The college dating world exists in a vacuum. I don’t know if many college kids realize it, mostly because we’re currently living and breathing this weird void, but this is a fact. There are three reasons why it is a vacuum: (1) everyone is young and beautiful, (2) everyone is a pseudo-intellectual, and (3) everyone is expected to date around. There’s essentially no reason why we wouldn’t be excited to meet new people in college. There are no more questions about whether we should be dating or not because, according to standard practice, you’re supposed to find your college partner and have all of your college experiences with one person. This person will eventually become your college ex.
If it weren’t for the pandemic, many of my friends would be swiping through the land of Tinder and Bumble, going on weird dates at local coffee joints, and trying to make conversation with someone who wants nothing more than to talk about themselves. But I digress. I don’t want to take this whole article down the beaten path of online dating, because that is another beast in itself.
In my meager dating experience, I’ve made a few observations.
In college, youthful bravado coupled with an overwhelmingly academic environment makes us all feel like we are part of this Empire State Building-tall intellectual high ground. This manifests into a completely different issue in the world of college dating. Let me break this argument down.
First, it feels as if cisgender heterosexual (cishet) college men are held to absolutely zero standards in terms of dating. “Boys will be boys,” right? This starkly contrasts what many womxn feel: we are to be fun…but not too fun. Serious about schoolwork…but not geeks. If a womxn is perceived to be studious (you see her at the library or at the park, book in hand), men feel that this is some sort of anomaly. Why is it that a studious sorority sister is always “rare,” but a frat boy can always “work hard, play hard?”
Meanwhile, Kyle, Justin, and Chad’s college archetypes include the convivial frat bro and the brooding skater boy, to name a few. The frat bros are fun-loving guys with a need for a girl to hold them down in their college years. The skater dude is just too smart, too thoughtful. He needs someone to tell him that it will all be okay.
The expectations, then, are clearly skewed. Men are given room to grow, whereas we have to be fully formed individuals, all-wise and mature.
This dynamic is compounded by the fact that college womxn are supposed to play the incredibly toxic “manic pixie” character for all of these guys: the one to tame them and to teach them about life. The one who loves The Smiths (Zooey Deschanel’s Summer in “(500) Days of Summer”). The one who impulsively changes her hair color every three weeks (Ramona Flowers in “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”). This trope is common in movies and books, but some people really do believe what’s on TV. These fantasies will attempt to retrofit themselves to real womxn, who are incapable of fulfilling this entirely unrealistic standard.
I’m going to try to say this as plainly as possible: an academically competitive woman is not some sort of manic pixie dream-girl fantasy for college males to prey upon. College students, especially womxn, deserve to experience their studies without having to mediate their newfound knowledge for the benefit of men. That’s what the world wants us to do. And we’re tired of it.