By Sandy Rashty
London Digital PR
16 August 2009
Whether they gather in their early-twenties or late-forties, women have sipped on countless cappuccinos as they obsess about their latest dating experience…their latest dating disaster. Aside from the lucky few who brushed past their soul-mate in the school playground, for the rest of the female population the pursuit of happiness (often assumed to be love) has dragged us into the exhausting mechanism of urban dating. Hopes of courtship and a corsage, of a love reaped from a Jane Austen novel, or an iconic Hollywood movie are quite frankly, Gone With the Wind. Instead the modern woman is presented with a Facebook profile, a myspace homepage, a blog on Twitter, or all three. For those who are extremely eager to find love, the services of match.com or mysinglefriend.com provide an extremely speedy examination of your birthplace, age, profession, and eye-colour… Nevertheless, with the hope that ‘I’m the exception’, we continue to date. The looming dilemma continues to ask whether the experience of dating really differs for those women in their early-twenties, to those in their late-forties?
Trusting the omniscience of Wikipedia, one may contend that the experience of dating is: ‘a form of romantic courtship between two individuals who may or may not expect marriage’. Herein (one initially assumes) lies the distinction between the two female generations; whereby the senior group of women expect marriage, and the younger group of women do not. Surely experience has taught the senior women to intelligently and automatically distance from the ‘bad boy’, the ‘commitment phobe’, the ‘workaholic’ (and alcoholic for that matter), who will never marry or settle down with them.
While indulging such social stereotypes, one may simultaneously assume that the younger generation of women remain at the polar end of the dating spectrum. They are eager to welcome the experience and indulge the ‘bad boy’ as he excites them more than the gentleman who holds the door open. The notion of marriage before they have engulfed their vocational potential scares them as they never want to be as devalued and undermined in the workplace and their mothers once were. Yes, the wave of feminism has swept the younger generation into a revolution of self-belief, where the traditional dependency on men and the dating desperation to ‘snap him up before someone else does’ has thankfully disappeared… Right?
Unfortunately, endless hours of drinking and dining with younger girlfriends has disproved this theory. My extremely unscientific poll of their eternal relationship tales, of their obsessive analysis of how many kisses are placed on his brief Facebook message the night before their university exams, has encouraged one to say that the younger generation of women are just as keen, if not more so, to date and settle down than their senior counterparts.
Unfortunately, endless hours of drinking and dining with younger girlfriends has disproved this theory. My extremely unscientific poll of their eternal relationship tales, of their obsessive analysis of how many kisses are placed on his brief Facebook message the night before their university exams, has encouraged one to say that the younger generation of women are just as keen, if not more so, to date and settle down than their senior counterparts.
As a dear friend of mine ludicrously wailed that she’ll “never get married” the moment she turned eighteen, I began to contemplate our social obsession and haste to find Mr. Right, and settle for Mr. Right Now even if he values you as much as his football shirt, far less than his friends, and as a walking talking blow-up doll. As the same friend of mine (who we’ll call Lucy) ventured off to a central London seminar on How to Find Mr. Right, I was just as shocked as the leader of the seminar, that at her twenty-years of age the ‘dating-panic’ had become firmly entrenched in her psyche. As Lucy forwarded the notes that I have right in front of me, bought the self-help manuals, watched He’s Just Not That Into You (took notes on that too), I could no longer judge her, or any single woman, for becoming so engrossed in our social dating frenzy.
Just as we are all meticulously uniformed in Juicy Couture tracksuits and march Oxford Street in our beloved Ugg boots, so has the experience of dating become a monotonous one for every generation of women; partly because of the billion-pound market of dating literature that promises everlasting love…provided you act in a certain way. The experience of dating that should be exciting, inspiring, and tingling; is often transformed into an examination, a test of how many rules you remember, and how well you perform them. Smile all the time, Mirror his body language, Ask him questions, or, as so eloquently put by recording-artist Usher, act like “a lady in the street but a freak in the bed”. Moreover, why do we abide? Because as Liz Tuccillo so frustratingly illustrates in the narrative he’s just not that into you:
‘Most women who date, I would guess, don’t have men throwing themselves at them every night of the week…So when we see a guy that we feel might be a romantic possibility, it’s even harder for us to take a backseat. That opportunity might not come back again for a long time.’
Move aside Liz, and enter brutal romantic honesty. Discard the obsessive literature, enjoy the dates that don’t carry the baggage of pre-meditated planning, composure, and a bundle of nerves. Though the writers of he’s just not that into you define dating as: ‘gray, murky areas of vagueness, mystery, and no questions asked…a public excursion, a meal, and some hand-holding involved’ (I prefer the Wikipedian alternative), dating is exciting, colourful, and sexy without the need for obsession and analysis! Thus with such an attitude I hope to trot down the yellow-brick road of London on my way to meeting Prince Charming, Orlando Bloom, or at this rate I may even settle for Joe Bloggs…
Just as we are all meticulously uniformed in Juicy Couture tracksuits and march Oxford Street in our beloved Ugg boots, so has the experience of dating become a monotonous one for every generation of women; partly because of the billion-pound market of dating literature that promises everlasting love…provided you act in a certain way. The experience of dating that should be exciting, inspiring, and tingling; is often transformed into an examination, a test of how many rules you remember, and how well you perform them. Smile all the time, Mirror his body language, Ask him questions, or, as so eloquently put by recording-artist Usher, act like “a lady in the street but a freak in the bed”. Moreover, why do we abide? Because as Liz Tuccillo so frustratingly illustrates in the narrative he’s just not that into you:
‘Most women who date, I would guess, don’t have men throwing themselves at them every night of the week…So when we see a guy that we feel might be a romantic possibility, it’s even harder for us to take a backseat. That opportunity might not come back again for a long time.’
Move aside Liz, and enter brutal romantic honesty. Discard the obsessive literature, enjoy the dates that don’t carry the baggage of pre-meditated planning, composure, and a bundle of nerves. Though the writers of he’s just not that into you define dating as: ‘gray, murky areas of vagueness, mystery, and no questions asked…a public excursion, a meal, and some hand-holding involved’ (I prefer the Wikipedian alternative), dating is exciting, colourful, and sexy without the need for obsession and analysis! Thus with such an attitude I hope to trot down the yellow-brick road of London on my way to meeting Prince Charming, Orlando Bloom, or at this rate I may even settle for Joe Bloggs…
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