Valentine’s Day was earlier this week and while I don’t personally observe Valentine’s Day, I do appreciate that it usually provides a few morsels of tasty gossip. We get to see defiant social media posts about being newly single, sweet posts about new sparks and of course – people soft and hard launching new relationships.
Often Instagram related, “soft launching” a new relationship means that you post a picture that shows you’re with a new someone, but with no identifying features. It’s a photo of two wine glasses and someone else’s arm in the frame. It’s a blurry, dark photo taken in bed, as if you’ve started dating someone who is also in witness protection. A “hard launch” is explicit. It’s the couple kissing, or a full-face photo (tagged) and some love heart emojis. Or perhaps a water emoji. There’s no room for doubt.
This Valentine’s Day we got the special treat of a celebrity hard launch.
a relationship hard launch if i’ve ever seen one pic.twitter.com/92ezfGKMlT
— ilana kaplan (@lanikaps) February 14, 2023
If you aren’t aware of these two, I’ll give you a quick rundown. Eric André is a successful comedian and actor known for his alt-absurdist comedy. Emily Ratajkowski came to prominence appearing in the controversial Blurred Lines music video and has a successful modelling career. She has also released a book, and published a well-received essay about her experience fighting to own her image. She’s good friends with rising comedy star Ziwe, so she’s probably funny in her own right.
They are two successful people, so why has this caused such a stir online? Well, it’s because people’s minds are blown that she is one of the most beautiful women in the world – and he is Eric André. Although obviously many people find him attractive (he is!), lots of people are finding it necessary to point out that he’s maybe not quite on her level, looks wise.
i cannot believe this is real pic.twitter.com/RY6uDRJM34
— bethany (@fiImgal) January 26, 2023
Luckily for Eric it doesn’t matter either way. This is because he is a graduate of the School of Being Funny Enough That Hot Babes Like You. I very much relate to this, and can also speak to this, because I am a fellow alum.
For context, I am a fat lesbian (shock!), so I am not what is considered a traditionally attractive woman. Before I go on here, my girlfriend has insisted that I have to tell you all that “I am hot”. Yet for most of my life it was made clear to me by society how unlikely it was that I would ever find people who were attracted to me. I believed it for a really long time. Luckily – or perhaps mindfully as a way to cope – I became funny. I developed a good personality and varied interests. I am nice. This, shockingly, was enough. Cool and interesting people started wanting to go on dates with me, they like hanging out with me – and sometimes they’ve even fallen in love with me!
It turns out that a lot of what women want is an interesting and/or funny person to talk to. If that person will also listen to them and care about them as a human being and treat them like one, you’re on to a winning formula. As a whole, I think women are far more accepting and able to enjoy different body types and levels of attractiveness in their partners and I don’t think this is a quality appreciated enough by men. Because I am fat, I know that my romantic life would probably be a lot harder if I had to find straight men who wanted to date me. But I don’t, I get to date women. And so do straight men!
Even though it’s a pretty damn good deal, there’s a not-insignificant amount of men who still insist on focusing on the wrong things. Instead of looking at pairings like this and seeing that women are clearly dating men because they are funny, smart and ambitious, and deciding to work on themselves so that they become more appealing, there’s still a lot of men who treat dating women like some sort of machiavellian scheme.
Straight men need to get the message. They should stop listening to other men who clearly despise women, like Andrew Tate, and take a page out of the book of men like André or Pete Davidson. Davidson is another funny guy with his own vibe who dates a slew of beautiful and successful women, often to the confusion of other men. But look at them and take notes – it’s not that complicated. Women just need you to not be threatened by their success, to be fun, and to treat them nicely, or even just normally.
Even if you’re not the hottest person around, women don’t need to be tricked into dating you, or controlled into enjoying your company, or talked into spending time with you. I have seen a lot of men respond to this argument by saying “but Eric André is famous and rich, it’s not the same!” This is correct, but I would guess that Em Rata is richer than him. If she wanted to, she could (and has) dated men who are richer than both of them put together and also incredibly classically good looking. But instead, she is now dating a cool guy who makes her laugh. I don’t mean that every man needs to be a professional comedian, but it’s always going to work out better for you if you try to be a fun and interesting person, or at the very least a genuinely interested person.
Become a person you like and chances are you’ll find people who like you too.
• Rebecca Shaw is a writer based in Sydney
