In contempt of courtship: why we love to watch other people date, but hate to do it ourselves

Washington Monthly, June, 2003 by Elizabeth Austin

MONICA LEWINSKY HAS A NEW JOB: doling out her sage dating advice as host of a new Fox TV "reality" show, "Mr. Personality." In the show, a babelicious young stockbroker named Hayley is asked to choose a lover from a group of 20 masked suitors. The masks, we're told, are used to conceal the men's looks and force Hayley to base her decision on personality alone--a concept that assumes a lady never glances below her date's chin. Unlike Ms. Lewinsky (described in the show's promotional materials only as a psych major-turned-handbag designer who "currently lives in New York City and is considering a future career in law") Fox execs limited their pool of eligible suitors to unmarried men who do not live on Pennsylvania Avenue.

As host, Ms. Lewinsky functions as Hayley's on-site girlfriend, giggling with her at hidden-camera footage that shows the suitors misbehaving at a party and helping her to make the undoubtedly difficult decision to dump the guy who slipped off into a bathroom to share a few intimate moments with a hula dancer. The show has spawned plenty of off-camera controversy--the spurned suitor later claimed that the sound of a zipper opening, heard through the bathroom door, was a sound-effect added in post-production--but primetime audiences' enthusiastic reaction to it has skipped over one huge question: What does it say about our society that we now consider Monica Lewinsky qualified to help anyone find her soulmate?

Lewinsky's show is only the latest in a whole slew of dating-based "reality" TV shows, which include "The Bachelor," "Meet My Folks," "Married by America," "Blind Date," "The Fifth Wheel," "Elimidate," "A Dating Story" "Dismissed," "Rendez-View," "Change of Heart," "Shipmates," "Temptation Island," "Looking for Love," and "EX-treme Dating." In my personal favorite, "Joe Millionaire," 20 women were whisked to a romantic French chateau to compete for a man's affections. The women were told the young man had recently inherited $50 million and was "looking for a special someone to share his newfound wealth." I spent the show's entire seven-episode run wondering where Fox managed to find 20 grown women gullible enough to believe that a tall, underwear-model-handsome guy with $50 million might need professional help in finding a date. But the success of these shows--40 million viewers tuned in to watch Joe Millionaire choose his guileless mate--shows how much we love to watch other people date, especially when there's a better-than-decent chance of witnessing an emotional trainwreck. Why do so many eligible singles prefer to sit at home watching other people go out to dinner, walk hand-in-hand, and smooch in bubbling hot tubs than actually go out on dates? When did we start to consider dating a synonym for hell?

It's almost impossible to find a positive depiction of contemporary dating anywhere. Television sitcoms from "Friends" to "Frasier" delight in the antics of lovelorn singles--not because they're more glamorous than their married counterparts, but because the vicissitudes of modern dating lend themselves to easy laughs. In novels, we see Bridget Jones as the modern-day counterpart of Jane Austen's Elizabeth Barrett--only somehow the centuries have robbed our heroine of her ability to bring Mr. Darcy to his knees.

Wasn't the sexual revolution supposed to make courtship more fun? Yet everywhere we look, we see single people bemoaning the loneliness, the despair, the just plain drudgery of dating. Dorothy L. Sayers once said, "The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless." But how much joy is there in courtship these days? Dating, it seems, has become a necessary chore, rather like scrubbing down the storm windows.

The Rules of Court

Something has gone drastically awry in the process of meeting and mating. I recently played confidant to a friend who has valiantly decided to re-enter the courtship arena. From her description, it sounded like she was applying for a new job--reading the want ads, circling anything that sounded halfway promising, sending in her resume via e-mail, and then trudging out on a series of high-stress interviews. (The only difference was, most employers usually don't advertise until the post is actually vacant, whereas at least one of her hot prospects hadn't quite gotten around to telling his wife that the family organization was planning to downsize.) To hone their "interview" skills, desperate affluent singles are driven to hire dating consultants to tell them how to do it right. One New York consultant bragged to Fox News that she charges her female clients $350 for a half-hour consultation to assess the dateworthiness of their hair, makeup, and wardrobe, while men pay $15,000 upfront for introductions to a dozen eligible pre-screened women. That fee also includes a virtual date with the consultant, who then scrutinizes the poor insecure fellow's manners and conversational skills.

For those who can't afford individual instruction, there are guidebooks like The Rules, billed as "time-tested secrets for capturing the heart of Mr. Right." The authors promise their husband-hunting readers that faithful adherence to a few basic rules, such as "Never Call Him, Always Let Him Call You" and "Don't Talk Too Much" will help them land the spouse of their dreams. (From the vision of dainty femininity sketched out in The Rules, one reaches the inescapable conclusion that all the eligible bachelors out there have posters of Donna Reed plastered above their beds.) The bad news, of course, is that once a girl has adopted the primly determined Rules persona to capture him, she has to keep up the hard work in order to keep him. Hence, The Rules for Marriage, the follow-up to the runaway bestseller. Hewing firmly to The Rules over the course of four or five decades is a daunting prospect, as the recent divorce of one of The Rules co-authors confirms.