Picture the dull scene. I am laying on my sofa, watching some sort of mind-numbing TV and scrolling through Facebook (obvs) when I am stopped in my tracks by an advert. Can’t say this happens very often. Most of the time the targeted ads I’m hit with are ‘meh’ at best – but this one was offering me a dating app with a difference. Oh I seeeee! Is this where I’ve been going wrong? All you have to do to find heart eyes “the one”… is change YOUR STANDARDS.
I’m sorry who what now? What in the hell kind of app is this?! Well it’s called Ten – after some hasty screenshots I quickly established nobody else had heard of it either. With a mixture of what I’ll call journalistic curiosity and morbid fascination I hit the app store… Now I’ve written about Tinder, etc before and I have nothing against online dating or dating apps in general but this was a pretty gross experience. At least in the ‘yes or no’ swiping format you can just sort of go ‘yeah I fancy you’/’no I don’t’; fair enough, right? Here, you sit and ponder over people before deciding to rate them from 1-10. There’s a big difference between not finding someone attractive personally and saying soz mate, objectively, you’re a two. After a couple of minutes of this I felt like a pretty abhorrent human being. Aside from the numerical rating of my fellow man, I was pretty indignant at the whole idea of being told that your standards can, or should, be adjusted with the swipe of a thumb. Based on what? Time of year? Current weight? Desperation??
There’s been a lot of chatter recently about beauty standards in relationships. It makes me think of an episode of How I Met Your Mother where they say there’s always a ‘reacher’ and a ‘settler’ in a relationship i.e. one person is always fitter than the other. Now being realistic, if you objectively polled the attractiveness of couples, I suppose it is unlikely many would get exactly the same ‘score’, making someone the “settler”. But does that mean they ‘settled’ for their partner? Erm, rude.
Someone called bullshit this week – Ashley Stevens posted a picture of her boyfriend Christopher’s panicked face after she caught the bouquet at a friend’s wedding… but aside from the typical humour that might be taken from this situation, all anyone could point out was how Christopher was ‘punching’. Ashley made a very cute statement about their relationship and basically told the internet to find a ladder and get over it. This prompted an outpouring from other couples around the world who deal with similar issues and comments from strangers on their apparently mismatched looks – good luck telling any of them that they’re settling, pretty sure you’re angling for a poke in the eye. Which you may deserve
Attraction is a very personal thing and while for most people, a large portion of it is about physical attraction, there are so many other things that make someone catch your eye in just the right way. ‘Float your boat’, yaknow. The classic GSOH is a must for me but then I’m also quite partial to boys in white t-shirts. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Each to their own I say – and how boring would it be if we all fancied the same people anyway. Bit awkward as well tbh. No denying fancying your mate’s boyfriend if everyone does because we are a LAND OF SEXUAL ROBOTS. I digress.
My message to you, boys and girls of the internet, is to cling onto your standards, whatever they may be, and tell all the sleazeball app makers in the land to sod off.
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Photographed by Matilda Hill-Jenkins
With thanks to Airbnb
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.