Pauline Philips, the original “Dear Abby” columnist, recently died. She wrote under the pen name Abigail Van Buren and captivated her readership. Her column has been a mainstay in newspapers ever since it first appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle in 1956. Today, “Dear Abby” is written by Phillips’ daughter and remains the most widely syndicated column on the face of the earth.
“Dear Abby” offers a space to complain, to seek advice or counsel, and to discuss something you might not voice in the company of someone other than Abby. “Dear Abby” offered an anonymous space for people to share their fears, dreads, ideas, dilemmas, and more, ostensibly testing them out on Abby before committing to a solution.
While “Dear Abby” is likely read by many with a similar level of interest to reading the comics, the column was and is a political platform of sorts. “Dear Abby” often supported gender equality, challenged men for writing in with patriarchal demands of their wives or daughters, and subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) teased those whose dilemmas she thought had less to do with the dilemma and more to do with an understanding of the world rooted in systems of power and inequality.
Inequality by (Interior) Design 