MODERN DATING: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
by Giulia Orsenigo
I think about dating all the time. Depending on the day, I could be thinking about how it’s really fun, or I could be thinking about how I’d rather sign up for medieval torture than partake in it ever again.
I also think about other things, like whether or not that time I went to watch Moulin Rouge! with my co-worker was a date (it was), or whether that forehead kiss a guy gave me after hooking up meant that he was in love with me (it didn’t). Mostly I think about whether or not heteronormative dating culture is designed to systemically oppress its non-male participants (it is!)
Dating expert Blythe Roberson says that part of what makes dating inherently oppressive is the very fact that we think about it so much. “For thousands of years, women have been reduced to their worth as sexual objects slash domestic workers,” said Roberson. “So we learn very early on to go to great lengths to increase our sexual value in the eyes of men, and we do it without even realizing it.”
The sad truth is… we can’t really help it. From an early age, women are taught to value love and romance above anything else. From the princess movies we sang-along to, to the family dinners we attended in which our drunk uncles interrogated us about our non-existent love lives… we have been conditioned to think about love all the time. So a lot of us can’t really help constantly ruminating over it.
In my case, sometimes I actively choose to focus my attention on the inane difficulties of dating because it’s more fun to think about than other things. Whether or not Moulin Rouge! night was a date is so much more fun to contemplate than whether or not I’ll ever be a talented enough writer to make a living, or whether the war against Ukraine might set off a chain of events that leads us into World War III. Objectively, those are more important things. They are also objectively more stressful and I don’t like thinking about them.
Don’t be fooled, though. Just because dating is less stressful than international armed conflict, does not mean that it’s less complex. I’ve witnessed some of the smartest women I know go quasi-clinically-insane trying to decode a single text from a man. The most brilliant minds of our generation turned to mush over a boy. Unsure what else to do about it, I wrote this article.
I have scoured my college campus in search of bright young women who could provide some insight… perhaps even a kernel of truth. In short, this is an attempt toward a unified theory about why modern dating sucks so much. Maybe if we all use our collective brainpower we can identify patterns of oppression and figure out ways to overturn them! And if not that, at least we can try to decipher what the hell he meant by that text.
THE PROFILES
