ABSTRACT
The question-and-answer impulse that serves as the foundation for advice columns is a natural phenomenon. Newspapers, if anything, provided a secular translation of the centuries-old tradition of advisor and confessor. With the advent of the newspaper confessional, no longer did the Church hold a monopoly as the site of penitence. Newspapers in the seventeenth and eighteenth century responded to this increasing lack of public forums by reaching out to readers and soliciting their input. At times the letters appeared on editorial pages, and increasingly the number of letters justified spin-off space that dealt exclusively with reader's inquiries. To understand the modern advice column one must first understand how women helped to shape the field of journalism itself. The advice column as a site of sexuality discourse did not emerge until women rescued the advice column format from male editors and publishers. Instead, women's work in journalism industries should instead be analyzed comparatively with the experiences of other women journalists.
