Rank Heresy

According to the article by Sonja Lubyomirsky quoted by Julie in her post today, "People learn early in life that success often is a matter of relative rather than absolute performance and, consequently, strive to learn how they stand relative to 'relevant others.'"

Relative success compared to relevant others--let's put that into layman's terms in the form of an internalized thought process, shall we?

'OK, so I'm not the world's best soccer player. I didn't score any goals last week, in fact; but that's ok, because I'm new, I've hardly ever played soccer before. The other people who are new didn't score so many goals either. Though they did score more than I did--but that's different, Joey is so much bigger than I am and Susan has always been such a fast runner. There was that other guy who didn't score any goals, I'm not the only person who didn't score any goals, though he did manage to stop the other team from scoring once or twice, and I didn't do that either--but that's ok. Soccer's a stupid game, I don't really care about soccer anyway.'

In other words, I highly suspect that most people select as their group of "relevant others" for social comparison whichever is likely to be the most flattering for themselves. And it works, right up until you live in a soccer-crazy culture where everyone wants to be great at soccer, and you "not really caring about soccer anyway" becomes just another thing wrong with you.

Like breasts. My female readers will know exactly what I'm talking about--nothing is more important to the social status of a thirteen-year-old girl than breast size. Or maybe it just seemed that way to me since my "relevant others" were all eight years old; I still remember nearly twenty years on a day in the changeroom before or after gym class (hands up everyone who'd still like to go back and torture whichever adult ever came up with the concept of group nudity during adolescence) when I was informed that next to so-and-so, who had half-melons, and next to so-and-so, who had half-apples, I had half-cherries. But that's ok, who cares about breast size anyway?

Oh, that's right, boys. Boys cared about breast size. They weren't even subtle about it. One day in drama class in grade 10, I remember, a relatively well-endowed girl leaned back and put her arms over her head for a good stretch--and the boy sitting next to me nudged his friend and pointed straight at her chest so they could both have a good ogle. Or another boy who was so offended by Guess brand clothing for some reason I never managed to fathom, who said he was tempted to go up to any girl wearing "guess" on her chest or her ass and estimate her bra size. Why bra size? Was there an innate understanding that this would be the most humiliating, or was it just that at that age there was little else as important? He never threatened to guess their IQ or their favourite colour.

All of which is to say that "relevant others" is sometimes a field which we are left to define for ourselves, and sometimes is a field defined for us. In adolescence, no one is free to decide that it's ok if they're ugly because beauty doesn't really matter anyway. We are all left to bleed on that killing field. In my gym class in middle school, there was a girl whose name began with W, with pale blond hair and blue eyes, a beaked nose, and at least and extra fifty pounds. Not only did many of the other girls mock her, but our gym teacher was relentless too, and made sure every day to tell her how unacceptable her body was. I hope the teacher's own body betrayed her in some greusome and painful way, I truly do; W was defined by her weight all throughout highschool, and whenever I ran into her (which happened once a year or so) the conversation inevitably returned to how well or how poorly she was doing with her weight-loss efforts.

~~~~~

I'd like to say we all outgrow it. Certainly it matters less as we get older, and when it does matter it hurts less than it used to; but it still matters, and anyone who says it doesn't has yet to be exposed to the marvelous world of online dating sites. I know, I'm back at that again; but it's relevant so hang on. Let's leave alone for a moment the examples that are so offensively shallow it's hard to believe it's not some massive cyber-joke, i.e. sugardaddie.com and their ilk ("Where the attractive, classy and affluent meet"--sure, that's just exactly what comes to mind when I think of sugar daddies) and focus on those that purportedly are trying to match people up to someone who could be a life partner (Match, eHarmony, certain sections of LavaLife, plentyoffish, etc.). The first thing you have to do upon signing up is fill out a questionnaire. Do they ask you about your views on capital punishment, your charitable donations for the last year, your favourite book, the amount of TV you watch?

No. They ask for your age, your body type, your height, your income, your level of education, whether or not you already have children, if you want any in the future, your smoking and drinking habits, give you a chance to tick off your hobbies (one of the two of the guys I met who listed "creative writing" as hobbies meant that he'd published a poem in the local newspaper's "poet's corner" once, and the other was referring to the three poems he'd written since graduating from university ten years ago, so you can imagine there is a broad field of possible meaning), and ask you to post a photograph. None of this is necessary. You can leave the whole thing blank if you choose but, as they sternly warn, "profiles with photographs get 8x the number of responses." Why is that? Because "prefer not to say" is interpreted by most browsers as meaning that the person has no relative success against any relevant others--that the guy without a photo has two heads, neither of which have a nose; that the one who left the income field blank is, in fact, living with his mother and hasn't held a steady job since 1993; that the one who has decided not to share about his drinking habits was probably drunk as he posted the profile. Sure, there's the ad-lib section where you can wax poetic about your deep and abiding love of cats, the importance of your spiritual values and the number of exes who would rate you an excellent kisser (and some people do, in fact, include this information); but the reality is that if you don't fare well on the social comparison section most people will not bother looking past it to the lovely and loving soul that lurks beneath. (Though in some notable cases the opposite does occur: someone does well on the social comparison section only to ruin it by revealing a sinkhole of moral values in the ad-lib section, for example, the lovely man who sent me a message and revealed that while he was looking for a woman who was beautiful and intelligent (while being neither himself, so far as I could tell), he could accept beautiful and unintelligent. Or--even better!--the man who said he was looking for a very submissive woman to have sex with while his wife was dying of a terminal illness. It's been many months since I received that one, Dear Readers, and I am still hard pressed to identify anything in that sentence that is not offensive, with the possible exception of the conjunctions).

The entire subject of dating, mating and marriage has always been a minefield of social comparison--stock phrases such as "I can do better," "she's out of my league" and so forth reveal it--but dating sites take it to a whole new level not only by making it clear and explicit but also by encouraging it. What do you want? What kind of lover are you shopping for? Make out a list and keep browsing till you find it; there's someone out there, someone perfect just for you, and you won't need to compromise or settle. Why, if you're not getting the kind of results you'd fancy, just rewrite your profile, tweak your age or income, put up a new photograph. It's all about how well you rate, your rank on the social hierarchy; and while the romance experts will tell you this is about chemistry and shared values and expectations, if the behaviour of people on dating sites is any guide, it has at least as much to do with how well your potential love interest reaffirms your perceptions about your relative success against relevant others. It's about bagging the trophy.

Posted by Andrea at March 26, 2008 10:01 AM under Friends and Others , Me

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