Life can often be too serious. Especially on a Monday… So we hope we can lighten up your day with a little reflection on the dating scene. Should that not do it for you, retail therapy would be our second suggestion.
Isn’t it funny just how much the dating scene is run by the power of three? If in doubt wear your LBD, make sure you don’t have VPL, never be or dress OTT, on the lead up to a date don’t eat too many BLT’s and you may just bag your MOD (aka. the Man Of your Dreams…). Admittedly I may have made that last one up. But my point is still noteworthy: an LBD could in fact bag you a date whilst 15 BLT’s could instead bag you a Saturday night date with the sofa. Although with the new series of ‘Take Me Out’ fresh upon us I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing.
Like De La Soul so truthfully sang in 1990, three, it seems, could very well be the magic number. An LBD with minimal VPL is your bait to attract a juicy catch. There’s also the age old saying that you’ll only have three great loves in your life. But before we move onto that scary prospect, (one step at a time and all) we have to learn how to get the date, and importantly a successful date, first. When it comes to dating and relationships, no one wants to be a tri-hard. And yet we’re persistently inundated with dating do’s and don’ts so much so that many will stay in instead of heading out for dinner in fear of not, say, holding the wine glass the right way to show a man you’re interested but not easy. A tricky move to master.
Those tiring articles that abound our magazines: ‘The 10 Steps to Impressing your date’, and, ‘What men like in Women’ have, rather than providing helpful instructions, put the fear of god into vulnerable, prospective daters. So why don’t we instead make up our own rules? Even if I instructed the council to incarcerate every BLT within a 10 mile radius of my home, wore an LBD every day (into the library, on my weekly Morrisons food shop and on my way to the bank), showing as minimal VPL possible, I still wouldn’t be able to bag Ryan Gosling. And my relentless, bordering on insane, pursuit of the man himself is likely to end up being alerted to America’s Ministry of Defence – not necessarily the MOD I was hoping to catch the attention of.
Rules are there to be broken. So I say, instead: date by the power of free. All of those qualities that don’t cost a penny: confidence, humour, sex appeal and charm are much more likely to get a man than those we constantly read of in magazines. Although a little slinky number, we think here at Studio 8, doesn’t hurt. And what I also think women have to bear in mind is that this isn’t a one-sided game. In order bag your (insert name of dream celeb crush here), there has to be one out there for the taking. For I would argue that as of late, the manly men that dominated our cinema and TV screens and we would see walking down the street have all turned into boys.
Over the past few years we’ve seen film and television icons go from strong and burly (here I refer to Gerard Butler in 300 – like how I incorporated another 3 in there?) to, like Cheryl Cole’s hair without the extensions and multi-million L’Oreal campaign deal: weak, limp and lifeless. A great example of this would be the film Social Networking, dedicated to the geek god himself Mark Zuckerberg. Take a look around and we have ostensibly a lot less ‘manly’ men abounding all aspects of the media and our local pubs and high streets. Easier to catch? Yes. But worth it? Probably not. What’s a skilled fisherwoman without her prospects of catching a hearty fish?
by Jess West
