Millions of Women Are Waiting to Tell You: a story of life, love and internet dating
Sean Thomas Bloomsbury, 320pp, £10.99
ISBN 074758219X
Advertising for love is by no means a new phenomenon. It was in the 1730s that newspapers first began to print lonely hearts ads. In those days, income or respectability tended to be the primary requirement in a potential spouse, though some of the ads made more unusual demands - for instance, a "shapely ankle" or a "non-dancer". Under Queen Victoria, lonely hearts ads proliferated, mirroring the increasingly commercial, public and unregulated nature of courtship towards the end of the 19th century.
Today, lonely hearts ads are more popular - and hence more profitable - than ever before, with internet dating services alone worth in the region of a billion dollars a year. All - yes, all - my single friends over the age of about 28 are engaged on some level or another in internet dating, and rarely does a Sunday brunch go by without being regaled with tales of the latest disastrous dates (as well as the occasionally successful one). There are, it seems, literally millions of people looking for love online.
Sean Thomas used to be one of them. A freelance journalist for a men's magazine, Thomas was single, 37 and (in his words) "desperate" to fall in love and have children. Happily, fate intervened when his editor commissioned him to write an article about internet dating. This book is the story of what happened next, padded out with some mildly outrageous anecdotes about his previous sexual escapades - a sort of sexual memoir, though Henry Miller need not be overly concerned.
Having signed up to two of the largest internet dating sites in the country, Thomas described himself online as follows: "I look like Earl Spencer on a bad hair day. I review Lego for amazon.co.uk. I live in a fabulously located but pitifully small central London flat." Despite this, he quickly embarked on a series of dates with women - some suitable, some not so suitable - all of which are recounted here.
Though eminently readable, the book stumbles along fairly haphazardly, with chattily written diversions on such subjects as the time Thomas masturbated himself into hospital, what it is like to date a celebrity, and an account of a trip to Mount Athos, a semi-independent ecclesiastic republic in northern Greece that has banned women. The author also offers up a few pointers about internet dating in general: women, don't describe yourselves as "fun-loving" because Thomas will take it to mean "drunken, possibly a crackhead"; and men, try to restrain yourselves from posting pictures of your cars in your profiles. Hilarious, however, this book is not. Thomas's hackneyed inquiries into familiar subjects ("Why are so many men fascinated by lesbians?"; "What's so good about stockings?") have the unmistakable air of a men's magazine article being awkwardly stretched out to fill a book - which, of course, is exactly what they are.
Thomas has certainly ended up a fan of internet dating: "We all want to fall in love . . . the medium is almost irrelevant, as long as it works. Put it another way: when you are looking for love, you are shooting for the moon. Who cares if you get there in a gondola, or in a minicab? Just get there." This sentiment might have seemed original in 1760, when one smart beau placed the following plea in the Public Advertiser: "A gentleman, who feels lonely, and possesses a good round sum for the matrimonial cash-box, wishes to find a lady in a similar position, having a wish to marry. Would prefer a plain, neat lady, rather than a dashy person." But in 2006, when advertising for love is entirely commonplace, it all feels rather like old news.
Fran Beauman, author of The Pineapple: king of fruits (Chatto & Windus), is working on a history of lonely hearts ads
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