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

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

Of all the current presidential candidates, single women would most like to see Barack Obama naked, followed by John Edwards as their second choice, according to a January 2008 Engage survey of more than 900 single adults.

After recently meeting the candidate at a Women for Obama event—if elbowing my way to the front of a line to shake his hand, glance into his inviting eyes and snap a photo to forever memorialize the two-second event (only later to learn I had cut off his head) actually qualifies as meeting—he has my vote too, at least in the naked department. Obama is cute, charismatic and strikes me as a candidate relatively comfortable with naked truths—even his own. Not to mention he has a confident, warm, and not at all sweaty handshake.

Barack Obama seems comfortable with naked truths.

According to the survey, single women believe John Edwards is the sexiest candidate by two percentage points above Obama, with Mitt Romney taking the bronze. Single women elected Obama as the best kisser of the candidates, in a tight race with Edwards as his runner up, and with Guiliani coming in a distant third. Among single women, no Republican candidate finished first or second when asked about their sexiness, perceived kissing prowess, or one’s desire to see them naked. How will this play out in the coming primaries and the general election later this year?

John Edwards - Candidate McDreamy?

The McDreamy Presidential Election Factor?
Forty-two percent of single women surveyed said that a candidate’s physical appearance influences their voting decision. Women were more likely to be influenced by the presidential attraction factor than were men. Melinda Henneberger, who spent eighteen months interviewing women about their voting choices:

“…began to wonder if picking a candidate wasn’t a little like dating, with chemistry and timing regularly trumping reason and common vision.”

We don’t have to agree with everything our significant other believes, in order to have a passionate, meaningful and happy relationship. Sometimes even opposites make for a great marriage. Regardless of how our beliefs align with our partners’, it certainly helps if we think they are sexy, like the way they kiss and enjoy seeing them naked. Is this true also for our president? According to Henneberger:

“Many women said they are looking for someone they can trust, even more than someone they agree with in all the particulars.”

Whether single women intend to vote for the candidate who looks best naked, or the candidate they trust will have the best plan to address issues they say are most important to them—the war in Iraq, the economy and healthcare—Engage is encouraging all single women, and their male counterparts, to vote and make themselves heard in 2008. “Every Single Vote,” a 10-month campaign to get out the single vote for this year’s presidential election, kicked off this week. The campaign will continue to survey singles on election issues, provide voter registration resources to Engage members, and encourage all singles to let their political voices be heard. Wondering if it’s OK to discuss politics on a first date? Or whether Democrats or Republicans make better lovers? Take the Engage “Every Single Vote – 2” survey this week, and let the last word be yours.

Me? I’m off to dream about sexy candidates, and ponder the war in Iraq, as I cast my absentee ballot.

Trish McDermott
VP of Love, Engage.com

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