Patti Stanger. “The men are not in the city; they’re buying houses in a down economy. If you want to get married, you have to go to where the men are. You have to think: location, location, location.”

c. 1680: Concerned with the stability of the population of colonial outposts in Canada, the French monarchy sponsored passage of unmarried girls to the New World, hoping marriage and establishment of families would make the colony more successful. Termed the Filles du Roi, or the King’s Daughters, descendents of these unions are active in Canada today. Debates over the moral character of the filles du roi were heated in contemporary publications. Louis-Armand de Lom d’Arce traveled to Canada in the late seventeenth century and wrote an unflattering account of the ladies:

The majority of these inhabitants are free people who came here from France with little money to set up their establishments. Others, who after having resigned their careers as soldiers thirty or forty years ago embraced the career of farmer. After the reform of the troops, the King sent from France several vessels filled with girls of middling virtue, under the direction of a few old Beguine nuns who divided them into three classes. These Vestals then crammed people one on top of the other into three different rooms where husbands chose their wives in the same manner as a butcher goes to choose sheep from amidst the herd—everyone found the shoe to fit his foot. There was not a single one let after fifteen days. I have been told that the fat ones were chosen first because they thought that they were less active and that they would have more trouble leaving their homes, and that they would better withstand the great cold of winter.

Image via Shutterstock

• Email /
• Print /
• Comment now