Is Internet Dating A Rabbit Hole For Effeminate Straight Men?

It’s 7 pm on a Wednesday evening at Wilfie and Nell in the West Village. To my left is John, my internet date for the evening. He’s explaining something, and he’s excited. Arms flailing, wrists flicking, voice rising and falling in dramatic fashion. And I think, my God, not again. Not another effeminate straight guy posing as an urban lumberjack.

Truth be told, I have something of a fetish for the urban lumberjack, defined as anyone over 6’0 tall, wears flannel, has a beard/scruff/tattoo(s), can fix things, and voted for Hillary in the primaries. Combined, these elements paint a portrait of pure virility, sex and man. But John, with his flailing limbs and summer ale, is about as far from the desired U.L. as one can possibly be, bringing me to my thesis, which is more a warning to women looking for love online: beware the effeminate straight man posing as something very different.

The reason is fairly obvious: given the opportunity to reshape your persona into something a little more, er, appealing to the opposite sex, you take it. The strange thing is, people don’t do it on purpose – it’s totally unconscious, like an actual illustration of what you see yourself as, yet in reality you couldn’t be further off. Maybe we’re all guilty of it to some degree. One of my Date Dispatch pictures, for example, indicates that I have a lot more cleavage than I actually do (I’m flat).

So there’s a charade inherent in web dating: we’re  looking for our ‘type’, while simultaneously presenting the type we think we are, but most likely are not. Round and round we go. Where does it stop? Who knows. Maybe we need to ‘settle’. Or maybe we need to be more flexible and give different types of people a chance.

But there’s a limit. I was recently informed of the 3 date rule:  go on three dates with a guy before making a judgment call. Three dates?!  I’m not a total shallow bitch, but am a believer that physical attraction makes up a third of a dating pizza pie – a slice of hotness nestled between funny and smart.  Therefore, guilt aside, I must send these pretty lads back into the dating pool so that they can find a woman who truly appreciates them and is not hung-up on a scruffy hunk of flannel.