'I've always wanted the fairy tale,' she says before telling her date she isn't wearing knickers.
Strange, because I always thought Cinderella was missing a shoe, not her pants. The show dismantled that old myth but it stopped there in being daring and fell back on the tired notion that women must get tarted-up to attract men.
In the dating world, GSOH used to mean 'good sense of humour' but, going by the hideous footwear the women wore, it must now mean 'grotesque shoes on her.' Each woman wobbles into the bar on ridiculous, clumping platform heels which are crusted with cheap glassy jewels. Our first view of each woman is of her shoes. I can't imagine where men's eyes rush to upon first meeting an attractive female, but the camera was zooming in on her clod-hoppers.
In this 'interactive documentary' the men wait at the bar, most of them bawdy and eager little bulldogs in colourful shirts, and tell the camera what they're hoping for in a woman. It mainly seems to be 'tits'. If that's also what the women are after, they certainly won't be disappointed.
Then, the two sets of tits meet. The women come teetering through the glass doors, their eyebrows applied with some kind of bingo pen, their lips gummy with pink gloss. Is this what women actually look like? Not where I live, but then I don't go clubbing in the Merchant City.
It's wrong to judge a woman on her appearance, but the sight of these huge Barbie dolls made me wince. I tried to wait till they spoke before damning them. Maybe there'll be eloquence and wit? There wasn't. One claimed to be a writer but had never heard of HG Wells. Another giggled as she ordered a Porn Star Martini and simpered about how she's 'bubbly inside and out'. Well, she needs to steer clear of the Porn Star Martini and get some Rennies down her. These tarted-up females were simply frilly and dim, acting the bimbo to get on TV.
The same thing happened with the last series of The Apprentice. The women wore make-up so thick that the nightly scrapings to remove it must have troubled the Richter Scale. Commentators asked if it damaged women who're trying to make a career in business to have had those gaudy blow-up dolls sitting beside the sober-suited men? The answer was no, as we saw enough of the Apprentice women to learn that they were sharp and hyper-educated but First Dates doesn't give us 12 weeks to get to know the participants. We just see the women hoisting their cleavage, taking selfies at the table, giggling and fluttering and making real woman cringe.
First Dates also falls flat as it tells us nothing new about dating. It's just another round of reality TV. Anyway, we don't need a new show or site or app to teach us how to date because the dull truth is that, even now, most of us meet our partners at work. You can tune in and download and click and tweet till the cows come home, but you'll still end up marrying John from Accounts, that nice man who nudged the vending machine for you when your packet of Revels got stuck.
Yes, we're all going to end up with someone from the office. If that depresses you then you'd better start looking for a new job. Unfortunately, NASA and MI6 aren't recruiting just now, so eat your Revels and hope for the best.
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