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Psychiatry to Chopin. Abby rarely clucks at length over the details of dating and mating. When a theater cashier confided her secret passion for the married manager, Abby counseled: "Find another job. It's not worth being the tail-end of a double feature." A bachelor confided that he knew a sweet, demure girl who would make a wonderful wife, and another girl, "uninhibited, gay." who "comes up to my room." "How," he asked, "shall I discourage this girl?" Quipped Abby: "Which girl?" When a California husband complained that his wife, though "smoochable, affectionate and responsive" before marriage, had "cooled to a considerable degree" since they married and moved into a $40,000 home, Abby suggested: "Have your thermostat checked."
As a result of Abby's fast rise, sister Ann sniffs that Abby is "very imitative." If not imitative, the two columnists have reason to show some similarity. Maiden-named Pauline Esther (Popo) and Esther Pauline (Eppie) Friedman, they are identical (5 ft. 2 in., 108 Ibs.) twins, who dressed identically until the day they were married (in a double wedding), and still find that they occasionally buy identical clothes in San Francisco and Chicago. Married to wealthy businessmen, they have many of the same friends, share interests that range from psychiatry to Chopin.
Abby's replies are slicker, quicker and flipper, but Ann comes up with an occasional Eppiegram. To the worried young man who asked, "How can I keep my hair?" she suggested: "You could keep it in a cigar box or just throw it away like everybody else."
Both receive more than 1,000 letters a week, and both discuss the more complex problems, especially religious, with outside advisers." And both consistently employ the astringent approach. Explains Ann: "When you sit down and cry with people, you don't help them. Some people have to be shook—and Ah shakes 'em."