Wednesday 21 October 2009

Janus-faced?

If I were absolutely honest, this is what my online dating profile would say:

"I can come across confident and opinionated, which I think puts some men off; although you boys all SAY you want a girl who's passionate, funny and independent, someone who knows her own mind, you all seem to end up with someone coquettish and insecure. Anyway, the truth is, confident or not, I want to give and receive love and affection as much as the next mammal. I'm pretty happy on my own but as the nights draw in, thoughts of putting my mittened hand inside someone else's become more alluring. Plus it'd be nice to get a boyfriend so that I don't have to think about what to do on New Year's Eve.

I promise to be a good girlfriend. I'll look after you and make your life better than it was before you met me. I have excellent taste in cultural activities, film, music, food and clothes, and am skilled at pretty much every element of girlfriendom apart from playing things by ear and tolerating tardiness. If you're late, I reserve the right to go into a big strop until you apologise, when it will all be fine. I don't hold grudges. And other than that, for the most part I'm up for pretty much anything. I'm a good cook and I buy amazing presents, I'll never ever cheat on you and I will be a brilliant mother. I am quite pretty in places and know how to dress to flatter the less perfect parts of my anatomy. You'll feel pleased when you're meeting me at a nice restaurant and I walk in all glammed up with a big smile. And in a few months or years, we can go travelling for a bit around Asia, and then we can have babies. You could go out with one of the other girls on this site instead but really, they're no better than me. We're all as sexy and lovely and screwed up as each other. So if I sound roughly OK, then send me a mail. You need to be taller, cleverer and quirkier than I am, and not take life too seriously, but I don't give a monkey's about your pay packet or your CV, although my parents might."

My actual profile says this:
"Why should you get to know me?
Oh, I rock. I'm lovely. Really.

I write, I take good photographs, I love good music, I like eating out and drinking wine. In short: I have exactly the same qualities as 99% of the other girls on this site, but I'm fractionally funnier, fractionally cleverer and a lot more lovely. Plus I smell delicious, and my obsession with quality bed linen is important.

Oh, I could go on. But then where would the fun be? You know next to nothing about me, but there's only one way to find out more. And I'm worth a punt. Definitely.

My ideal match:
At the risk of sounding like I'm writing a covering letter, I am passionate, honest, and I always try to see the funny side in a crisis. Those are all qualities I'd like to find in the man who steals my heart. And if you can sing in tune, and spell, and you're fit as a butcher's dog, that'd be great. Somewhere in the Venn diagram intersection of Nick Drake, Simon Cowell and Jimmy McNulty would be mint."

Weirdly, I think the honest one is better. Maybe I'll swap them.

4 comments:

  1. The honest one is brilliant. You just need to add a line somewhere about Clapham.

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  2. Murray M17:41

    "cleverer than you"... is your problem. You're blocking out 99%+ of the male population. You ought to consider accepting the next 10% of the available selection: those who *think* that they might be cleverer than you. Then spend the next 45 years assiduously avoiding any topic or line of debate that might expose their intellectual failing thus breaking their poor heart. Simple, really.

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  3. Ah, but if they *think* they're cleverer than me, then they'll still answer the ad, right? Then I can see if they're good looking enough to allow a bit of a discrepancy on the whole intellect thing.

    That was tongue in cheek, by the way. I'm really not that clever - it'd be easy to find a boy who's cleverer than me. I have potential to be clever, but my general knowledge is appalling.

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  4. Honest = fab. HOW MUCH do I relate to the first half of the first paragraph? (Answer: A LOT.)

    The actual profile stuff doesn't come across like you, I don't think. CHANGE THEM.

    (I'll stop using gratuitous capitals now.)

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