Getting personal.

GETTING PERSONAL

THE REDHEAD and her ideal man don't exist. I constructed them: my ad is just a plausible collage. But what does it matter? The people who inhabit Personal World are insubstantial as fog drip anyway. Ghosts of hope. Raw sexual projection. The vaporous stuff that has energized romance fiction since Tristan met Iseult. Insubstantial but revealing. For the personal items are a profile of our expectation: vain, crass, obvious, pathetic. Despite the ostensible difference and eccentricity--"good penmanship not required, left-handed woman preferred"--there is a forlorn, dull sameness about it.

With some little practice you can smoke out the code. Everyone is at least "attractive"--which word has less critical definition than, say, "beautiful" or "well-built." "Spirited woman," for instance, means, "I'm uglier than a pig in a python, but I'll talk you blind." Not that I blame the lady: this is advertising, after all, and those are guman slogans. Too much truth will wallflower you. Nonetheless, the suspicion exists that personal people believe they're attractive, vivacious, whatever. Some day, presumably, they'll arrange a hot assignation: they can't want to be sued for deceptive advertising. But, beyond that, American men and women have been taught--by relativist culture, by liberal jargon, by one mod therapy or another--that we are all, indeed, "attractive." Even when we look like urban sprawl in street clothes. Moreover, we deserve--didn't Jefferson mention happiness?--someone "handsome, tender, bright." As though we were each one half of a federal matching grant.

Actually, what you have here are New Age liberals in their most intimate courtship dance. Women control personal-column language. Their need coincides nicely with the liberal agenda. No male advertiser would dare flaunt chauvinism or even celebrate his forcefulness: instead he'd better be "still growing" or "in touch with feelings." Intellect might be conducive to success, but emotional "availability"--sensitive, gentle, affetionate--has more seductive power. That famous compassion most often directed at large, nebulous groups is here set aside for a single male or female. In return, women have graciously agreed to downplay their feminist activism. I don't claim that conservative men and women are above placing personal ads. When they do, though, in just about any publication other than NR, they will be well advised to gloss over their conservatism. The personal message is clear and probably effective: your love life will be held hostage until you conform to a liberal model.

Beyond that, personal columns sound rather like the internal correspondence at some Tantric health farm. Rule One: if you want a girlfriend, give up tobacco (and alcohol and drugs). Rule Two: get in shape--tennis and all your moonlit walking will take a lot of wind. Rule Three: be sensitive about art and consciousness phenomena, as was that gentleman advertiser who "Once caught a glimpse of Tom Robbins in the La Conner, Wash., post office. Yet one can't live by books and music alone." Certainly not. One must also have, Rule Four (this is crucial) a sense of humor--no, an irreverent sense of humor. Which means you often lampoon Reagan and the Roman Catholic Church. Personal folk are compassionate up and down, but, Rule Five, YOU DAMN WELL BETTER NOT BE SHORT. 5'10" is the cut-off point. Doesn't signify how loving and sharing I might be, at 5'4" no one will bother to lean down and notice. Heightism, ask Galbraith, is the secret shame of the liberal soul.

But health food and a private fitness consultant are expensive. Much more than lust, yuppie pragmatism underlies personal advertising. In New York magazine, where one line will run you $27.00 (and an average item is well over $100) the tone can be less than compassionate. "Tennis, golf, sailing from my Hamptons waterfront home." "Please be Ivy-educated and very, very successful." "Successful" without the "very" is, I'd guess, $75,000 per year, bottom figure. Someone who has two "very"s could mount Aida with Placido Domingo and an elephant in his breakfast nook. Personal advertising is a class phenomenon. Historically the middle and upper middle brokered their passion. Now they have to act as both agent and flack. Blue-collar people have a greater sense of either insecurity or shame.

The personal columns in New York are heterosexual and 50 per cent female, 50 per cent male. (I don't imagine they can exclude gay people, but none advertise there.) In the Village Voice, downscale at just $9 per line, about 35 per cent are homosexual. This is hardly astounding, given Voice readership. What did perplex me was the considerable proportion (more than 10 per cent) of married advertisers. "MWM, on a sabbatical, would like to meet a woman in similar situation." "MWM, 36, handsome, professional, has seven-year itch." Beyond the hardcore sex correspondence catalogues, I don't remember seeing such blase outreach to adultery before. But it was inevitable, I suppose. The personal column has always been sub-pornographic: voyeur and exhibitionist maintain their anonymity. And their control. Society has discouraged perversion by isolating it. Personal columns unstring our social fabric by allowing isolated men and women to find each other without risk across a wide circulation.

Personal advertising is, you could say, the quintessential free-market instrument. It will unite buyer and seller--HERPOID CAN'T FIND HERPETTE--where no transaction woudl otherwise occur. More than this, though, the enormous personal industry is symptomatic of a culture that has lost its organizing institutions. Church, club, tong, neighborhood, ethnic group no longer serve as matchmaker. There are only, so to speak, civil ceremonies left. If we cannot find our like, it is largely because we have over-individualized American experience. All that remain are vulgar billets-doux broadcast to an anonymous and prurient universe.