Fragrantly Beautiful

Is Beauty A Curse For Some Women?

Why would a really good looking woman need to join a dating service? This question was posed to me almost daily by single men during the nearly 23 years I owned such a service. (The only other question asked of me almost as frequently during that same time period was "Are we there yet? by my kids on the way to... anywhere).

The fact is that over the years hundreds and hundreds of really attractive single women actually joined my dating service. Often while interviewing a woman who was an absolute knockout, I found myself chuckling that this "goddess" (who would not even have noticed my existance in high school) was now paying me to find her dates.

A vast majority of these very attractive women worked in high level executive and professional positions. Yes, corporate America has discovered beautiful women can "use" their feminine wiles to achieve success in such fields as sales and marketing, advertising, and public relations.
Moreover, I interviewed many successful women attorneys who were absolutely stunning. Perhaps their role models were some of the beauties in such Boston-based David E. Kelley television shows as "Ally McBeal," "The Practice," and "Boston Legal." Was it a coincidence that as Calista Flockhart's skirts rose, so did the show's ratings?

But in Kelley's Boston it is very common for female lawyers to date clients, for judges to date lawyers, and defense attorneys to date prosecutors. A new associate is introduced in one episode, and before the first commercial she catches the eye of another attorney, and within one or two episodes at most that couple is "going at it" on someone's desk.

This season's finale of Kelley's "Boston Legal" featured an affair between a partner and an associate, a wild sexual liaison between an associate and a new associate, a romance between an accused murderer and one of her attorneys, (along with a rebuffed romance between the same accused murderer and another of her attorneys), and a back story about an affair between a married judge and an attorney.

Of course this was a two-hour episode!

In the real world, though, such office trysts are very rare, if non-existent. I interviewed many women who told me they were huge "Ally McBeal" fans, but could not recall any intra-office romances where they worked. Moreover they insisted they would never consider risking their professional careers with any type of romantic dalliance with anyone in or represented by their firm. Let alone a judge.

Very attractive professional women (let's call them "VAPs") also have the problem of needing a dating service to "screen out" or "filter" the men who approach them. Such women report walking down the street and being approached by all sorts of men from cab drivers to construction workers. Or they walk into a bar with a friend just to have a drink and immediately get hit on by, in their words, "jerks."

So, if a VAP is not going to date anyone affiliated with her career or anyone she might meet at a bar or through fate, it makes sense that she would consider using a dating service.
By the way, many VAPs told me when they tried using an Internet dating site and posted a picture they would be flooded with so many responses from salivating men, it soon became a "full-time job" just to navigate through the myriad responses they received.

Many VAPs have been attractive since their middle school years, with men swarming around them since they first began to "develop" during their adolescence.

Unless they are not too bright, (and I am referring primarily to well-educated women), most of these beauties soon figured out just what it is men want from them and why.

They actually face the "problem" of trying to figure out whether a man who professes his love after only a handful of dates has bothered to get to know what they are like on the inside.
What I also found especially interesting is the feedback VAPs usually reported to counselors at my dating service after their dates. Rarely did they ever complain the men were dull or "just sat there." (This was a common complaint from average-looking women.)

No, the VAPs would often complain the men they met were far too self-centered. That is they spent the entire date the same way males in heat in the animal kingdom would"¦showing off their "plumage."

"All he did was talk about himself," was a common response. "From the moment we sat down he started bragging about his car, his condo, and his job"¦and he never asked me any questions about myself."

Of course these same men would call in raving how "great" their dates were and then be shocked when the VAPs would not want to see them again. (Let this be a lesson for men.)
One woman, a very natural beauty with long, flowing blonde hair, told me while most of her friends would spend hours applying make up, fixing their hair just right, and donning an attractive outfit before going out, she often "dressed down" and wore little or no make up, so as not to attract men interested only in her looks.

Yet that same woman, who was in pharmaceutical sales, also admitted to trying to look her absolute best and sexiest when making a sales call to a male physician's office.
On the other hand, she had a hard and fast rule of never, ever going out with any of her work-related clients.

Of course most of you readers are probably laughing to yourself and saying you have no empathy for such women. I understand.

Steve Penner was the owner of the Boston-based dating service LunchDates for nearly 23 years and interviewed and listened to feedback from thousands of single men and women from all over New England. "The Truth About Dating" reflects insights and observations based upon his experience. He welcomes feedback and comments at pennerst@hotmail.com.

posted by Cheryl Levesque @ 4:43 PM