The Rabbit Room

Okay so I’m a little late to the Loveawake party. Hey, I’ve been a busy girl, I had a lot to blog about and a movement to participate in!
Anyway, in this study by Loveawake they discuss how men and women of various ethnicities self-describe when writing their online dating profiles. This site is free, so they have a lot of participants and are able to collect a lot of data. I would caution however that this study isn’t totally scientifically accurate but it is a good reference and starting point.

The folks at Loveawake compared the ways in which AW, HW, and BW describe themselves when setting up their online dating profiles (for my take on online dating profile caveats click here). Asian and Hispanic women tend to describe themselves in very neutral and general ways. On the other hand, BW’s self descriptions and interests tended to be more in line with black males. This may prevent BW from casting a large net and making themselves appealing to as many men as possible.
How, you ask? Check out the words used by BW and BM in the link cited above. The interests of BW appear to largely match that of BM- but not that men of other groups. Also the interests of BW are much more “African-American-Community-Centric” so to speak (i.e. neo-soul, The Color Purple, Zane, Tyler Perry, etc). THIS IS NOT TO SAY that having these interests is a bad thing, but if they are your only interests it can be very limiting. Let’s be perfectly honest here, how many WM/AM/HM are going to list The Color Purple or The Bluest Eye as their favorite books/films? Just sayin’.

Furthermore, it appears that other groups of women self-describe in order to access the widest range of acceptable men. Asian, Hispanic, and white women described themselves in terms of diverse interests- food, hobbies, authors they liked to read, etc. They cited personality characteristics like: good heart, down-to-earth, cheerful, etc. They also complimented themselves or made reference to their appearance: “my hair”, “my lips”, petite, etc. In contrast, the BW did not give high priority to describing their appearance or personality.

So what am I saying here? Take a tip from my previous post about online dating- scope out the competition and find out what you can learn from them? I think when writing our BRIEF self descriptions we should take a cue from women in in other communities and use a more diverse and general approach. But at the same time, keep it simple, this isn’t something you should be stressing over or writing novellas about. Most men will only skim through your profile. They’re not going to read through paragraphs and paragraphs of personal statements and answers to questions so keep it simple, light, and breezy.