So at the ripe old age of 28 I have realized that although I am attracted to tall white men and Indian men the kind of people who share an attraction to me are neither of these groups. I have narrowed my type down to a very specific group of men: short, hairy, half italian half mexican men. yeah, it's that specific. I don’t know what it is about those Italian boys but they love me (sidebar: their mothers HATE me. Not sure why). So when I got on match I thought that things would pretty much mirror real life.
Oh how wrong I was. My first few day on match I listed myself as Hispanic/Latina. I didn’t say that I was Mexican, I just left it at that. In a curious case of events I started getting winks galore from black men and Indian men. Now hear me out, I would gladly date either of these groups and have tried but failed miserably. Let us not forget the Mexican/Punjabi Indian in college who I never met but was sure was my soul mate. Indian men, despite my very in depth knowledge of the culture have never actually pursued me in real life even when i throw myself at them. And black men have absolutely no interest in me. My assumption has always been that men of color feel like first they’d rather pick someone in their racial group and if they are going to date outside of it why not just go for a white girl or an asian girl. Men almost never say “I want me a nice, educated Latina woman with a phd! Yes yes that's the girl for me! i choose the short, mexican, smart girl!” Ask around. It NEVER happens. I assume it’s because it’s seen as dating down.
So back to all of these Indian men who were hitting on me online when i was Latina…They were kind of sad and tragic and had names like “lonelyboy” and stuff like that. But the black men were sending me messages calling me baby and asking me if I salsa danced. I took me a second but I realized that the meaning of the term Latina is quite different on the East Coast. On the West Coast it means taco trucks and cleaning ladies and spicy food and salma hayek. But on the east coast Latina means Puerto Rican or Dominican or loud or salsa or a curvy body or J Lo. Am I J Lo? I think not and my junk leaves much to be desired. So in the interest of not lying to these men I decided that perhaps I should change my status to White because culturally despite my hatred of the terminology I am indeed “whitewashed.” Is this lying to say that I’m white? Well if you believe like me that race is socially constructed than you can say whatever the hell you want.
Being a social scientist I decided to leave my profile exactly the same except for changing my race to white. All things being equal, what would people think….The results: I was still getting hits from the Indian men but his time they were more attractive less pathetic ones. Ibankers!! Consultants!! On top of that I was getting zero black men winking at me and more white men. In fact the education and income level of the men also rose. I was getting men in the 100K plus bracket who were lawyers or had gone to b-school. Very interesting indeed!
But then it felt a little bit like lying and for the sake of the experiment I took it a step further. I changed my race to “other” and left everything else the same. Well you will never guess what happened. No black men at all, the white men abandoned me and the only group that was pursuing me was Indian men. VERY INTERESTING!
So yeah, I’m not really sure what to assume about all of this because when it comes down to it have I ever actually been able to bag an Indian man? Absolutely not.
the next experiment i'm conducting will be changing my height from 5'0 to 5'2. I've noticed that men seem to list 5'2 as their cut off. Like 5'0 is dauntingly small or something. so we'll see what happens. just appreciate that i am sacrificing my dating life for the cause of science and your entertainment!
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