You Know What? I’m the Perfect One
The penultimate installment
I’ve always said you can tell a lot about somebody by what he reads. More to the point — since this is, after all, a dating column written by a heterosexual cis male—you can tell a lot about somebody by what she reads.
It probably comes as no surprise, I’m generally attracted to well-read women — also, to women I can’t read, but that’s a story for another time. So, in order to find the woman that’s perfect for me, I’m hitting the books.
The plan is to figure out everything I can about the kind of ladies who read the stuff I read — what else they like, where they hang out, their opinions on all this creepy research I’m doing. Then, I can focus my energy on finding just those special kinds of ladies, because I’m pretty sure my continued dating woes are the result of casting too wide a net, and not of any deficiency on my part.
So, what do I like to read? Let’s start with periodicals, since those reader demographics should be easy to find.
I really enjoy reading The New Yorker. In fact, I bet if I used The New Yorker as a starting place, I would soon encounter a warm, empathetic, talented, hard-working, and beautiful woman, whom I would start dating. That, of course, would make it so difficult to connect with the premise of this column, I would take a month off, slightly irking the column’s literally tens of elevens of fans.
So, right. Let’s start there. Well, according to this article (somehow related to the University of Virginia), which keeps coming up in my Google searches, “the affluent middle-class professionals who read The New Yorker constituted an insecure and anxious elite …” and I stopped reading right there, because what more needs be said? At least one fifth of that sentence applies to me, so it must apply to my dream ladies. I’ll start a list of traits I should be looking for in my dream girl.
- Insecure
- Anxious
Great start!
Hm, I wonder if there is any advice out there on how to prey on women’s insecurities. Well, certainly not in any of the literature I read, so I’ll just take these two data points and go back to my research.
I also enjoy reading Mother Jones. Lucky for me, Mother Jones is big on data, so they have some numbers readily available for me to explore. Here are the self-reported demographics of the Mother Jones readership:
This is great! I’ll just add to my list.
- Insecure
- Anxious
- Optimistic
- Active
- Risky
- Opinionated
- Educated
- Married
- Male
- 35-70
Brilliant. Of course I’ve been having trouble finding the right women; I’ve been looking for women! Instead of thinking about what women might be interested in, I should have been focused on what my real spirit animals — middle aged married men—are going on about! This fresh perspective might be just what I need to crack the case.
Let’s stick with literature and search “what middle aged men read” which, of course, brings us to …
What the—
Hold everything. I have to worry about estrogen now? Are you kidding me? Forget finding a women, I’m apparently about to become one. A fat one, at that.
I don’t like this one bit! I’m a heterosexual cis male! I shouldn’t have to put up with thinking about my appearance! I was put here to be the standard to which the world conforms, by hook or by crook, and that is where I shall remain.
New. Plan.
Ladies, you have to come find me before the estrogen does. This is now up to you. I done with this entire dating pursuit. I’m heading to the gym to stave off the hormones which will soon erode my precious masculinity. There is no time to waste, least of all on the stupid Internet. I came into this column with an open heart and open mind and what have I learned? Nothing. Or, at least, nothing but bad news. Thanks a lot, Internet. I’ve tried everything — revisiting my past, asking hot men for advice, trolling for pageviews, Gene — and now, I give up.
You know what? I’m the perfect one. You should all start columns about trying to find me. I am man! Come and get me! I am … oh wait, sorry, one moment … okay, I’m very sorry, but I have to wrap this up. My girlfriend is free to hang out and I don’t get to see her very often.
There’s one more of these to come. All I can say is this: listen to me. My name is Jason Oberholtzer. That is not my real name.
