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Looking for Love in All the Right Places
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17255 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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2 / 1990 |
2,325 Words |
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Steven Kaplan
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If you've noticed what Pepsi girls look like these days or have taken a gander at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue lately, you'll know what 5'4", 200-pound Bonny D. is up against. Bonny is an executive, a college graduate, and an attractive woman; but she's about as far from the media's idea of the ideal American woman as is possible. That fact has been brought home to her all too often in her dating life. Men avoid her in bars and other public places, and blind dates have been a nightmare. Bonny had been rejected and rudely treated so many times that she was just about ready to give up dating altogether when she discovered the Bigger and Better Dating Service, which caters to overweight men and women.
"For the first time in my life," she says, "I am able to have a social life that is normal. I don't have to worry about what my date will think when he meets me, because everybody there is either a big person or somebody who wants to date a big person. I date several times a month now, and I' am enjoying my life like never before."
Bonny is a beneficiary of an eighties trend in dating services, the special-interest dating club. Dating services in the seventies tended to be catchall affairs, a little like the singles bar scene, only more organized. But lots of people were unable to fit into the broad-based singles scene. These were people who either didn't look "right" - they were too tall or too short, too skinny or too fat - or they had particular interests or requirements that were unlikely to be met at random in a crowd.
In Palo Alto, California, the Vegetarian Dating Club connects singles who would prefer a cheese to a pepperoni pizza after their date. In Chicago, Yvonne Monte's Ebony/Ivory Society is set up for individuals interested in meeting dates of another race. And in Brooklyn, Stephanie Alexandra's Music and Art Lover's Club for Singles creates an atmosphere in which cultured young people can meet to enjoy art and music and perhaps find that perfect match.
THE SEARCH FOR A 'PERFECT MATCH'
Thousands of dating clubs have opened in the United States in the last decade. Dating services today represent a $40-billion business in the United States. There are television dating shows such as Love Connection; magazines and newspapers devoted to the single person's search for a mate; dating-service information bureaus that will guide you through the singles scenes of various big cities; and even "attraction researchers" -psychologists who specialize in studying the details of dating and courtship. The old neighborhood matchmaker is still around, but she's got help these days from videotapes, computers, fax machines, and just about every other high-tech gadget you can imagine. With all that, one hard fact is clear to anyone who is still playing the dating game in America: You can't always get what you want.
A major factor affecting the rise of dating clubs is the extraordinary growth in the U.S. singles population. A generation ago an unmarried person in a social gathering was the odd man out, but that situation has changed dramatically. Today almost one in five Americans - more than sixty million people - are single, and the single lifestyle has become fashionable. Since 1950, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of single Americans has grown an astonishing 385
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