Bethany Rutter explores our obsession with agony aunts in Ask Me Anything

Bethany Rutter’s Ask Me Anything follows Mary-Elizabeth, a fun, chaotic, party-loving uni student with a surprising side hustle: running her university’s anonymous advice column. Between messy crushes, questionable choices, and plenty of oversized sunglasses, she somehow gives the best relationship advice on campus. In this piece, Bethany dives into what makes agony aunts so irresistible, why we’ll always crave a little guidance, and how asking for help, even anonymously, never really goes out of style.

Guest post written by Bethany Rutter, author of Ask Me Anything. 

When I set out to write my new novel Ask Me Anything, I was clear on a few things. I knew the main character had to be a fun, silly party girl with a serious side, I knew it had to be set at a university, and I knew that my fun, silly party girl with a serious side had to have an advice column. I just love the idea of an agony aunt – even the name itself is so fun and melodramatic.

I think the appeal of agony aunt columns has two components: firstly, the idea that there’s someone whose job it is to know more about this than you, and secondly, the fact that you can write to them anonymously.

If we think about the first one, what is it that makes the idea of an agony aunt themselves feel so appealing? The way I see it, life is… overwhelming. There are so many things to think about, so many responsibilities, so many curveballs that come out of nowhere and you’re telling me we’re meant to deal with them all by ourselves? Hideous! This is why I think having an agony aunt figure is so juicy and compelling. It’s someone who’s stepping up and saying I can and will try to solve at least one problem for you.

My main character, Mary-Elizabeth, is not a particularly serious person – she wears ridiculous outfits and loves nothing more than chasing inappropriate boys. But there’s one thing she knows really well, and that’s the human heart. Sure, she doesn’t always make good decisions for herself, but she has a way of looking at relationships and dating and figuring out the issues that her peers are experiencing, whether it’s to do with body image, jealousy, the wisdom of ‘once a cheat, always a cheat’ and more. People trust her for advice because she has this something that makes her perspective feel valuable.
And the anonymity factor? Think of all the things you’d love to get advice on in your life but don’t want all the people around you knowing. Maybe you’ve got a problem with (or a crush on?) one of your flatmates and don’t know the best way to handle it. Maybe you’re really insecure about something but don’t want to draw attention to it. Maybe you’re having second thoughts about your relationship but know that once the genie’s out of the bottle and you explain all your misgivings, your friends will never be able to look at your partner in the same way.

The funny thing is, it’s clearly not just about nostalgia. It’s about the future as well as the past. Whatever I might personally think of the technology, it must also explain the incredible number of people using sites like ChatGPT and AI chatbots to try to solve their problems. Sometimes we want that sense of distance, some kind of mystical remoteness between us with our problems and the person (or robot) we hope might have the answer.

Call me old fashioned but I choose the person over the robot every time, however silly they might be.

Ask Me Anything by Bethany Rutter is out now.