Butching Up Online: A Dating Experiment

The Experiment

I was on Scruff for 14 days with my hair down and fully visible in all its luscious glory. The actual text of my profiles is always amazing, and I don’t say that just because I think so. My friends think so, and I’ve written more than a few OkCupid profiles for my friends that immediately led to relationships. Anyway, in those 14 days I received four messages, four conversations resulting from messages where I had made the initial contact, and three woofs, which are like hey, you’re cute but I’m too lazy to say hi so this is like a Facebook poke. These numbers were fairly disheartening, especially when you sit across from one of your friends at dinner who has 15 new messages every time he opens his phone.

After changing my profile pic to something more butch—again, face-forward but with less expression and my hair pulled out of sight under a baseball cap—my screen lit up with two messages in the first 10 minutes. Over the course of 10 days I received 28 messages, had 29 convos based on my initial message, and scored 36 woofs. While these numbers are not massively high (I don’t do half-naked pics and I’m black), the butch factor clearly had an impact.

Conclusions

Believe it or not, I didn’t come out of this experiment feeling bad about myself—just smarter about the way gay men (or perhaps men in general) place way too much emphasis on silly characteristics like beards and ballcaps (hint: that’s why you’re all still cranky and single).* And really, I don’t think having long hair itself is the big hang-up; it’s what my hair implies. Having long hair (especially for a black man) means you’re probably a bitchy dramatic queen that nobody wants to date. Even if the assumption isn’t that extreme, the underlying fear is “you spent too much time on your appearance and that’s not masculine.” That’s frustrating, of course, since stereotypical masculinity takes just as much work—we just don’t think of it that way. I remember chatting with this scruffy, fairly muscular guy with tattoos and chest hair and an Instagram full of masc pics; once we got to talking, he revealed his obsession with Beyoncé and said “yasss!” every other paragraph. But no matter—his picture is butch, so his dating life is always full.

As for me, I like my hair, and I like my style; right now, I don’t feel the need to change myself to attract 5 percent of the population when the other 95 percent gives me snaps. It’ll always bother me at least a little to watch the whole gay dating scene from the outside, but for the moment I’d rather be unique than put on another interchangeable, expressionless “masc” mask.

Read the full article here
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/...presentation_matter_in_online_gay_dating.html

 

Best comment and interaction between a reader and the author of the post.
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DMem
Mar 27, 2014
First, I need to address the following statement “black men are virtually invisible on online dating sites (unless you are in the top 5 percent of musculature and attractiveness) compared to white men (who can be completely average in every way and still fill a social calendar)”. This is completely false unless you are a black man who is only interested in white men. I have little empathy for men of color who basically limit their dating pool to white men and then complain that the white men don’t want them, but that’s a different conversation.

Now, to the main point, based on the picture, the author isn’t just feminine, he’s flamboyant.The issue isn’t the long hair as much the hairstyle. If he wants to wear his hair that way more power to him.However, my question is “are the guys online that he considers interesting also flamboyant”?Odds are; they are not. I have found that while flamboyant types tend to hang out with other flamboyant types in terms of friends, when it comes to dating they avoid each other like the plague. I suspect this is just another example of someone chasing behind others who are the complete opposite of himself for the very same reasons yet those who reject him are shallow but he’s not while all the time ignoring all the other flam types out there.

Rafi D'Angelo
Mar 27, 2014
@DMem I don't typically read or respond to internet comments, but I was a little interested to see what the difference in response would be between people who are familiar with me through my blog and people who aren't.
Curiously enough, you proved my point. "Based on the picture he's flamboyant." Actually, I'm not. And, I pretty much stopped dating white men in 2012, but this is pretty much what I mean by judging someone solely on a picture. You've ascertained that I only date white men, that I'm flamboyant, and that I chase others who are the opposite of myself from just a picture when none of those are true.

DMem
Mar 27, 2014
@Rafi D'Angelo @DMem Actually I assumed you are basically in to white man based on your statement that black men are basically invisible on online dating sites which just is not true. It had nothing to do with your picture. As for the picture, like I said based on the pic. Let's face it it's not just the long hair. If your hair was the same length but with locks, no one would bat an eye. Again, based on the pic, it looks as if you are going for that quasi-Farah Fawcett look that a lot of female celebrities have these days. And we all know that the black females that sport that style are mostly sporting weaves. So, yes, a man sporting a weave would be flamboyant by my definition. However, flam and fem are not the same in my book. A straight man can be flam. Flam is a matter of saying, "hey world, look a me." That's an issue of personal style. The more your personal style differs from the mainstream, the fewer people are going to be attracted to it. It's like someone in the Goth look trying to date outside of the Goth screen. it's possible, but the reality is that it going to be hard.
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Exactly...