flying high

For a single woman looking for love (or a good time) in these early years of the 21st century, there are a few indispensible people that she needs to surround herself with: the sympathetic friend, on whose shoulder she can cry when things don’t work out with a guy; the realistic friend, who tells her that guy was a jackass and she can do better anyway; the platonic male friend, to whom she can go to for insight about the male psyche; the booty call, who’s always willing to give her a hand (or other body part) in the bedroom during a dry spell; and of course, the wingwoman – the co-pilot, the support system who rides shotgun with you as you navigate the treacherous waters of bars, clubs and parties trolling for a catch.

The term “wingwoman” derives from “wingman,” a term which was, according to Wikipedia, knower of all things, introduced in the 1986 movie Top Gun, and advanced in the vernacular by the 1996 movie Swingers. Wikipedia defines wingman as  “a role that a person may take when a friend needs support with approaching the opposite sex. A wingman is someone who is on the “inside” and is used to help someone with relationships.”  Wingmen have become a widely accepted social fixture in the years since the concept was first introduced; they have been featured in commercials, and have web sites devoted to them and their practices. Sadly, it seems wingwomen have gone under-appreciated on the Interwebs, which is why today I am offering The Girl’s Guide to Selecting and Being a Good Wingwoman.

*It should be noted that several of the rules listed on the Wingman Laws web site apply to wingwomen as well, i.e. always make sure you’re both looking your best, never leave a fallen pilot/wingwoman, have a rendezvous point if you get separated.

- First and foremost, you and your pilot/wingwomen must not share the same taste in men.  The pilot/wingwoman arrangement will never work if you’re both gunning for the same target.  This is all about teamwork and cooperation; there is no room for competition and sabotage here.
- Secondly, attitude is everything. A good wingwoman is open to being approached by guys; a great wingwoman is comfortable approaching guys herself. If you have to convince your wingwoman to come with you to the bar or the dance floor to start chatting up some fellas, forget it. Not only are you never going to be able to soar off victoriously into the sunset, you’re plane’s never even going to get off the runway.
- Along those same lines, a good wingwoman strikes a balance between being supportive, and a total twat-swatter (the feminine equivalent of a cock-block). I think this is one of the reasons the pilot/wingman system works better for men – they are notoriously un-picky. If it has boobs and it’s breathing, most likely there is a guy who will try to fuck it, and, 9 times out of 10, his buddy will support that mission. Conversely, women tend to have high (if not stratospheric) standards, and tend to be even more judgmental when it comes to the men their friends are eyeing. But you can’t have a wingwoman who shoots down all of your targets; it just won’t work. She also can’t automatically turn up her nose at every friend she is charged with distracting. Remember – “in it to win it” is the operative phrase here. To be a successful wingwoman, you have to take one for the team sometimes.
However, a good wingwoman is not so blindly supportive that she will not interject her opinion when it’s really, really called for. If a wingwoman knows something about a target that her pilot doesn’t, like that he has a girlfriend, herpes or a criminal record, by all means, she needs to speak up. I guess, in the end, what I’m trying to say is that the best women know how to use the “Abort Mission” button judiciously.
- Ideally, your wingwoman is also a single gal. While using a wingwoman who is taken automatically cuts out the competition factor, in order for the pilot/wingwoman formation to work, the wingwoman needs to be in it to win it as well, which can mean anything from flirting with a guy, to going home with him.
- Finally, when choosing to work with a wingwoman, it’s important to understand that you will be obligated, in the future, to return the favor. In the pilot/wingwoman relationship, everyone needs to be a switch-hitter. It’s only fair. Tonight may be your night to fly high, pilot, but next time, you’re the Goose to her Maverick.

Any other guidelines/thoughts on being a good wingwoman (or wingman)?  Feel free to share them in the comments!

match point

As I’ve mentioned before, for almost a year now, I’ve been subscribing to Match.com in hopes of finding Mr. Right (or a decent Mr. Right Now, as it were), with varying degrees of success.  At present, my stats are: two guys who were quite awesome and were worthy of  pursuing relationships with (not like that actually happened in either instance, but still); a handful of guys who were just awesomely bad, and then dozens more who fell somewhere in between.  Overall, I’d say that my decision to plunge into the world of online dating was a good one.  Regardless of how terrible the date was or how mismatched the guy and I were, I learned a lot about myself and what I want from a man and a relationship (I also learned the value of positive thinking.  Ha.)

My Match subscription expires at the end of this week, and I’m still on the fence about whether to renew it or not.  My mind seems to change by the hour (I guess I am finally living up to that aspect of femininity.)  On one hand, no amount of positive thinking can convince me that I will meet my soulmate on a dating Web site, no matter what those cheesy TV testimonials tell me.  It just ain’t gonna happen.  Anyone who has ever done a dating Web site knows that those kind of fairy tale happy endings are a crock of shite.  There are still too many variables that can kill a match that on paper (or a computer screen, as it were) looks perfect.  You don’t really need to look any further than my own experiences for proof of that – one year, at least two dozen matches, two guys worth pursuing something with, and even that didn’t translate into more than a few weeks of casual dating.  Now, I’ll admit, I’m pretty picky, and some matches fell through because of my haphazard handling of the situation.  But for a concept that is supposed to remove a lot of the guesswork from dating…well, there’s still quite a bit of uncertaintly involved.

But still…but still.  It is an avenue through which to meet men (which I definitely still want to do) and, I’ll be honest, I’m kind of out of ideas of where else to do that.  I mean, let’s be real here – where do people go to meet members of the opposite sex these days?  I’m not the only one asking this question.  Ang and I had this very conversation Sunday night, while we were talking about her getting back out on the dating scene after breaking up with her boyfriend.

“My parents always tell me that I have to go out and meet people,” she said . “But I honestly don’t know where they want me to go.  Things are not the way they were when our parents were dating.  People don’t ‘go out’ to meet people anymore.”

And how. Dating’s most historically prolific meat market, the bar scene, is about as used up and overdone as Paris Hilton’s vagina.  I spend my fair share of time in bars these days, and let me tell you, people are not mixing and mingling like they were back in my parents’ day, or even like they did at the local bars when I was in college.  You don’t believe me?  Go to any bar anywhere in Philly (or any other city) and you’ll find lots of people – but they will all be in little nuclear groups, talking only to each other, and nobody from the “outside.”  The easy flow of interaction between individuals and groups that I remember from the college bar scene seems to have ceased in the real world.  Everyone keeps to themselves.  It may be because half the people in the bars (at least to my single eyes) seem to already be paired up, which actually makes me paranoid sometimes.  I feel as if one day, a few years ago, there was a big, important, worldwide meeting where everybody sat down and decided who they were going to spend the rest of their lives with, and somehow I missed it.  Like I slept through it or something.

Anyway, even in the event that I do find a single guy in a bar who is willing to a complete stranger, chances are he’s not looking at me as girlfriend material, if you know what I’m saying.  Nowadays, if there are people in a bar mingling with the opposite sex, it’s for one reason and one reason only – to hit it and quit it, as the kids say.  It’s such common knowledge, I don’t even know why I’m repeating it.  People nowadays go to bars looking for someone they can spend a night with – not the rest of their lives.  Which, you know, principle-wise I don’t have a problem with; it just crosses out one big feeding ground for potential mates, and when you don’t have that many options to begin with, that kind of sucks.

I guess I can let my subscription lapse, and see what happens out in the ‘real world.’  I mean, it is true that you never know what will happen or who you will meet on any given day, and things always fall into your lap when you least expect it.  Or maybe I’m just telling myself that.  Lord know, I look for that silver lining on every cloud.