“But you’re not an ugly woman,” was the response I received from a few male friends when I told them the title of this book. Their words were very carefully chosen as they voiced their protest.
One man responded by telling me (rather haltingly, as he scrambled desperately to find the right words), “Rose, you have (pause) many (longer pause) attractive features” (deep cleansing breath).
The image of a Mrs. Potato Head toy popped into my mind. She has “many attractive features,” such as those full lips that curl up on the edges, her beautiful blue eyes with their luxuriant lashes (presumably for flirting with her special spud spouse). And all of her detachable noses are just precious. That cute little tuft of hair is the finishing touch. However, I would never describe the missus as a pretty potato. Even with those “many attractive features,” she was still a homely tuber.
Was I a human version of that vintage veggie? The gentleman talking to me had obviously parked himself in an uncomfortable corner, but I knew that he meant well, so I graciously thanked him and left it at that.
The idea for this book - and the title - came to me in a flash of inspiration in early 2004. As the project evolved and the manuscript started to take shape, I began to have some doubts about the wisdom of using the word “ugly” in a title. From a marketing standpoint, a title can make or break a book. The sales of my other books (on historic architecture) have always spiked a month or two before the Christmas holidays.
It wasn’t likely that many people would be purchasing The Ugly Woman’s Guide to Internet Dating at Christmas for their female relatives. And if they did, they’d be looking for other books soon afterwards, like How to Repair Hopelessly Damaged Family Relationships and The Moron’s Guide to Better Gift Buying.
Wasn’t the word ugly being bandied about too much as it was? Weren’t there already enough women in the world who, for whatever regrettable reasons, were struggling under the oppressive mantle of “ugly”?
As I agonized over this, the local library called and told me that the many books I’d requested on internet dating were now in. The books were an easy read and I finished them in a few days. I was disappointed. These books were not at all what I’d expected and the authors’ experiences bore little resemblance to my own. And while they contained some helpful information, they were devoted primarily to the mechanics of online dating. This is how you write a profile. This is how you respond to a profile. This is what you do on a first date. Here is a list of the most popular dating websites.
No one was talking about dealing with 12 rejections in a row, or what to do when your email inbox remains empty day after day, or how to respond to a 50-something man when he explains he was hoping to find a woman who was a little more svelte and a little less old.
I checked out the authors’ biographies and photos. The pictures of the handsome, youthful, photogenic authors on the back covers explained a lot. These “how-to-date” books were written by and for the beautiful people.
The books all emphasized the importance of including a photo with your profile, claiming that profiles with photos generated eight to 20 times more response than photo-less profiles. This was the opposite of my experience. Consistently, my photo-free profiles (uploaded at a variety of different sites) generated more (and better) response.
The other salient point, the authors explained, was patience, because women at dating sites were deluged with email from potential suitors. Different things have different meanings to different people, but I wouldn’t consider five emails a month (my personal average) a “deluge.”
There were many such areas where my experience did not match the authors’ descriptions. And it was these differences that convinced me to proceed with this project.
The one-size-fits-all advice contained in the “Beautiful Woman’s Guide to Internet Dating” books is not going to work for all women because internet dating is so utterly beauty-centric. If you’re “average-looking” or “less than beautiful,” you’ll need to make some adjustments and tweak your battle plan.
My friend Liz advised, “Don’t write a book that says, ‘Men are idiots and dating sucks, so save yourself a lot of trouble and buy a puppy instead.’”
Conversely, I didn’t want to promote this flawed message either: “Men are wonderful and a woman’s life isn’t whole and complete unless she’s in a relationship.”
That’s not the thesis of this book. In fact, I’d dare to say that this book doesn’t have a thesis. This is simply my story, and it’s the true story of my experience in the dating world. I wanted to be married. I wanted to know how it felt to be someone’s beloved wife and I wanted it so badly, that I went on 70 first dates and kissed an awful lot of toads, hoping against hope that I’d find a good man with whom to spend the rest of my life.
My dogged persistence was fueled by a simple motive: I longed to be mired in romantic love. I wanted to know how it felt to be cherished and respected and adored and admired by a man. I wanted to have a man that I could cherish and respect and adore and admire. I wanted a man who’d call me pet names like “Peachblossom” and occasionally bring me breakfast in bed. I wanted to have someone to call with my happy news, and someone who’d let me cry on his shoulder when there was bad news.
During this four-year period, I became disgusted with the overly simplistic, one-size-fits-all advice I found in the mainstream books on internet dating. When you’re a “woman of a certain age” and a “woman of a certain size” and a “woman with a certain look,” much of the advice offered in these books is simply bad advice and it’s bad advice that may well leave you with a heart that’s been broken in too many pieces to count. If your heart does survive the experience intact, chances are your self-esteem won’t be so lucky. Dating via a medium that judges you by nothing more than your profile picture is hard for everyone and it is emotional torture for women who feel that they’re less than beautiful.
If it weren’t for the professional success I was enjoying with my newly published book on Sears Homes, I’m sure that my self-esteem would never have survived the experience of being rejected by so many men, who ditched me simply because - in their own words - I didn’t have The Look. In other words, I wasn’t pretty enough for them. And in talking with my less-than-beautiful women friends, I learned that these rejections were not unusual, but in fact, the norm.
As I talk about in Chapter Five, some men are just pigs.
Take Jack for example. Even this charming, decent man had his swinish tendencies. He confessed to me that he’d become so desperate and lonely one Saturday night that he’d gone looking online for a “quickie.” By 9:00 pm, he’d found his desperate fishie and started talking with her via IM. Around midnight, she invited him to her apartment in a nearby city. When she answered the door, he saw a 30-something woman who was morbidly obese, sloppily dressed and profoundly depressed. He was too “grossed out” to have sex with such an enormous woman. She sensed his disappointment as soon as he strolled through her front door. With her three little kids soundly asleep in another room, she offered him oral sex and he accepted. Afterwards, she begged him to stay the night and cuddle with her in the bed. He declined.
“When I got up to leave,” he told me, “she put her head in her hands and wept. She said was ashamed and humiliated by what this damnable loneliness had driven her to do. I didn’t know what to say. I’d used her for free sex and we both knew I’d never be back.”
As much as I hated being the non-stop rejections and foolish men and assaults on my self-esteem, there was something I hated even more: The idea of being alone for the rest of my life.
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