Whether you’re here to Play Matchmaker™ for single friends or to connect to new people for yourself, we ask all of our members to create a profile. Here are nine ways to make your profile stand out from the crowd!

1. Make a good first impression. Your profile is a way of introducing yourself to people. What do you want them to take away? Humor, humility, and optimism are always in style. Most people want to spend time with someone who’s upbeat and fun to be around.
2. Grab their attention with a creative headline or an interesting story. What makes you different from everyone else? What pursuits make you happy? If someone dated you, how would you want to spend time with them? Or if you fixed up friends how would you help them decide who to date?
3. Don’t complain. Mama always said, if you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything at all. And she’s probably right when it comes to exes. If you really feel compelled to share, your best bet is to briefly mention the bad breakup and then talk about how you’ve moved forward and turned lemons into lemonade. Or explain how your experience made you even better at Playing Matchmaker™, because now you’ve loved and learned.
4. Do be honest. One of the biggest complaints single people have about traditional online dating is that some of the profiles are kind of shady and inauthentic. With social dating everyone’s friends are on hand to keep them more honest about their age, looks, and dating history. So we can all be real here, right? Celebrate who you are!
5. Focus, people. Focus. You don’t have to throw in the kitchen sink (and the microwave and the toaster). Just mention the three or four most important qualities you bring to the party. Think about giving people enough information to discover that they have some things in common with you. Or that you sound like a great match for their cousin or coworker or neighbor. Then you can learn more about each other over time.
6. Check your spelling and get a trusted friend to edit what you’ve written. If you’re stumped about what to write, ask a friend how they would describe you to a stranger. You might be surprised at their insights about you!
7. Do take time to post a quality picture. What does that mean? Include one good head shot that’s in focus, with nice lighting. Then add extra pictures that show all the sides of your personality- on a camping trip, on the dance floor, running a half-marathon, walking your Welsh Corgi, knitting an iPod cover, hanging streamers for a charity fundraiser… Show yourself off!
8. Don’t take the picture yourself. Here’s another place where friends come in handy. You know that weird camera angle you get when you hold your arm out and shoot your own portrait? Yeah. We do too! Whether you’re here to Play matchmaker or to connect to new people yourself, it will improve your credibility to look decent in your picture.
9. Let your honesty extend to your photo. It may be tempting, but don’t post a six-year-old picture of you playing drinking games in college — no matter how sassy you look! Your friends love you for who you are now - and new people will too!

Hugs and kisses,
Engage

You use Engage. You use Facebook. You’ve got friends on both. Now you can share Engage profiles on your Facebook profile, so you can Play Matchmaker^TM even when you’re away from Engage. It’s like those old Reese’s peanut butter cup ads: “You got your Engage in my Facebook!” Delicious!

Here’s how to do it:

1. Sign in to Engage.
2. Pick a friend on Engage that you want to fix up or connect with your Facebook friends.
3. On the friend’s Engage profile, in the “More” drop-down list, select “Share to Facebook.”
4. You’ll be taken to Facebook’s sign in page and asked to write a comment about the picture.
5. Repeat until all your single friends have met someone fun and new!

What’s The Point?
To get your social network to make new connections and fix up even more of your single friends. That’s what social dating is all about!

Hugs and kisses,
Engage

Fifty-seven men were arrested for dancing to pop music and flirting with women in front of a shopping mall in Saudi Arabia’s holy city of Mecca last Thursday, behavior that is apparently against Islamic law, as reported at msnbc.com. Meanwhile, presidential hopeful John McCain is in political recovery mode after the New York Times reported on speculation about a friendship with a female lobbyist that PresidentPicker blogger called:

…flirtatious but probably not scandalous.

Over in the United Kingdom The Telegraph, in a story titled, “How Facebook flirting could lead to divorce,” reported that:

Flirtatious emails and other saucy messages sent via the sites are expected to be used as evidence of “unreasonable behaviour”, legitimate grounds for divorce.

Career coach, Cynthia Shapiro, gives this warning on office trysts over at collegerecruiter.com:

No Flirting. Dating a fellow employee is your private business and should not be obvious. Please resist the temptation to send ooglie, smoochy emails…

What’s wrong with ooglie, smoochy emails? Aren’t they one of the things–along with breathy, seductive voicemails, warm, fuzzy text messages and deliriously giddy Facebook references–that great romances are made of today?

While doing research for the Engage 2008 State of the Date report we learned that only 38 percent of singles reported using flirting last year as a way to advance their romantic objectives. Apparently 2007 was not a very ooglie, smoochy year. Five percent of singles said lack of flirting was their biggest complaint about the people they dated in 2007.

Fear of flirting is thwarting our national romantic progress. While 57 men sit in a cell in Saudi Arabia, accused of having a little fun expressing their romantic attraction, singles in the United States are prisoners in a social cell of their own making, afraid to break out, take a romantic risk, tease someone, smile, banter a bit or make just enough eye contact to say “Hey, I’m interested.”

Not all flirting is good flirting, as John McCain is probably now realizing. Lobbyists and divorce proceedings aside, it is still good to flirt. Good for you and your love life, and good for the world, which can always use a little more love and affection.

Winks for everyone.

Trish McDermott
VP of Love, Engage

Since single women named Barack Obama as the presidential candidate they would most like to see naked , are they also more likely to find a man in an Obama t-shirt sexier than a man sporting Clinton or McCain across his chest? Probably. Check out this PopSugar photo of Ryan Phillippe stepping out for his candidate Obama yesterday in LA. PopSugar is right when they say of Ryan:

“…showing off he’s a voter is always sexy.”

The Engage “Love, Politics and Romance” survey found that 83 percent of single women and 78 percent of single men report they are more likely to fall in love with a registered voter, rather than someone who hasn’t registered.

Single men, not surprisingly, think Hillary Clinton is the sexiest of the three candidates. So when Fran Drescher, seen here at PerezHilton in her Clinton gear, steps out for her candidate, single men are likely to notice. We are attracted to people with strong opinions and the guts to be public about their political choices…even when their t-shirt choice isn’t entirely flattering.

Want to increase your romantic chances this election year? Get engaged in the political process and show off your Clinton, McCain or Obama gear.

Trish McDermott
VP of Love, Engage

Valentine’s week is always a lot of fun, and occasionally full of surprises, when you work for a social dating site. Here’s a recap of the last few days at Engage.

We Rode the Love Train

I suppose we could have been in the office working on Valentine’s morning, but where is the love in that? Instead, we took a team of Engage staff and friends, grabbed a musician armed with a few hundred love songs and headed down to the Montgomery BART station to romance some unsuspecting commuters.

We gave away just under 3,000 roses in 90 minutes and shared a little love with a lot of San Franciscans. One of them was the rather handsome Michael Singer, from InformationWeek, who was apparently feeling so much love for us that he went right to the office and posted about his Engage Love Train encounter. Of course, not everyone was feeling all warm and fuzzy about the love train, especially not Andy Wright in his post at SFWeekly.com going to throw a lot of love his way this year, and we’ll see if he comes around for next February 14th.

Just about everyone in the BART station was smiling, and a few commuters were even singing along to their favorite love song. Watch the CBS news video and feel the love for yourself.

Engage Research Made the News

Valentine’s week is always a busy press time around here. Jen Saranow at the Wall Street Journal worked with us for her “The Cut-and-Paste Personality,” piece about singles plagiarizing each other’s dating profiles. Jennifer says that a recent search at that other dating site that I helped start and run for ten years:

…brought up more than 90 profiles with such lines as: “I want an opposite. A yin to my yang,” or “You know that woman who is the first person on the dance floor at every party? That’s me.” They weren’t even from real people. They were cribbed from sample profiles posted online at E-Cyrano.com (www.e-cyrano.com) by dating coach and profile writer Evan Marc Katz. “It just seems so short-sighted,” says Mr. Katz, of Los Angeles. “Everybody steals the same lines so they are not original anymore.”

Jennifer included this Engage research in her piece:

In a recent survey of more than 400 online daters commissioned by Engage.com, 9% of respondents said they copied from another person’s profile; 15% suspect their own words were stolen.

Isn’t stealing someone else’s profile text scraping the bottom of the barrel for insight into who we are, why someone might be attracted to us, and what we’re looking for in a partner? Apparently not everyone thinks so. Meanwhile, over at the Chicago Tribune, technology writer Wailin Wong looked at the growing confusion regarding how we should use technology and social networks in our romantic lives:

In simpler times, a high school ring was all it took to signal the start of a relationship. And when the breakup came, who would know or care if one tucked away a few mementos?

All that has changed in the digital era, in which millions of people chronicle the real-time, intimate details of their lives on social networking Web sites like Facebook.com. Dating may be no more or less complex than ever, but because gossip about who’s got a new boyfriend or girlfriend — and who just lost one — now travels instantaneously to a large network of contacts, a new relationship minefield has emerged.

Wailin used some new Engage research in her story “What’s Your Status? Relationships Revealed Online.”

McDermott’s advice is to remember that relationships involve people, not machines. Strange as that sounds, Engage.com conducted a survey of more than 600 single adults in the U.S. and found 21 percent said it was OK to say “I love you” for the first time in an e-mail or text message. Only 12 percent said it was acceptable to break up electronically.

Valentine’s Surprises

Over at About.com’s Weird News Buck Wolf reported that:

In Kansas, a woman carrying flowers and a box of candy walked into a bank and told the teller that the box contained a bomb. She demanded an undisclosed sum, and after she left, x-rays shows the chocolates contained nothing more dangerous than nougat.

Buck also mentioned that 8 million Americans probably sent themselves Valentine’s presents this year. If we had known, we would have given them a rose!

Hugs, kisses and warm romantic wishes this love week from all of us…
Trish McDermott
VP of Love, Engage

Valentine’s Week 2008

Welcome!
It’s Love Week once again. That means close to one billion printed Valentine’s cards will be exchanged. The chocolate industry will have its two biggest days of sales on February 13th and 14th. Consumers will spend an estimated $17 billion celebrating Valentine’s Day with sweet, endearing—and sometimes rather expensive—professions of their love.

What is the Engage State of the Date Report?
Each year during Valentine’s Week, Engage will issue this “State of the Date” report, which details what it’s really like to be single on Valentine’s Day and every other day of the year. This year’s report is the result of analysis of a thirty-seven question survey, administered to a random sample of more than six hundred single adults living in the United States in January 2008. This was not a sample of Engage members, although many singles in the sample group are users of either online dating services or social networks, or both.

In some instances, we’ve included a trend analysis, comparing this year’s data to data from identical questions asked in Engage surveys in prior years. Some results have been cross tabulated with other data points, so we can break out male vs. female responses, or behavioral trends based on age ranges. If you are looking for a data point that isn’t presented in this report, please contact us. We have more data than we’ve presented, and we’re happy to share it.

Because Engage is the Internet’s first social dating community, where friends help their single friends connect and find love, we asked a lot of questions about the roles that technology, online dating, friends and social networking play in our love lives. So: read on. Maybe 2008 will be your year to make a meaningful connection or Play Matchmaker^TM or simply enjoy watching love blossom. It’s all good!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

xoxo,

Trish McDermott

Vice President of Love, Engage

What it’s really like to be single in 2008

The Dating Scene
So: what’s it like out there? Possibly boring. Or a bit less fun than married folks may nostalgically remember. In fact, more than half of all singles may not have dated even once in the last six months.

Twenty-two percent of singles can’t remember the last time they went on a date. Another 22 percent went dateless in 2007.

Whether they’ve dated or not in the past year, “confusing,” might be the word that best sums up single life today. For all the “communicating” singles are now doing using the plethora of social media available to them, men and women still aren’t necessarily hearing each other. Most men still think they should pay for the first date, but most women don’t agree. On the other hand, women still expect gentlemanly courtesies such as having the door held open for them.

Fifty-four percent of women think a couple should either go Dutch on a first date, or that the person who initiated the date should pay.

Women are likely to still want a man to demonstrate that he is a gentleman on a date. Fewer men agree that this is a role they should take on a date.

More than half of all women surveyed felt a man should pick the venue for a first date and do the driving. Only 8% of women felt a man should bring a gift on a first date. Women were twice as likely as men to say a man should initiate the first kiss. While twenty-six percent of women felt men should “talk more” on a first date, seventeen percent of men thought men should actually “talk less” on a first date.

Given those mixed social messages, it may not be surprising that honesty also isn’t always the policy in dating today. More than one in four singles think it’s acceptable to tell “little white lies” when dating online. Unfortunately, we’re hearing from singles that the lack of social consequences for dishonesty on most first-generation dating sites has led to inauthentic profiles and some awkwardly awful first dates.

Men are more likely than women to believe “little white lies” have a place in online dating.

Many singles share with us that they are annoyed by the number of married people using social networks and online dating sites to cheat on their spouses.

More than a quarter of singles say a married person contacted them on an online dating service or social network for dating purposes.

Relationship status is not necessarily a barrier to romantic indiscretions. Some singles knowingly dated people last year that most of us would consider “off limits.”

Eleven percent of single men, and the same percentage of single women, admitted to dating someone who was married or in a committed relationship last year.

In spite of the confusion and uncertainty that is part of dating today, singles just keep on keeping on. After all, what other choice do they have? Read on to learn about how singles will continue to hold out hope that they will find love, commit to mastering the dating protocols of new technologies, personally better themselves, and ask for a little friendly intervention in their search for someone special in 2008.

Singles and their search for love in 2008
While almost three quarters of singles are interested in finding love and marriage in the next five years, fewer singles are seeking love and marriage this year than they were in 2006.

Most singles (68%) report they are interested in falling in love and getting married in the next five years. Younger singles (ages 18 – 39) were the most likely to say they were “Extremely interested,” while older singles, (age 50 and above) were the most likely to say they were “Not at all interested.”

Fewer singles report they are interested in love and marriage this year than they did in 2006.

Whether they want to fall in love or not, just under a third of singles report they are not optimistic that they will find the relationship they are seeking this year.

Thirty percent of singles are not optimistic they will find the relationship they are seeking this year. Overall, women surveyed were more optimistic than were men.

Pessimists and optimists share a pragmatic approach to finding someone special: Singles are more likely to think they will meet their future spouse through an introduction from a friend, co-worker, or family member, than through any other means. Men were more likely than women to say they believe they will meet their next partner on a social network or online dating service.

Typical “Other” responses included: Church, Not looking, No idea, Fate or chance encounter, Someone I’m dating now, While traveling, etc.

While some singles are tapping friends for an introduction that might lead to love, others may be finding ways to stay entertained and romantically connected during these long, cold winter months.

Almost one in three singles had a “friend with benefits” in 2007, and 33% reported “hooking up” with someone last year.

Mind Your Social Media Manners
Most singles encountered “good” or even “excellent” behavior while on dates last year.

Men and women both equally reported good behavior from their dates last year, with no significant change from 2006.

That said, some singles were likely to have been unhappy about gossiping taking place on social media, especially public disclosures of their failed romantic relationships.

While technology has created more, and some would say better, ways to make romantic connections, the protocols for using romantic technologies are still evolving.

While few singles think bad romantic news should first be delivered electronically….

More believe good romantic news can first be communicated this way.

Social media can also distract from romantic interactions. Six percent of singles complained that the men and women they dated last year were more into their own social networks than they were into the respondents.

Many dating-related behaviors occurring on social networking sites are perceived as unacceptable by some singles, with women surveyed tending to be more sensitive than men. Two behaviors that were most commonly seen as “crossing the line,” were writing negative material about an ex, and posting about romantic intentions so your network was aware of them before your date or partner.

Respondents were able to select more than one answer for this question.

Some Things Change. Some Things Never Do.

The good news is that chivalry is still very much alive for most singles.

When it comes to their dating lives, women are more likely than men to report that chivalry is dead.

And while some singles have indicated dishonesty is acceptable when dating online, most singles are men and women who say what they do, and do what they say, especially when the say “I’ll call you.”

We were surprised to learn that 49% of women say they never pay for a date!

And that seventy-seven percent of singles felt gay and lesbian couples should have equal rights to marriage!

• Only 38% of singles said they flirted to help themselves meet someone last year.
  
• Only 4% of singles said they expect to meet their future spouse at a bar.
• 31 percent of singles surveyed said they exchange only one email with someone they meet on an online dating service or social network before agreeing to meet face-to-face.
  
• 25% of men, but only 10% of women, say they become sexual with someone after only one or two dates.
  

Conclusions

In many ways, and with a big nod to social technologies, 2008 is a great time to be single. As more and more singles migrate their off-line dating practices to online communities like Engage, they are expecting sites to be more social and to offer experiences that are not only more natural and authentic than first-generation dating sites have typically offered, but also a lot more fun.

While single men and women may never entirely “get” each other, social media, when used with some responsibility and discretion, is helping both genders communicate, listen, learn, and explore what it really means to share ideas and life experiences with someone you may also one day come to love. Of course, you may also one day come to stop loving someone, and not all of us have finessed how to communicate to members of our social network what we’re genuinely feeling about an ex, without violating our ex’s right to privacy, not to mention sanity. Like everyone else, singles are a work in progress.

While it’s fair to say that some singles will try to lie, cheat, and possibly even steal their ways into our hearts, most singles will tell the truth in an online dating profile, call us when they say they will, and show up for a date. Todays singles are good people, hoping to find love, marriage, and their own little piece of happily-ever-after in the next five years. If you’re one of them, you are in some very nice — not to mention highly qualified — company.

We hope to see all 92 million of you on Engage this year. Make connections. Play Matchmaker^tm. It’s all good.

See you online!

More than one billion Valentine’s Day cards are likely to be exchanged over the next few days. How many will be printed on recycled material? What quantity of fair trade chocolate or locally grown roses will change hands this week? Are lovers developing a social consciousness, right along with the rest of us?

Do you know where your Valentine’s candy comes from?

We think so. Sixty percent of 1,000 adults we recently surveyed said “going green” was the right thing to do this Valentine’s season. Sixty-five percent of the people surveyed who expect to receive a Valentine’s gift this year said they prefer to receive a socially-conscious or eco-friendly gift.

Women who plan to give a socially-conscious or eco-friendly gift were most likely to say they will give a card or other gift made with recycled materials. Other top gift-giving choices for women were fair trade chocolate and a gift to a nonprofit or charity made in their Valentine’s name. Men were most likely to say they would give their Valentines eco-friendly flowers, followed by fair trade chocolate, and then a card or gift made with recycled material.

Three percent of men said they were most likely to give their Valentine a hybrid car this year! Now that’s a thoughtful man. One percent of both men and women surveyed said they would give carbon credits to their love. Overall, women were more likely than men to believe going green was the right thing to do on February 14. Women were also more likely than men to say they prefer to receive a socially-conscious or eco-friendly gift.

Green and Socially Conscious Valentine’s Gift Guide
The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations has some great ideas in their Valentine’s Gift Guide including one way to approach your February 14 meal: “Before you make romantic dinner reservations check out Local Harvest to see if there are any restaurants in your area that use locally grown food.” Local Harvest can also help you locate locally-grown flower shops in your area. According to A. Caleb Hartley at Environmentastic:

“Often, your flowers are delivered from halfway around the world. Flowers sent to people in the USA are grown in South America. This means that, even if the flowers are organic, that significant amounts of fossil fuels have been burned just to get them to you or your recipient. So buying local is very important as well.”

A pig, cow or goat can be an especially romantic gift, when given through Heifer International They believe giving impoverished families livestock as a sustainable source of food, and one that they can in turn pass on to other families via offspring, is a way to stop hunger and poverty.

Visit Money and Values to learn more about why you might want to buy fair trade chocolate, and other products, for your love on February 14, including that:

“Fair trade certification is about letting consumers know that the people who grow/harvest/make their products got a fair price and humane working conditions, which is a big step above the often horrible conditions (child labor, pesticide poisoning, intimidation and exploitation, etc) involved in producing non-certified versions.”

Valentine’s Day is an especially big deal for two fair trade products– chocolate and the newly available fair trade flowers– because it’s estimated that Valentine’s Day accounts for 12% of chocolate and 25% of flowers sold in the U.S.

Want to do something to keep a bit of red in Valentine’s day, while also saving three lives in the process? Take your love and arrange to give blood at an American Red Cross donation location in your area.

Finally, why not buy your love a “Love” t-shirt from Rosie O’Donnell’s shop? It’s a simple message, and exactly what the world needs more of right now!

All net profits go to Rosie’s For All Kids Foundation

Peace, Love, and Happy Green Valentine’s Day!

Trish McDermott
VP of Love, Engage

Have You Thanked Your Matchmaker Lately?

Fourteen days to Valentine’s Day, and right about this time happy, and not-so-happy, couples, are navigating a media blitzkrieg of rose and champagne reminders of what love and happily-ever-after are supposed to be all about—namely diamonds, if you believe what you see on TV.

Singles, on the other hand, are doing their best to ignore the global mating call to action—the corporately-manufactured drive to fill that empty spot and cross over to the land of the happily-coupled with their future special someone. Someone whom they actually have yet to meet, but should be fully prepared to shop for, all in a matter of days.

At its worst, Valentine’s Day is an unavoidable reminder of the love we may be missing in our lives, or an unhappy obligation to purchase a little peace in our life with our partner. We get it all wrong when we let dollars be the currency of our commitment to each other.

At its best, Valentine’s Day is about small gestures and thoughtful acknowledgments that say, “None of us are in this alone. And all of us are better by virtue of the people who love us, and the people we love.” We get it right when we reach out and connect with these people, even when they aren’t romantic partners.

February 13th is “Thank Your Matchmaker Day”

Look behind half of all couples celebrating Valentine’s Day this year and you’ll find a friend who in some way nudged, cajoled, or meddled (and I mean that in the best possible way) to help that happy couple find each other. Yes, half of all marriages in the United States are the result of someone playing matchmaker for the couple, according to Engage research of more than 1,000 married adults.

As I write this, many thousands of people are using Engage to help their single friends connect with other eligible singles. Friends play matchmaker on Engage, and in the real world, not because they are paid to do so, but because it’s fun and because they care. Matchmakers are the unrecognized masterminds of great dates, love affairs, and marriages. Yet when was the last time any of us took a minute to say “Thanks!”?

Engage first declared February 13, 2006 “Thank Your Matchmaker Day,” in an effort to honor these behind-the-scenes heroes of love. Before any of us celebrate Valentine’s Day, let’s take a moment to thank the intrepid matchmakers who have helped us find love already or who are committed to helping us connect with someone special soon.

While many of us will be thanking female BFFs, sisters, and mothers on February 13th, more and more, men are stepping up to help make love a reality for their friends. On Engage, half of all people playing matchmaker are men—something even we didn’t expect when were building the site.

Famous Couples and the Men Who Played Matchmaker For Them

Joe Simpson, reported to have persuaded Jessica Simpson to dump Nick Lachey two years ago, played matchmaker this year when he introduced his daughter to Dallas Cowboy, Tony Romo. For everyone other than some Cowboys fans, the relationship seems to be working.

Seems like Jessica and Tony are happy they met!

Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones should take time on February 13th to thank Antonio Banderas, who introduced the two at a dinner he gave.

Rosie O’Donnell’s brother Daniel O’Donnell deserves kudos for introducing his sister to her life partner, Kelli Carpenter.

Rosie and Kelly met when Rosie’s brother played matchmaker.

Christina Aguilera was introduced to her husband, Jordan Bratman, by her manager, Irving Azoff. Now they have a new baby boy to think Irv for, too!

Christina Aguilera met her hubby through a friend’s introduction.

The Hard Knocks School of Matchmaking

In Chinese, the character that represents “matchmaker” happens to also be a homonym for “bad luck.” That may be one reason why not all matchmaking stories have happy endings — especially for the matchmaker. One professional matchmaker in China was sued when he denied his client’s request for an “Ugly Girl Refund”. The courts eventually ruled that the matchmaker had to return half of the fee he had collected from his client’s mother.

An old custom in China had brides crying and yelling during their weddings. Apparently the idea was to make false claims of grievances and sorrows, which would in turn guarantee marital bliss. But sometimes, the grievances and sorrows were actually true. Some brides publicly cried about and cursed their matchmakers, during their weddings, especially when they had little say in their choice of groom.

Every tear shed over an unfortunate match can be trumped by a true love story, inspired by a friend’s human intuition and gut feelings about how two people just might pair up. Although NY Times reporter John Tierney wrote this week about the “algorithms of love” social scientists are peddling on some leading dating sites, it shouldn’t take an advanced degree or fancy mathematics to sense that two people might be right for each other, or to do a good deed. Tierney would like to hear your online matchmaking success story.

We’d prefer to watch you thank the matchmakers in your life. Just add your video to our collection of “thank you” messages on our Thank Your Matchmaker YouTube group. While you’re at it, pay you matchmaker’s good deeds forward by playing matchmaker for singles you know. You might forever change two lives.

On a personal note: Marion, thanks for helping me find the love of my life. I promise you’ll never hear me cry, complain, or swear about that!

Trish McDermott
VP of Love, Engage

It’s that time of year where you can’t go anywhere without hearing the V word. (No, not “vajayjay,” silly… though we’re hearing that everywhere too.) We meant Valentine’s. For some, that word cues a symphony. For others, it cues the screeching violins from “Psycho”.

Don’t get us wrong, we love little candy hearts as much as the next gal or guy! But sometimes it feels like we all have to participate in Valentine’s Day’s chocoholic excesses. Whether you’re between relationships, dating someone new, or with a longtime companion, all the hearts and arrows and romantic formulas can get a little stale, right? Romance is so much more, well… romantic when it’s not calendared in.

Why not take a more social approach to V-Day? Here’s one recipe for a St. V’s without the Hallmark holiday hangover:

• Host a party where you and your friends can get gorgeous and mingle – without paying for a prix fixe menu or being sardined into banquette seating with three gazillion other couples.
• Invite everyone you know – involved or not.
• Ask everyone to make up a signature cocktail and bring the ingredients to your place.
• Tell your involved friends to bring a single friend or two along with them.
• While you’re mixing cocktails, see how your single friends blend!

Will love be served up, shaken not stirred? You’ll have to wait and see. At least you and your best friends can have a gala evening together, whether or not Cupid decides to strike. And If you’re between sweeties, your best friends are the best people to be with!

Gee… someone should throw a fun party like that online. Oh wait, we did.

Hugs and kisses,

Engage

p.s. Be sure to tell us about your party. Post a comment to this blog entry and let us know how your soirée turns out!

I caught Carson Kressley on the first episode of Lifetime TV’s “How to Look Good Naked” last week, a day after I spent $385 at Nordstrom’s buying lingerie that will never leave my panty drawer, unless we have another power outage. Like most women, I have my lingerie issues. Unlike most women, lingerie was actually underneath my career success.

Most of what I eventually learned about dating and romance was first inspired during my time running the returns department for the Victoria Secret catalog, in the days before it was acquired by The Limited. Women commonly returned lingerie with personal notes to “Victoria,” confiding intimate, and sometimes demoralizing details of their faltering marriages and the role they had hoped a baby doll, or cami set, might have played in bringing back their man.

“Victoria” was actually me, Trish McDermott, an early-twenties student and political activist who took the Victoria’s Secret job because her boss promised her time off to get arrested at political demonstrations, thereby somehow bettering, or possibly even saving, the world. I had a plan for saving the world, but was clueless about saving a marriage, especially one that was impervious to something soft and silky. Not all lingerie returns had happy endings.

I learned one very important lesson at the panty factory: It’s your choice of partner, and not your choice of panty, that ultimately makes your marriage work.

Carson Kressley was on again last night, with another less-than-perfect-in-panties woman in need of his “perception revolution,” which includes projecting a four-story-tall image of her, clad only in a bra and underwear, on a building somewhere in downtown Santa Monica. I’m an ardent supporter of any revolution that takes place in our underwear, partly because as a peace activist, I’m reassured by the fact that it’s hard to carry concealed weapons in our panty bands.

Of course, not everyone wants to participate in Carson’s revolution. The National Action Against Obesity chose to keep all of us less- than-perfect women in our perceived place with a press release attacking “How to Look Good Naked” (Credit and thanks to Chubby Mommy, where I first found this release discussed). The release included this comment:

“When we observe obesity, we’re seeing the effects of self-abuse. To end self-loathing, one must stop self-induced abuse. It’s a change in behavior, not a change in word choice — like calling the evidence of abuse beautiful. It’s no more logical to compliment the aesthetics of obesity than the beauty of cigarette-stained teeth or track marks on a junkie’s arm,” said NAAO President MeMe Roth.

What riles them up is that “How to Look Good Naked” isn’t telling women to lose fifty pounds and get a personal trainer before they get naked, given what they call the “dangerous denial of compromised health due to obesity”. Instead, Carson wants women to shed all of our layers—clothing, of course, but also shame, guilt and the constant comparison we make between our bodies and those of fashion models, or women twenty years younger than ourselves—to see that we are each beautiful in many ways, and certainly deserving of love and happiness, even with cottage cheese thighs.

Sometimes single people see themselves as a sum of their flaws. Perhaps they are overweight, or bald, or underemployed, or too tall, or too short, or too much of, or not enough of something they think they must be in order to be loved. It isn’t true. What is true is what I heard Carson say to this week’s guest: “There’s so much good here that we can work with.”

Here’s to seeing you all naked – at least metaphorically.
Me? I’m off to purchase a light dimmer.

Trish