Married life seems to involve a lot of TV-watching. After a long day of preserving his nation's heritage and fostering its intellectual and artistic advance, B.A. comes home and flops down before the telly. Incidentally, he says I may go to night school if I want to. I said, "That's not the point. I see you only in the evenings."
On the other hand, mostly in the evenings I see him watching the telly, ha ha ha. Night school!
Anyway, I watch more TV than I did when I was Single. When I was Single I either didn't have a TV or I lived with my parents, and I hated their shows. They seemed to watch a lot of shows with yelling and screaming and bad things happening to bad people and good people finding their mangled corpses at the crime scene. I could just stomach Bones but not Buffy. Definitely not Buffy. House was okay.
Many American shows make it over to the UK. Among them are The Big Bang Theory, which I like, and Two Broke Girls, which I loathe.
I like The Big Bang Theory because it is about scientists, and it makes math and science seem cool and adventurous while poking gentle fun at boyish obsessions with comic books and sci-fi shows. Dr. Sheldon Cooper is a great comic character, and as far as I can determine, he is celibate. Okay, his celibacy is presented as a facet of his weirdness, but at least someone on TV is not obsessed with sex.
Two Broke Girls is obsessed with sex, and in a particularly nasty way. A week ago, it featured the protagonists being crudely propositioned by two Orthodox Jewish boys at a bar mitzvah party. (The boys even throw money at them. It is suddenly okay again to portray Jews like this?) Last night it featured at least three one night stands and, if I get this right, Alex having sex with a prison guard as a bribe so Caroline will be allowed to visit her imprisoned father. Ha, ha.
Alex doesn't believe in love, as she tells the "one night stand" who recognizes her at the prison. She doesn't recognize him; he has her face tattooed to his chest. Alex is supposed to be super-cool, the practical, straight-talking one. But, actually, women who don't believe in love and have a lot of one-night stands aren't cool or practical. Their behaviour is dangerous, physically and mentally unhealthy and not worthy of emulation.
Nobody can tell me that "it's just TV" so I shouldn't worry about this. But Sex & the City was also just TV, and I have seen young women in Edinburgh, four abreast, striding tipsily along as if to invisible choirs singing "Here Come the Girls...", as drunk on Girl Power as they were on vodka.
I've seen Scotswoman of two generations thronging in Paisley airport on their way to hen parties in Ibizia wearing tiny outfits, T-shirts proclaiming their sexual availability, and...um....phallic accessories. They did not get their fashion sense from either John Calvin or Alexander McCall Smith.
And when the dumped, furious English girl on a documentary about English girls in Ibizia said, "Women should have sex just like men," she was quoting Sex & the City, Season 1, Episode 1. Where she got her subsequent expression, "pump and dump", I haven't the slightest idea, although if I were her mother I would be ashamed.
Actually, I don't have to be her mother. I am ashamed that women now say things like that on television. Call me retro, but I think it is one of Woman's earthly tasks to keep men at least somewhat civilized, and how is that possible when legions of women are acting like complete barbarians themselves? Chaste women used to sneer and isolate unchaste women for a reason, and that reason was that unchaste women were (and are) a serious threat to social order. Not just THE social order, which admittedly might be a terribly unjust one, but SOCIAL ORDER itself.*
Okay, so maybe chaste women took things too far. After all, Our Lord did go and talk to that polyandrous woman who was all by herself at the well. Of course, he was not showing by this that polyandry was okay, but that He loves everyone and calls whomever He calls to follow Him.
Polyandry (or serial monogamy, as it is misleadingly called) is not okay. One night stands are not okay. They're not funny. They're sad. They're dangerous. The more men a woman has sex with, the more likely she is to contract HPV, a very common, sexually transmitted virus which male carriers cannot be tested for, which can destroy your fertility and which is the cause of cervical cancer.
Condoms do not seem to protect against HPV, which is no doubt why health authorities are so interested in innoculating 15 year olds against it. And why all women who have been sexually active should have Pap smears every two years or so.
I find it terribly ironic that the cancer Samantha in Sex & the City came down with was breast cancer. She was haunted by the thought that it may have been caused by her rampant promiscuity, so she is vastly relieved to find a nun in her oncologist's waiting room. Sex does not result in cancer, is what we are told. But, actually, it can.
Alex supposedly so cool; Sheldon is supposedly a freak. But I know who I'd rather be. The more Alex indulges her libido, the less happy she is likely to be. To be happy, all Sheldon has to do is stare at a mathematical equation. Now that's cool.
*And, yes, so are unchaste men, and it is a hallmark of the suspension of civility, i.e. war, when large numbers of men just start looting and raping or queuing outside brothels.
Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Saturday, 18 August 2012
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
"The Innocents"
I always have Canadian Thanksgiving Dinner and Hallowe'en on the same night. This year it was not on actual Hallowe'en but on All Hallows Night, so I was very tired this morning, let me tell you. I made all the food my family has for Thanksgiving, except for pumpkin pie, because I couldn't find anything pumpkin in Tesco, and the roast turkey was actually twin chickens. Plus I was dressed as "Dorothy" in The Wizard of Oz. I trotted around the kitchen in ruby slippers. Was I glad to finally sit down and have a glass of wine! Whoo!
After supper, the party settled down in the sitting-room to watch The Innocents, a film adaptation of Henry James' novella The Turn of the Screw. It stars Deborah Kerr, is very scary and is very interesting from a psychological point of view. Are there really ghosts, or is the heroine imagining it all?
This question was of particular interest for me because I am a very imaginative person and I have found it very, very important in my life to sort out what really is true from what I imagine to be true. But at the same time, I have discovered that sometimes I am absolutely right when others think I am just imagining things.
In matters of the heart, this can be particularly difficult to sort out. There's the problem of thinking Johnnie has a massive crush on me, and then discovering that maybe Johnnie doesn't have a massive crush on me, and then feeling disappointed because, actually, it wasn't that Johnnie had a crush on me but that I had a crush on Johnnie. How humiliating.
Unrequited love is one of the most humiliating aspects of everyday life that I can think of. And I am thinking about it today because recently I got a letter from a woman who chased a guy, without realizing/admitting that's what she was doing, and when he broke up with her, she was devastated. The break-up seemed to come out of nowhere. She was so sure they were meant for each other.
When "Volker" of my book (plot spoiler!) broke up with me, my friends and I were so shocked that we called all such surprise break-ups "Volkers" ever after. Volker would no doubt be horrified to know that, so let's hope he's not still reading. But after some years' distance from that humiliating and surprising event, I can admit that it was not so surprising after all. Although I tried reeeeeealllieeee hard not to pursue Volker, there was some serious Volker-pursuing behaviour in there. Boo. Left to his own devices, Volker would not have asked me out in the first place.
(For those who are new here, a cornerstone of my overarching theory of male psychology is that men don't stay interested very long in women who pursue them and therefore are easy to win. [Exception: much older men will fall for the happy-go-lucky girls crazy enough to flirt with them.] Despite massive social engineering, all but the laziest men want to woo and win the princess in the tower, taking a manhood-proving risks to do so. Being given everything on a plate makes boys bored, cranky and infantile. Polish guy over here agrees with me.)
Anyway, my correspondent described the courtship/dating period in great detail, so even if she could not see where she had been "the (courting) man" and her ex had been "the (courted) woman" (complete with early explanations that he had been hurt and needed time to reflect, etc.), I could. So I gritted my teeth and pointed them out. I felt rather awful about this because, really, facing up to one's mistakes when it comes to courtship is sooooo painful. If someone points them out to you, you don't feel like thanking them. You feel like killing them.
However, it is better to live in reality than in a fantasy world, which is what I think every time I sit down before Confession and force myself to do an examination of conscience. Bleah!
After supper, the party settled down in the sitting-room to watch The Innocents, a film adaptation of Henry James' novella The Turn of the Screw. It stars Deborah Kerr, is very scary and is very interesting from a psychological point of view. Are there really ghosts, or is the heroine imagining it all?
This question was of particular interest for me because I am a very imaginative person and I have found it very, very important in my life to sort out what really is true from what I imagine to be true. But at the same time, I have discovered that sometimes I am absolutely right when others think I am just imagining things.
In matters of the heart, this can be particularly difficult to sort out. There's the problem of thinking Johnnie has a massive crush on me, and then discovering that maybe Johnnie doesn't have a massive crush on me, and then feeling disappointed because, actually, it wasn't that Johnnie had a crush on me but that I had a crush on Johnnie. How humiliating.
Unrequited love is one of the most humiliating aspects of everyday life that I can think of. And I am thinking about it today because recently I got a letter from a woman who chased a guy, without realizing/admitting that's what she was doing, and when he broke up with her, she was devastated. The break-up seemed to come out of nowhere. She was so sure they were meant for each other.
When "Volker" of my book (plot spoiler!) broke up with me, my friends and I were so shocked that we called all such surprise break-ups "Volkers" ever after. Volker would no doubt be horrified to know that, so let's hope he's not still reading. But after some years' distance from that humiliating and surprising event, I can admit that it was not so surprising after all. Although I tried reeeeeealllieeee hard not to pursue Volker, there was some serious Volker-pursuing behaviour in there. Boo. Left to his own devices, Volker would not have asked me out in the first place.
(For those who are new here, a cornerstone of my overarching theory of male psychology is that men don't stay interested very long in women who pursue them and therefore are easy to win. [Exception: much older men will fall for the happy-go-lucky girls crazy enough to flirt with them.] Despite massive social engineering, all but the laziest men want to woo and win the princess in the tower, taking a manhood-proving risks to do so. Being given everything on a plate makes boys bored, cranky and infantile. Polish guy over here agrees with me.)
Anyway, my correspondent described the courtship/dating period in great detail, so even if she could not see where she had been "the (courting) man" and her ex had been "the (courted) woman" (complete with early explanations that he had been hurt and needed time to reflect, etc.), I could. So I gritted my teeth and pointed them out. I felt rather awful about this because, really, facing up to one's mistakes when it comes to courtship is sooooo painful. If someone points them out to you, you don't feel like thanking them. You feel like killing them.
However, it is better to live in reality than in a fantasy world, which is what I think every time I sit down before Confession and force myself to do an examination of conscience. Bleah!
Monday, 27 September 2010
Cherry Goes Dating
TUES SEPT 28 UPDATE--on again on BBC 3 at 8 PM!
Poppets, it's my third post of the day, but I am traumatized. I just watched a BBC 3 programme called "Cherry Goes Dating," and I almost couldn't watch to the end. Fortunately, the girl with the brain tumour meets a cute cancer survivor through friends and so there was a sort-of happy ending.
Cherry is a sparkling TV presenter much prettier and more personable than any of the women she interviewed for this programme, so it was sort of a bad idea for her to turn up before the women's dates to ask the men how they were feeling.
Oh dear. I am almost hyperventilating, so this post isn't making much sense. Okay, Cherry interviews a number of single women of different ages, first two young teens, then a few women in their twenties, including an unabashed gold-digger, then a 30-something or two, a widow of 45, and then a divorcee of 51 or so.
The teens are mostly harmless. They go to the mall and walk around and around hoping to catch or re-catch the eye of boys they like. Too smart to approach the boys bluntly, they wait for the boys to start something.
The twenty-somethings include a woman with big breasts and big dyed blonde hair. She is looking for a rich husband. However, she seems to have become a professional girlfriend instead, having been invited away on holiday 21 times last year and given lots of clothes by her dates. She really, really wants to get married, and can't imagine still going on dates in a tiny skirt in ten years. The thing is, though, that she is after a rich man and wouldn't let herself fall in love with a poor man. Oh dear, oh dear.
Then there is a big girl, who seems really nice. Sadly, though, she is very lookist in her expectations, which is a bad idea for any woman who is not herself model-perfect or Queen Latifah. There are some belle-laides who can sweep into a room and sweep out with whatever man she likes in tow. I was never such, nor is this big girl.
The girl with the brain tumour, whom I respect a lot, finds a nice man through friends, as stated above.
The widow of 45 lost her husband to that huge tsunami in Thailand you might remember. She waited years for him to come home, and then grieved, and then finally decided to find love again. But taking no chances in this crazy world of freak accidents and sudden tsunamis, she did one of those massive hundred-question diagnostic quizzes and does diagnostic charts on (A) the men she dates and (B) their relationships. Cherry thinks that this might be a coping mechanism, and I think so too.
It is hard to say what I would do if I lost B.A. to a tsunami, but I think I would probably pop anti-depressants and write long novels about a loving couple who are separated by cruel fate. I would not date again. Heck, I never dated B.A.
There is next a double-divorcee of 51, who has a lovely slim body, great hair, and a lined face. Her principal dating problem is that she has gone through every man in her village. Oh dear. And one divorce is so ghastly, imagine two.
"Don't divorce me, B.A.," I wailed.
I think, though, that this 51 year old is just as happy to be divorced, for she speaks very forcefully about being able to do whatever she wants now. Her two husbands were both more than 10 years her senior, and I suspect one or both bossed her around. And at the show's end, she is dating a nice 38 year old.
Now, the 34 year old. Oh dear. She needs my book. And if she's still single, she might have it because she seems to have read every book for Singles out there. On the other hand, these must be the how-to-get-a-man books, not books of the I'm-Single-Chaste-and-Happy variety.
I'm not writing her name because her long search for love has made her a little loopy, and she now may be sorry she appeared on "Cherry Goes Dating". If she sees this and sends me her address, I will send her a free copy of Seraphic Singles. Oh dear, I don't want to add to her pain, but I don't want you girls to do what she did. Oh dear.
What she did was challenge herself to get five men's phone numbers a week for six months. And then, just before the Valentine's Day after the end of her challenge, she wrote a letter to the date she liked best, inviting him over for V-Day. She decorated her flat with hearts, set out Valentine's cookies, bought a Valentine's cake, fashioned a First Place Winner's ribbon, and called Cherry and the TV crew. N.B. She had not seen the man in months.
At the flat, shortly after Cherry and the crew, arrived Mr. Winner, looking for fun, and I am not sure what happened, exactly, as I hid behind a pillow and merely watched the expressions on B.A.'s face. Let's just say that it was very embarrassing for everybody, including Cherry, whose conscience might have been giving her a twinge.
It was so horribly embarrassing because it was exactly the kind of big dramatic gesture women think will work but of course never, ever does.
I wonder if Cherry, whose eyes nearly popped out of her head when she found out what 34 year old had planned, was torn between love for her show and female solidarity. She must have been. Utter emotional and social breakdown is great for TV but terrible for one's fellow woman, and if you ever meet a woman about to embarrass herself like that, you must tempt her out of her flat, take her to a bar and talk her out of it.
I feel like Father Z writing "Brick by brick" as a kind of mantra, but, girls, really, don't chase men. Don't chase men. Let love come to you. You deserve that. You're worth that. And if God means you to meet a Mr. Right, you'll probably meet him through friends. Must have some more wine now.
Update: Oddly, the seemingly most man-savvy women in the whole show were 14 and 15 years old.
Poppets, it's my third post of the day, but I am traumatized. I just watched a BBC 3 programme called "Cherry Goes Dating," and I almost couldn't watch to the end. Fortunately, the girl with the brain tumour meets a cute cancer survivor through friends and so there was a sort-of happy ending.
Cherry is a sparkling TV presenter much prettier and more personable than any of the women she interviewed for this programme, so it was sort of a bad idea for her to turn up before the women's dates to ask the men how they were feeling.
Oh dear. I am almost hyperventilating, so this post isn't making much sense. Okay, Cherry interviews a number of single women of different ages, first two young teens, then a few women in their twenties, including an unabashed gold-digger, then a 30-something or two, a widow of 45, and then a divorcee of 51 or so.
The teens are mostly harmless. They go to the mall and walk around and around hoping to catch or re-catch the eye of boys they like. Too smart to approach the boys bluntly, they wait for the boys to start something.
The twenty-somethings include a woman with big breasts and big dyed blonde hair. She is looking for a rich husband. However, she seems to have become a professional girlfriend instead, having been invited away on holiday 21 times last year and given lots of clothes by her dates. She really, really wants to get married, and can't imagine still going on dates in a tiny skirt in ten years. The thing is, though, that she is after a rich man and wouldn't let herself fall in love with a poor man. Oh dear, oh dear.
Then there is a big girl, who seems really nice. Sadly, though, she is very lookist in her expectations, which is a bad idea for any woman who is not herself model-perfect or Queen Latifah. There are some belle-laides who can sweep into a room and sweep out with whatever man she likes in tow. I was never such, nor is this big girl.
The girl with the brain tumour, whom I respect a lot, finds a nice man through friends, as stated above.
The widow of 45 lost her husband to that huge tsunami in Thailand you might remember. She waited years for him to come home, and then grieved, and then finally decided to find love again. But taking no chances in this crazy world of freak accidents and sudden tsunamis, she did one of those massive hundred-question diagnostic quizzes and does diagnostic charts on (A) the men she dates and (B) their relationships. Cherry thinks that this might be a coping mechanism, and I think so too.
It is hard to say what I would do if I lost B.A. to a tsunami, but I think I would probably pop anti-depressants and write long novels about a loving couple who are separated by cruel fate. I would not date again. Heck, I never dated B.A.
There is next a double-divorcee of 51, who has a lovely slim body, great hair, and a lined face. Her principal dating problem is that she has gone through every man in her village. Oh dear. And one divorce is so ghastly, imagine two.
"Don't divorce me, B.A.," I wailed.
I think, though, that this 51 year old is just as happy to be divorced, for she speaks very forcefully about being able to do whatever she wants now. Her two husbands were both more than 10 years her senior, and I suspect one or both bossed her around. And at the show's end, she is dating a nice 38 year old.
Now, the 34 year old. Oh dear. She needs my book. And if she's still single, she might have it because she seems to have read every book for Singles out there. On the other hand, these must be the how-to-get-a-man books, not books of the I'm-Single-Chaste-and-Happy variety.
I'm not writing her name because her long search for love has made her a little loopy, and she now may be sorry she appeared on "Cherry Goes Dating". If she sees this and sends me her address, I will send her a free copy of Seraphic Singles. Oh dear, I don't want to add to her pain, but I don't want you girls to do what she did. Oh dear.
What she did was challenge herself to get five men's phone numbers a week for six months. And then, just before the Valentine's Day after the end of her challenge, she wrote a letter to the date she liked best, inviting him over for V-Day. She decorated her flat with hearts, set out Valentine's cookies, bought a Valentine's cake, fashioned a First Place Winner's ribbon, and called Cherry and the TV crew. N.B. She had not seen the man in months.
At the flat, shortly after Cherry and the crew, arrived Mr. Winner, looking for fun, and I am not sure what happened, exactly, as I hid behind a pillow and merely watched the expressions on B.A.'s face. Let's just say that it was very embarrassing for everybody, including Cherry, whose conscience might have been giving her a twinge.
It was so horribly embarrassing because it was exactly the kind of big dramatic gesture women think will work but of course never, ever does.
I wonder if Cherry, whose eyes nearly popped out of her head when she found out what 34 year old had planned, was torn between love for her show and female solidarity. She must have been. Utter emotional and social breakdown is great for TV but terrible for one's fellow woman, and if you ever meet a woman about to embarrass herself like that, you must tempt her out of her flat, take her to a bar and talk her out of it.
I feel like Father Z writing "Brick by brick" as a kind of mantra, but, girls, really, don't chase men. Don't chase men. Let love come to you. You deserve that. You're worth that. And if God means you to meet a Mr. Right, you'll probably meet him through friends. Must have some more wine now.
Update: Oddly, the seemingly most man-savvy women in the whole show were 14 and 15 years old.
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Watching "Wink, Meet, Delete"
(Update: I forgot two people. Eeee! Sorry! I've added them on.)
There are 15 million Singles in Britain. Seven million of them internet date. There are over 1400 dating sites in Britain, and they generate over £105 million. In 2009 British internet sites spawned 12 million first dates. Only 50% of British online daters are looking for a long-term relationship.
I found all this out last night from a BBC2 program called "Wink, Meet, Delete." If you are in Britain or Ireland, I recommend that you try to find and watch it online. If you aren't, you are probably out of luck, so I will describe it below.
Benedict Ambrose and I watched "Wink, Meet, Delete" from the comfort of our flat in the Historical House. I think B.A. had a glass of wine, so imagine B.A. with a glass of wine in a moss-green Parker Knowll armchair and me in a corner of a white IKEA sofa, wearing a grey argyle pullover. There we were, a typical 21st century married couple (including the 10+ extra pounds married people put on shortly after getting married) watching a handful of Singles talk wittily, bravely, desperately about their internet search for love. Feel free to throw popcorn at your computer screen.
The show was enthralling. The producers had assembled a variety of Singles, mostly middle-aged to talk to. There were:
1. a Baby Boomer Guardianista (a very left-wing but consumerist, PC, right-on, middle-class, Spirit of the 1960s) man in a black turtleneck
2. a funny, balding, squashy divorced journalist with a soul patch
3. a clever, vivid, slender 50-something writer, a widow
4. a fat, chuckling blonde, whom I adored
5. a largish, lovely girl in her 20s, of perhaps Mediterranean heritage, with beautiful long dark hair
6. a young and handsome Edinburgh (or Glasgow..?) white-collar office type (drool)
7. a very pretty, fun part-African 24 year old divorcee with two children
8. a 39 year old divorced roofer with bad teeth
9. a stocky, bald red-headed 48 year old Glaswegian ( or Edinburgher..?) estate agent who could have been Frankie Boyle's less confident older brother
10. a nice-looking, ordinary bloke in his 20s or early 30s who, according to B.A., had bad teeth, but I thought he just looked nice
Update 11. a beautiful woman with huge dark eyes and MS
12. a conventionally pretty young women
All of these people were tremendously interesting and telegenic, so kudos to the producers for finding them. And I hope they will now forgive me (if they read this), for I shall now make some personal remarks.
1. The Guardianista man was a type as easy to recognize as a stormtrooper in Star Wars, and when he said he belonged to the Guardian Companions site, I said, "Bwa ha ha ha ha!", which is what I said when My Nearest Neighbour said she had a friend who was on the Guardian Companions site. I just think left-wing people with intellectual interests, who drink Chablis, name-drop Martin Amis, and find religious faith embarrassing are, as a group, hilarious, if potentially dangerous.
Anyway, the Guardianista man wasn't really interested in a relationship but in delightful flirtation and witty letters over the internet. He was taken aback at forthright women who say "Okay, I trust you aren't an ax-murderer, rapist or pedophile, so let's meet." He was more inclined to want to exchange 700 emails first. Once he had dinner over the internet with a woman in Florida. He made his dinner, she made her dinner, and then they ate their respective dinners "together", presumably with webcams. I thought this sad, but he enjoyed it very much. Curiously, though, when he took this woman to a real dinner in Florida, to a very expensive restaurant (which he clearly resents having had to pay for), he did not enjoy it as much.
Interestingly, Guardianista man was snide about Guardianista women. He said in their ads they stated that they wanted a man who wasn't sexist, who was ecologically conscious, who was socially conscious (in fact, everything I would expect of a Guardian reader), etc.
"No wonder they're Single," he laughed.
"Hey, buddy," said I from my sofa. "You're Single."
Guardianista man was a time waster for whom fantasy is more attractive than reality, although if sex was on offer, he took it "as one does" [smirk]. Watching Guardianista man made me wonder, once again, why so many Englishmen seem to be so odd about women.
2. The divorced and balding journalist was so sad, I wanted to hug him. I suspect he was a Guardianista, too, but his sorrow made him deep. He was quite a ladies' man in his youth, and as they showed a photo, you could see why. He was bespectacled but cute, witty and intelligent. I can see lots of clever women of his generation digging him in the 1960s and 1970s. However, eventually the shadow side of the Sexual Dissolution got him, for his marriage unexpectedly ended, and now he is lonely. He had high expectations of internet dating, but by filming he had quit.
3. The widowed writer was very attractive indeed, as B.A. pointed out. I couldn't make out why she had not been snapped up right away by some lovely widower, perhaps a widowed Oxford don. While internet dating, she had met a lot of divorced people and realized that "it is far better to be widowed than divorced."
4. The fat and funny blonde had discovered, thanks to the internet, that there are indeed men who love "big, beautiful women." She was stunned at how many. She showed her old internet photo, in which she had a short haircut and looked dreadful. She had been mistaken for a "dyke" (you can say almost all bad words on British TV after 9 PM), so she put more effort into how she looked, realizing that big can be sexy.
5. The largish, lovely girl proved this, for she had a really pretty face, which she made prettier with make-up, and indeed, she soon fell in love with a man she met on the internet. I believe she met him over the internet on Christmas Day or New Year's Eve or some other day when it is a bit shamemaking (she thought) to be online. They arranged to go out on New Year's Eve, and the man was 10. (above), the nice-looking ordinary bloke. ("What?! But he has such bad teeth," protested B.A.) They beamed in the TV studio, and I thought they were sweet.
6. The young and handsome Edinburgh (or Glasgow) white-collar wants to settle down and find a woman to be the mother of his children. I imagine the BBC phones started ringing off the hook, frantic women sitting on hold for minutes that seemed like hours. But then I have a weakness for Edinburgh men in nice suits. Anyway, his revelation was that he wouldn't be interested in the kind of woman who would have sex on the first date. The female interviewer, whom I suspect of being a Guardianista, asked him a tad waspishly if he had had sex on the first date. After hesitating, he confessed that he had once, having been very drunk. Personally, I forgave him. Men have a harder time turning down sex than women do. My guess is that they very rarely say, "Ewwwww! No! Go away! Ewwww!"
7. The very pretty, fun 24 year old mixed-race girl married 8. (above), the 39 year old roofer. He can't have children, so he was delighted to be given a ready-made family. There was egregiously sentimental footage of the four of them on a sofa with a dog and playing together in a park, and I almost got teary. Anyway, they just clicked. I am not clear on why he was The One, but he was.
8. The bald, ginger-bearded Glaswegian was in grave danger of becoming bitter. For some reason, I did not want to hug him as much as I wanted to hug the sad, divorced journalist. Instead I wanted to tell him that he should study Frankie Boyle, who is married, and develop Frankie Boyle's confidence. Somehow, I think Frankie Boyle is key to his future happiness. Meanwhile, I wonder if there is a "bald and beautiful" category on dating sites. There must be women who are attracted to bald men just because, and not despite the fact that, they are bald. And, although bald, this guy was certainly not as ugly as he said. I suspect gingerism.
Update: 11. The dark-eyed woman with MS had had very glamorous photos taken-with her cane, incidentally--but initially did not mention on dating sites that she has, well, a "wasting disease," and thus gave at least one date a huge shock. And this was such poignant situation that I don't know why I didn't remember her this morning. She certainly made an impression last night.
12. All I rememer about 12 is that she was young and pretty and did not interest me in a blogging for Singles capacity.
One issue that the interviewees agreed on was that people must NOT NOT NOT lie about their looks, either through words or with out-of-date pictures. Expecting a clever, 28 year old, thin guy and discovering that he is a clever, 38 year old, fat guy is a total turn-off. It is miles better to put up an honest, strictly contemporary photo.
I've thought a lot about internet dating, and I have internet dated, and I know married people who met through internet dating. These married people are not millionaires or beauty queens, but average-looking people with two or three very attractive physical features who love their jobs. In short, ordinary people who value ordinary people. They are practical, not dreamers or time-wasters.
B.A. and I met over the internet, although not on dating sites. We had friends in common, whom I had met because of my blogs. And it is unlikely we would have met any other way, as he has lived in Scotland his whole life, and it didn't occur to me to go there until 2008. My personal feeling is that blogs are a great way to meet likeminded people and make friends. The trick is that your blog should be about something that you are passionate about (and not just about you).
Finally, I can't stress how important it is to actually meet your best internet friends. Before he met me in person, Benedict Ambrose suspected that Seraphic might be an airhead with a squeaky voice because that was sort of the image my blog-persona of perpetual cheer created. So he was, apparently, pleasantly surprised to find the sensible, silent, jet-lagged little person who tumbled off the London bus. And I have met up with my very favourite readers, like Aelianus, Alias Clio and Shiraz, and we have had marvellous chats.
Yet Another Update: Here's what I wrote in the CR some months ago about internet dating.
There are 15 million Singles in Britain. Seven million of them internet date. There are over 1400 dating sites in Britain, and they generate over £105 million. In 2009 British internet sites spawned 12 million first dates. Only 50% of British online daters are looking for a long-term relationship.
I found all this out last night from a BBC2 program called "Wink, Meet, Delete." If you are in Britain or Ireland, I recommend that you try to find and watch it online. If you aren't, you are probably out of luck, so I will describe it below.
Benedict Ambrose and I watched "Wink, Meet, Delete" from the comfort of our flat in the Historical House. I think B.A. had a glass of wine, so imagine B.A. with a glass of wine in a moss-green Parker Knowll armchair and me in a corner of a white IKEA sofa, wearing a grey argyle pullover. There we were, a typical 21st century married couple (including the 10+ extra pounds married people put on shortly after getting married) watching a handful of Singles talk wittily, bravely, desperately about their internet search for love. Feel free to throw popcorn at your computer screen.
The show was enthralling. The producers had assembled a variety of Singles, mostly middle-aged to talk to. There were:
1. a Baby Boomer Guardianista (a very left-wing but consumerist, PC, right-on, middle-class, Spirit of the 1960s) man in a black turtleneck
2. a funny, balding, squashy divorced journalist with a soul patch
3. a clever, vivid, slender 50-something writer, a widow
4. a fat, chuckling blonde, whom I adored
5. a largish, lovely girl in her 20s, of perhaps Mediterranean heritage, with beautiful long dark hair
6. a young and handsome Edinburgh (or Glasgow..?) white-collar office type (drool)
7. a very pretty, fun part-African 24 year old divorcee with two children
8. a 39 year old divorced roofer with bad teeth
9. a stocky, bald red-headed 48 year old Glaswegian ( or Edinburgher..?) estate agent who could have been Frankie Boyle's less confident older brother
10. a nice-looking, ordinary bloke in his 20s or early 30s who, according to B.A., had bad teeth, but I thought he just looked nice
Update 11. a beautiful woman with huge dark eyes and MS
12. a conventionally pretty young women
All of these people were tremendously interesting and telegenic, so kudos to the producers for finding them. And I hope they will now forgive me (if they read this), for I shall now make some personal remarks.
1. The Guardianista man was a type as easy to recognize as a stormtrooper in Star Wars, and when he said he belonged to the Guardian Companions site, I said, "Bwa ha ha ha ha!", which is what I said when My Nearest Neighbour said she had a friend who was on the Guardian Companions site. I just think left-wing people with intellectual interests, who drink Chablis, name-drop Martin Amis, and find religious faith embarrassing are, as a group, hilarious, if potentially dangerous.
Anyway, the Guardianista man wasn't really interested in a relationship but in delightful flirtation and witty letters over the internet. He was taken aback at forthright women who say "Okay, I trust you aren't an ax-murderer, rapist or pedophile, so let's meet." He was more inclined to want to exchange 700 emails first. Once he had dinner over the internet with a woman in Florida. He made his dinner, she made her dinner, and then they ate their respective dinners "together", presumably with webcams. I thought this sad, but he enjoyed it very much. Curiously, though, when he took this woman to a real dinner in Florida, to a very expensive restaurant (which he clearly resents having had to pay for), he did not enjoy it as much.
Interestingly, Guardianista man was snide about Guardianista women. He said in their ads they stated that they wanted a man who wasn't sexist, who was ecologically conscious, who was socially conscious (in fact, everything I would expect of a Guardian reader), etc.
"No wonder they're Single," he laughed.
"Hey, buddy," said I from my sofa. "You're Single."
Guardianista man was a time waster for whom fantasy is more attractive than reality, although if sex was on offer, he took it "as one does" [smirk]. Watching Guardianista man made me wonder, once again, why so many Englishmen seem to be so odd about women.
2. The divorced and balding journalist was so sad, I wanted to hug him. I suspect he was a Guardianista, too, but his sorrow made him deep. He was quite a ladies' man in his youth, and as they showed a photo, you could see why. He was bespectacled but cute, witty and intelligent. I can see lots of clever women of his generation digging him in the 1960s and 1970s. However, eventually the shadow side of the Sexual Dissolution got him, for his marriage unexpectedly ended, and now he is lonely. He had high expectations of internet dating, but by filming he had quit.
3. The widowed writer was very attractive indeed, as B.A. pointed out. I couldn't make out why she had not been snapped up right away by some lovely widower, perhaps a widowed Oxford don. While internet dating, she had met a lot of divorced people and realized that "it is far better to be widowed than divorced."
4. The fat and funny blonde had discovered, thanks to the internet, that there are indeed men who love "big, beautiful women." She was stunned at how many. She showed her old internet photo, in which she had a short haircut and looked dreadful. She had been mistaken for a "dyke" (you can say almost all bad words on British TV after 9 PM), so she put more effort into how she looked, realizing that big can be sexy.
5. The largish, lovely girl proved this, for she had a really pretty face, which she made prettier with make-up, and indeed, she soon fell in love with a man she met on the internet. I believe she met him over the internet on Christmas Day or New Year's Eve or some other day when it is a bit shamemaking (she thought) to be online. They arranged to go out on New Year's Eve, and the man was 10. (above), the nice-looking ordinary bloke. ("What?! But he has such bad teeth," protested B.A.) They beamed in the TV studio, and I thought they were sweet.
6. The young and handsome Edinburgh (or Glasgow) white-collar wants to settle down and find a woman to be the mother of his children. I imagine the BBC phones started ringing off the hook, frantic women sitting on hold for minutes that seemed like hours. But then I have a weakness for Edinburgh men in nice suits. Anyway, his revelation was that he wouldn't be interested in the kind of woman who would have sex on the first date. The female interviewer, whom I suspect of being a Guardianista, asked him a tad waspishly if he had had sex on the first date. After hesitating, he confessed that he had once, having been very drunk. Personally, I forgave him. Men have a harder time turning down sex than women do. My guess is that they very rarely say, "Ewwwww! No! Go away! Ewwww!"
7. The very pretty, fun 24 year old mixed-race girl married 8. (above), the 39 year old roofer. He can't have children, so he was delighted to be given a ready-made family. There was egregiously sentimental footage of the four of them on a sofa with a dog and playing together in a park, and I almost got teary. Anyway, they just clicked. I am not clear on why he was The One, but he was.
8. The bald, ginger-bearded Glaswegian was in grave danger of becoming bitter. For some reason, I did not want to hug him as much as I wanted to hug the sad, divorced journalist. Instead I wanted to tell him that he should study Frankie Boyle, who is married, and develop Frankie Boyle's confidence. Somehow, I think Frankie Boyle is key to his future happiness. Meanwhile, I wonder if there is a "bald and beautiful" category on dating sites. There must be women who are attracted to bald men just because, and not despite the fact that, they are bald. And, although bald, this guy was certainly not as ugly as he said. I suspect gingerism.
Update: 11. The dark-eyed woman with MS had had very glamorous photos taken-with her cane, incidentally--but initially did not mention on dating sites that she has, well, a "wasting disease," and thus gave at least one date a huge shock. And this was such poignant situation that I don't know why I didn't remember her this morning. She certainly made an impression last night.
12. All I rememer about 12 is that she was young and pretty and did not interest me in a blogging for Singles capacity.
One issue that the interviewees agreed on was that people must NOT NOT NOT lie about their looks, either through words or with out-of-date pictures. Expecting a clever, 28 year old, thin guy and discovering that he is a clever, 38 year old, fat guy is a total turn-off. It is miles better to put up an honest, strictly contemporary photo.
I've thought a lot about internet dating, and I have internet dated, and I know married people who met through internet dating. These married people are not millionaires or beauty queens, but average-looking people with two or three very attractive physical features who love their jobs. In short, ordinary people who value ordinary people. They are practical, not dreamers or time-wasters.
B.A. and I met over the internet, although not on dating sites. We had friends in common, whom I had met because of my blogs. And it is unlikely we would have met any other way, as he has lived in Scotland his whole life, and it didn't occur to me to go there until 2008. My personal feeling is that blogs are a great way to meet likeminded people and make friends. The trick is that your blog should be about something that you are passionate about (and not just about you).
Finally, I can't stress how important it is to actually meet your best internet friends. Before he met me in person, Benedict Ambrose suspected that Seraphic might be an airhead with a squeaky voice because that was sort of the image my blog-persona of perpetual cheer created. So he was, apparently, pleasantly surprised to find the sensible, silent, jet-lagged little person who tumbled off the London bus. And I have met up with my very favourite readers, like Aelianus, Alias Clio and Shiraz, and we have had marvellous chats.
Yet Another Update: Here's what I wrote in the CR some months ago about internet dating.
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