[wordup] The sitcomification of American dating

[Adam Shand]

Jesus fucking christ people.  I understand that the article is written
to be funny, and I understand that when you start dating someone there
are sometimes "quirks" that can be a little tiresome.

But for fucks sake, shouldn't you be looking for good things in a
partner rather then compiling lists of things which exclude people? 
Isn't the fact that you enjoy talking to them and hanging out them and
always seem to have something to say to them ... more important then if
they wear fucking sandals with socks or have bad breath?  

Somehow this seems an indicator of much of what's fucked up to me, that
all those whiny bitches deserve to be alone :-)

Anyway </rant> ..., just to subvert previous seriousness, I did think
this quote was hilarious:

  "I like this guy so much," she said referring to the new apple of her
  eye, "that I'd let him fuck me in the butt while he was wearing
  Tevas."

Adam.

From: http://www.salon.com/sex/feature/2002/08/07/deal/index.html

Deal breakers
By Douglas Cruickshank

Aug. 7, 2002  |  A stated willingness to tolerate a prospective lover's
propensity for dining on saltines while in bed is the generally accepted
test of one's depth of attraction, the indicator of just how much you
would be willing to put up with in order to indulge with said object of
desire in a bit of horizontal hijinks.

I first learned of the cracker test when I was 13. A sophisticated, and
platonic, friend of mine -- a worldly woman of 16 -- had carnal cravings
for a skinny, scraggly-haired drummer with bad teeth. I questioned her
taste in men. She admitted that to some he might not be the most
appealing of characters, but he did have that certain something, she
insisted, that had nothing to do with looks. "I sure wouldn't push him
out of bed for eating crackers" she said from the bottom of her heart,
or maybe lower.

Implicit in the cracker test concept is that there are other people who,
while you may find them fetching, you don't find so intoxicatingly
fetching that you would let them remain in your bed if they chose to
consume Wheat Thins while between your sheets, or wherever. In such a
case, cracker consumption would be what's called a deal breaker.

Now, in truth, over the decades I've found that the cracker issue
doesn't come up that frequently during the ins and outs of love, but
plenty of other deal breakers do, and they are often just as petty and
absurd as the eating of crackers. Still, these little things can move
our hearts and change the course of our lives and loves, so I felt an
inquiry was justified. I made some calls, sent some e-mails and
harvested several bushels of strange and impassioned responses. In
return I promised to protect the guilty by changing names, though I've
left age and gender unaltered. Women tended to be more responsive than
men, but then we knew that.

Anyway, as for the deal breakers most likely to get you eighty-sixed
from the Garden of Earthly Delights, in the case of women assessing men,
I found that footwear plays a frighteningly important role (not
surprisingly, most men I talked to didn't give a damn about women's
shoes). Sandals specifically and two brands especially -- Birkenstocks
and Tevas -- really put the freeze on the female libido.

Sally, 29, said, "Tevas or Birkenstocks? No fuckin' way. But if they're
wearing those, I'm not going to get anywhere near them to begin with."
Jamie, 39, while expressing her desire in graphic terms, also dissed
Tevas: "I like this guy so much," she said referring to the new apple of
her eye, "that I'd let him fuck me in the butt while he was wearing
Tevas." A touching sentiment, charmingly expressed.

Liz, 26, said her father, a gynecologist, wears Birkenstocks and "I just
don't want to go there." I didn't either so I didn't query her further
on the subject. But I did ask Sally to elaborate.

"What is it about those two kinds of sandals," I wondered. "Are they
just sexless or what?"

"I guess so," she said. "They're so cheesy. And the absolute worst is
Tevas with socks. Or sandals of any kind with socks. Or white socks, in
most cases. It's very hard to think of a time when white socks are
appropriate. Maybe if you're doing some sort of '50s thing with black
loafers and Levis, but white socks in general are pretty bad."

Still another respondent, Callie, 44, sent a long list of deal breakers
and right at the top was, "Flip-flops except by the pool or in the gym.
They only exist to protect your feet against water and mildew. They are
not shoes. Birkenstocks and Tevas," she continued, "have no reason to
exist, they're just plain ugly. And with socks, they're even uglier!"

"The near deal breaker for me," a friend who wishes to remain
pseudonymless and ageless, said, "is men who skate. I'll never forget
seeing my boyfriend, later husband, in those giant roller skating shoes
with his skinny white legs zooming around the Venice Beach boardwalk.
That was a really dark moment."

OK, gentlemen, if you now choose to wear sandals on your first date and
you are not in Tahiti, at Gold's or at poolside, don't say you haven't
been warned. And, uh, if you're over 14, lose the Rollerblades.

Meanwhile, up north, the mouth -- how it's maintained and what you do or
don't do with it -- can be a big, big deal breaker. Kissing, the great
prelude, is all-important -- to women, anyway. Again, not altogether
surprisingly, men don't seem to place the same importance on kiss
quality that women do. As one 24-year-old male respondent put it
somewhat too bluntly, "That's just a means to an end." Yes, my friend,
but with that attitude, you're not going to be getting to that end.

"It's a preview of what's to come," one woman told me. And Julie, 35,
said, "For me, kissing is a big deal. If I can't kiss them, that's a
deal breaker. I tried to go out with this guy last year, and I really
liked him so much, but he just couldn't kiss. Every time he tried to
kiss me it would turn me off. I would be all attracted and ready to go,
then he'd kiss me and I'd immediately get turned off."

Several women said that bad kissing would probably be a deal breaker,
but bad breath or teeth (Austin Powers is a movie, guys) would
definitely put the kibosh on any chance of things moving to the
horizontal stage. "Really bad breath is not acceptable," said Lisa, 55.
"I'm not kidding, bad breath or scuzzy teeth totally turn me off." Liz
of the Birkenstock-wearing father concurred, "If a guy's got dragon
breath, he's history. Given their superior upper-body strength, they
should be able to brush and floss." And Callie instructed, "Floss (and
not in front of me), and take Breath Assure."

"So, what's a good kiss?" I asked Lisa. "Describe a deal maker."

"Soft lips, leisurely, a certain amount of tongue penetration, but not
when you first meet them. A bad kisser kisses too hard, doesn't ease
into it. Or they're just a pecker, they peck you. But no technique will
overcome bad breath or bad teeth."

Two words, men: Oral hygiene. And six more: Women are not poultry, don't
peck.

Oddly enough, counter to stereotype, some men I spoke with had more
ethereal concerns, assuming you consider mushiness ethereal. "I met a
woman once," Jack, 52, told me. "I went to her house for dinner. And her
taste was really sentimental. She had little bunny pillows, that kind of
thing. And she played guitar, sang namby-pamby folksongs -- hankie rock,
like 'Candles in the Rain.' That was definitely a deal breaker. What I
was thinking was, what happens if things get serious? When it comes down
to the nitty-gritty, when it gets really real, will I have to deal with
the bunnies?"

Kyle, 27, can't abide poesy. "If someone's a poet," romance is out of
the question. "Or if they're allergic to animals, or wearing running
shoes with business clothes." Fair enough, a man who knows what he
doesn't want.

Like Kyle, the aforementioned Sally, a woman of cultivated tastes, makes
no bones about precisely defining deal breakers. "Any sort of hyper,
over-masculinity really drives me crazy. I'm the kind of girl who hates
muscles. If someone's muscular at all it really pisses me off, I can't
deal with it. I also can't deal with blonds. I'm anti whatever the
all-American boy look is: blond hair, blue eyes, muscles. If there's any
of that it completely turns me off."

And if you non-blonds are after a woman like Sally, being aggressive is
not going to get you there. "I tend to pursue people myself," she says.
"My big thing is I initiate everything. So, if someone's picking up on
me, it's a deal breaker. Because if I haven't already started flirting
with them, I'm not interested."

Then there's the perplexing sphere of personal tastes. Much as we might
not want to admit it, one's tastes in art, music, books and even cars
can make or break a romance. James, 34, can't tolerate women with cute
cars. "If they've got a pink or lavender car, or they name their car,
I'd have to pass," he said. "That indicates a whole package of
personality traits I'm not willing to deal with."

Callie's list of deal breakers also mentioned cars: "Guys that think
their cars are an extension of their penis. No, your penis is smaller!"
Ouch.

But leave it to the ever-exacting Sally to move the discussion indoors.
"They couldn't have Thomas Kinkade paintings on the walls. I even get
weirded out if there's mainstream art. If they can't get past, say,
Picasso, Matisse and Monet prints. If you see those, you feel that it's
just received aesthetics. I can't stand that. Or if you find their books
are all the right books and all their CDs are exactly the right CDs --
if it seems just a little too cultivated, and you begin to suspect that
they have no original taste whatsoever. You're OK with the Martin Amis,
but you need them to have, you know, a telephone from 1920, or something
about space aliens or strange botanical books; something that says they
have fixations or interests outside the mainstream. You want them to be
bent."

But not bent in the wrong direction, according to Tara, 42, who won't
cut a deal with men who "phone too much" or express the opinion that
"breast implants don't seem like that big a deal -- if the man in a
woman's life really likes the idea." Speaking of physical attributes,
"interior nose hair is acceptable, if trimmed," she sniffs, "but hair
that grows out of the top of the nose" is a deal breaker. However,
having hair that grows out of the top of the head is an absolute
requirement, one woman told me, and toupees are "never, never alright,
unless he's Sean Connery." Which naturally leads one to wonder if 007
would wear Birkenstocks. (No, I suppose not.)

And of course Callie, the ferocious and indefatigable list maker,
weighed in on unacceptable hair: "Mullets. Must I explain?" And "Bozo
hair -- you know, bald on top, long on the sides. Thin-haired ponytails
are wrong too; bald on top with a Bozo ponytail is the worst."

And while James may not like cute cars, he sure likes cute hair. "I like
it real short, like Jean Seberg in 'Breathless' or page-boyish like
Audrey Tautou in 'Amélie' [James is a painter/filmmaker] or otherwise
real long, but definitely no hairspray. Hairspray or any kind of done-up
concocted hairdo is not OK."

Few respondents, male or female, volunteered opinions as to their
intended's political or ideological leanings, but when I pushed them on
the subject, it was clear they'd given it deep and careful thought.
"Republicans, Dodgers fans -- I don't care," said Sara, 43. "I'm not
elitist at all. I'm a tramp." Callie wouldn't go for "racists, rednecks
or conservatism" which she deemed "wrong, wrong, wrong." Jack, who
harshly drew the line at bunny lovers, said, to his credit, that
"bigotry" was a deal breaker. And Pamela, 36, said that "men who aren't
pro-choice or who are pro-death penalty" would definitely not be
spending the night. But even Salon writers have conservative friends,
and one of mine said he wouldn't consider sleeping with a liberal
because "they're smug and intolerant and poor losers. Plus, the whole
p.c. thing is just insufferable. Laura Bush is way hotter than Hillary
Clinton," he said.

But leave it to Callie, the trenchant listomaniac, to sum up deal
breakers in the most concise, non-negotiable terms. "I know a lot of
people will say the deal breakers are petty," she writes. "They believe
you can take 'a diamond in the rough' and polish it to brilliance. But
I've done it before, and they leave at about the quartz stage."