July 6, 2012

• Call Me Maybe and Dating Websites

  Ok…..so I am utterly confused now by this song and why women choose to use it for their dating headlines.  As you may have deduced, yes, I have looked online for dating purposes and I swear someone could write a PhD on some sociological topic.  This is not it, but here are some observations.

  There are many a profiles that reference this song.  I hate this song…It’s catchy and sticks in your head.  Not what I want to be humming while working out.  But I digress.  I recently saw the music video, and it makes no sense when used with dating websites. 

  First, women complain that men often take shirtless photos of themselves and post them on their profiles.  Apparently it happens a lot, but what happens at the very beginning of the music video?  The guy is shirtless while mowing the lawn, and she is totally flustered by him.  She also happens to be reading romance novels which have shirtless beaus on the cover.  The message I get is that eye candy is appealing, especially if you have a body like the guy in the video (I suppose the tattoos help too).  I haven’t gone looking at men’s profiles, so I have no idea what’s being posted, but I would assume that if a guy is going to post a shirtless photo, they could pull it off.  It is possible that women are complaining because men CAN’T pull it off, and they don’t want to see all that.  The justification of the complaint however, doesn’t hold water because a view of a rockin’ bod is exactly what they want, and men try to cater to that desire.  Failure or success, you can’t blame men for trying.

  Second, what’s the deal with the Call Me Maybe line?  Until the end she hasn’t even given a number yet, nor has she met him.  She’s missing him even before she’s met him, and apparently there are other boys who are chasing her.  This makes no sense with the video and even less so with online profiles.  The way people “meet” online is by VIEWING profiles, which does nothing to determine actual interest.  This is even more problematic with sites which require paid subscriptions to access who has viewed your profile in the first place.  Assuming you can, how does a man gauge interest, especially if the expectation is for the man to contact the woman?  Is a profile viewing the Call Me Maybe equivalent?  This is hard to do considering there are no numbers (and rightly so), so there is no “Call.”  For that matter, there is no “Maybe” either.  In the video she WANTS him to call her.  To be fair, there are now ways where calling/texting is an option, but you’ll have to pay extra for it. 

  Third, total confusion at the end of the music video.  The guy is gay/bi, or at least it appears that way with the XOXO.  I assume that women who use Call Me Maybe have seen the music video.  It’s probably a bad assumption.  The screening criteria for a woman in looking for a straight man, well, excludes gay men.  So, why would you reference a song that has a shirtless guy who you’ve been missing even though you haven’t met him, only to find out he’s gay?  Is that the purpose of Calling Maybe?  Is that what a woman wants?

  In all honesty, I do understand why a woman would use the line.  Apart from any context, it’s just a straight up hey-if-you’re-interested-after-looking at pictures and READING-my-profile-call-me thing.  The maybe might be there because sometimes a woman DOESN’T want someone to “call” her.  In a public, online environment this is certainly understandable.  In using those very lines however, there is an implicit knowledge of the song.  What she doesn’t account for was any matching up of the video with song, the portrayed female desires of the song, or the problematic…logistics…of Calling Maybe on online dating sites.  I suggest that women avoid using references to Call Me Maybe.  It would avoid confusion.

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  • 9:05 pm
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