Lulu's Research

Good morning beautiful! 

New work up at Window Talk (work by RISD GD MFA students)! 

Tonight I’m going to go on a tinder date. The first real–life encounter with a modern white–collar Renaissance man who knows how to rebuild and engine and sew and stuff. Here is a portrait of me as my date. I am trying not to have expectations. Being vulnerable to people you don’t know can be terrifying. But we are all just humans and chances are everything will be just fine. 

Being on tinder as a straight lady is rough. As this portrait of me as one of the men available to meet in my area reveals, the crop is not enticing. There are subcategories of blurry photos, ones where the subject is flicking off the camera, is wearing a mask, or just includes a photo of Betty Page. It’s not a good scene. 

One problem is the impact this has on my sense of self. As much as I don’t care and don’t believe in the potential of this application to bring any type of personal fulfillment to my life, it’s quite affecting to know who your immediate prospects are. When they appear to be a scrappy bunch of ne’er–do–wells, lazy brahs in bars, and couples looking for their unicorns on the wrong platform, it can make you feel a bit like a distorted undesirable toad. 

Speculative everything. 

Today I made my first tinder profile using images from snapchat. It is terrifying, because it’s connected to parts of my real life via facebook. That is a baby nightmare. 

You can only sign up with tinder if you have a facebook profile. Photographs and information about you is populated from your facebook profile. 

I hate it so much, but only because of its link with my real self. It makes me feel accountable in a way that I don’t want to have to be. And maybe I’m not. Perhaps it’s an illusion of accountability.