Look Me Up!

From around the age of twelve until around forever, women are pressured to strive to fit the mold of the most desirable figure she can be.  We are told by our parents, our culture, our faiths, and our friends that you grow up, get married, and get a job.  Then, we are told by magazines, television, movies, music, and books how to do it all while looking fabulous.

In the fifth grade, it’s the Limited Too shirt that you must have, or you may as well be invisible.  In seventh it was the white Wet & Wild eyeliner that, for me, Amber Burnette was the only one cool enough to have.  Freshman year of high school the Limited Too wardrobe goes out the door, and the Express clothes that don’t fit you right because they’re made for working women, not 15 year-old girls with pimples; and the Forever 21 clothes that will either rip or go out of style in twelve days, come into play.  Then when you hit age seventeen, it’s a whirlwind of things. Now comes the materialistic mindset: ‘I need a fake Coach tote immediately’; we discover more than just white eyeliner and Lip Smackers lip balm and go onto eyeshadow, blushes, smudge pots, lip tints, waterproof mascara and, my favorite, body sparkle powder; and we believe the online pop-up ads about the new berries found in Africa that will help you lose fifty pounds in fifty minutes. 

Oh yes, I have cried until my mom bought me the Limited Two shirt with the phrase “Girl Talk” on it, borrowed Amber Burnette’s white eyeliner, spent money on Express tops to wear to Friday night local hangout Roller Kingdom, and went through an odd obsession with Stila makeup products.  I have done everything right.  So what happens when I have done and bought into everything that has been thrown at me, and I am a single twenty-something that has a lot of makeup and clothes?    

Online dating.

I literally cannot turn on the television or radio or log onto the internet without hearing or reading about some sob story about two people who couldn’t find love until they joined eHarmony or match dot com.  What happened to the romance of meeting your “perfect match”, at work, at college, or bumping into them on the street, seeing a childhood friend after years and years and knowing that they’re the one?  Just as quick as the media and Hollywood made us into hopeless romantics, they are convincing us that we are doomed in love, and in turn life, and cannot live happily without the help of a computerized survey.

You see these commercials with these young, attractive, dare I say normal, people that while on the surface you’re feeling comforted that men and women like you also have trouble finding “love”; it is really making you feel worse about yourself for even thinking that you would need to be comforted about not having a husband at age twenty-three; as if it’s a terrible thing.

So are these hundreds of websites successful at what they do?  I am a single 20-year-old college student who has not even bought into the whole concept of marriage yet.  No, I am not a bra-burning feminist; but I do have goals that would indicate (unlike my clothing and makeup collection) that I have no desire to fit into a box that anyone decides for me, especially mass media.

I have an account on eHarmony.com and match.com. 

I can honestly say that there is nothing, not one detail of myself, on either of the accounts and that I have not looked at them since their creation (which I tell myself was a joke); but does that really matter?  They got me.  Regardless of the their intent, or mine for acting on it; I, yet again, bought into exactly what the media told me to do in order to fit the mold of a woman that I am not sure I ever want to be.