Dating can be really easy for some and really difficult for others. To add to the varying degrees of difficulty, there are so many methods to "meeting the one" or "meeting the one for right now."
You could go to the bar, you could have friends introduce you to someone, you could go to a singles gathering like 8-minute dating, you can sign up on a free or paid website for dates or for sex friends, or you can hire a stranger to pretend to be your best girl friend.
Wait, what was that last one?
That's right, you can now
hire someone to pretend to be a good friend for the night and be your wing woman.
I've signed on to various email lists so that I know what's happening around Boston, and this morning Thrillist.com (which is mainly targeting guys) is highlighting a new business called
HireaBostonWing Woman.com.
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| hireabostonwingwoman.com |
Go ahead and check it out. I'll wait.
*takes a sip of coffee...plays with the kitties...*
Okay, are you back? What did you think? Let me tell you what I think.
From first impressions, I think it's absolutely fascinating. Really, it's a great business idea. Take dating back to face to face interactions, and use the amazing relationship building skills of women to a guys advantage.
What girl hasn't been a wing man for a guy friend? Some are definitely more successful than others, but it's a proven success. If you just started dating a guy, you would want to know what his friends are like and you would definitely want to make sure his female friends approve of you. This cuts through all of that by starting with female relationship building.
But wait...what happens if you hit it off? What if the relationship goes really well and she asks, "Hey, where's that friend of yours that was at the bar the night we met?"
So, that's just really one question the website brought up to me.
What if the man is more attracted to the wing woman? I'm sure that there are rules about the relationship between the man and the wing woman (mainly because it seems that if you're a lesbian trying to hire a wing woman, you've just got really bad mojo...but also because the site is geared towards helping guys). The relationship probably has to be terminated.
Is this a new form of sex work? Perhaps, except that the woman would almost be more like a pimp, pimping the guy out. I'm not against sex work at all if the sex worker is not forced into the job by another person or by their financial situations - if you want to use sex to get money even if you still have the means to use other occupations, go for it! But there's just something that feels really sneaky and sleazy about this mode of finding dates. Which leads me to my next question.
Is the man hiring a wing woman out there trying to look for a serious relationship or just increasing his number of possible dates or just looking for a one night stand? It seems that the website really leaves that open by calling the other woman "a woman of interest." Whatever the guy wants, the wing woman is in charge of helping him get. So, even if the guy is a complete and utter douchtard, it's your job to help him seem like an honorable human being.
Does hiring a wing woman insinuate that the man doesn't have any female friends? To me, it sort of does. If you were already a great guy, your girl friends would either want to date you or would want to help you find dates. If you were already a great guy, your female friends would already want to look out for your best interest - and that includes weeding out the shady girls. I guess one could argue that a guy wouldn't want to put his female friends in an awkward position like that. But I really do believe that if you're worth it, your female friends will help you out.
There is definitely something to be said about this "new" way of getting a date. All methods of finding a date has its benefits and its downfalls.
If you were to meet someone through a friend, things could be awesome - until things started going bad. Would you lose a set of friends if your relationship went sour?
If you meet someone at a bar, most of the time they're intoxicated and probably not using the best judgement and neither are you. There's also a higher possibility of date rape.
If you go to a singles event, it could be a lot of fun and you can even do some networking. But it's sometimes all to similar to being at a bar or club, except you know that everyone in the room is single.
If you meet someone online, there's no guarantee that their picture is the most accurate or most recent. I've personally had someone tell me that they were black, and proceed to call me on their way over to let me know that they were actually whiter than white. That's a story for another time, but you get my point.
So, I'm not necessarily against hireabostonwingwoman.com. I really do think it's quite an ingenious concept, though it's not necessarily a new one (Go ahead and Google it). But it does raise quite a lot of questions, as I'm sure online dating did when it first began.
At the end of the day, it's just another way to get dates by putting yourself out there - whether it's by being who you are or who you would like to appear to be.
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