Life takes its freaky little turns. This blog started as I tried to figure out the craziness of being single in my 40s and attempted to explain the phenomena such as Tinder and Dad Bods. Now I’m front and centre with a 13 year old gamer who’s been particularly patient as I blunder through trying to to learn about Fortnite. Here’s what I learned….
Finding myself suddenly single in my 40s, this blog became a way of documenting, sometime graphically, every pitfall, every bad choice and every unusual thing that happens when you are a rookie in an online dating world. For light relief and reassurance that it can happen to anyone , I threw in the occasional examination of single celebrities that were being just as foolish as me.
After a year or two in a slick city apartment, creating the Aussie version of a SATC lifestyle, regressing to the cereal-for-dinner diet of a uni student, I met a Dad.
When you’ve got Tinder-fatigue and are tired of rejecting online dating candidates with the handle CheerfullySporty who are the antithesis of either cheerful or sporty, you’ll be casting about for a niche venue to meet vaguely interesting men. If your couch-bound viewing has included late-night ESPN you may have considered Cross-Fit, if you have any remaining faith in Pete Evans you’ll be googling your local Paleo café and if you are on a desperate quest to find a single, dateable bearer of XY chromosomes you might have considered perennially on-fleek Bikram yoga.
40schick has taken one for the team, done the research for the sisterhood and is here to tell you that Bikram is NOT THE PLACE to meet a life partner.
Whilst there is a promise that sweating out every last toxin whilst contorting a body that is about as bendy as a chunk of 4 x 2 might provide you a sweaty selfie that you can plaster on Instagram with a triumphant use of #fitspo, its not going to be the place where you meet someone that you are happy to split a green smoothie with over breakfast into your later years.
Here’s why:
Men in Lycra
I realise that you may be immune to the travesty that is men in a shiny faux-fabric given over-exposure via the weekend cyclists that invade beachside cafes with their barely-sheathed manparts on display like the rear-ends of lady baboons. If they are going to be there where you are slipping into your local to get a long black to accompany a read of the Sunday papers, you are unlikely to go all deer-in-the-headlights at the prospect of finding one in your local Bikram studio.
But it’s going to be tops-off girls.
And there’s no vanity here.
It may be that inner-city Bikram studios are filled with lithe male specimens who can totally own the baring of a shiny torso, but my suburban-based research exposed only dad-bods and a misguided Geoffrey Edelsten lookalike – none of which would ordinarily have dreamed of strutting shirtless, but feel that an overheated room provided adequate licence.
The breathing
There are 26-postures that are going to unveil everything you need to know about your male Bikram counterparts, but none are so telling as the very first breathing exercise.
If you did spot someone who might be an eventual housemate, any ideas of peaceful Sunday sleep-ins will be dismissed when you hear them attempt the breathing drill.
As a newbie, if coming grips with just where to point your elbows isn’t tricky enough, any thoughts of spending slumber time with any of your fellow uber-sauna-inmates will be quashed by the disconcerting throat breathing that is not just encouraged, but is mandated on the out-breath.
You can’t see what everyone looks like on their out-breath, given you are encouraged to bend all the way back to the point where you can count the tiles on the back wall but what you are hearing sounds 100% Voldemort.
Assumed intimacy
In the same vein that internet dating and snapchat seem to have implanted in the male brain unwritten licence to send you pictures of their favourite bits, something about being barely clad in an overheated studio seems to permit men to give you the complete up-and-down go-over in a way that would seem heinous in your normal social environment.
Sweating together appears to provide a permission slip for assumed intimacy, which just goes to show why so many Bintang-singleted Aussie males think that Bali is the natural home for lame-o pickup moves.
You’re not at your best
Assuming Bikram Choudhury himself has taken a beneficent view of your contributions to humanity and gifted you someone that is worthy of tops-off mini-lycra wearing glory, you are unlikely to be able to whip out a stunning example of your best-self to take him down. Why? As a Bikram newbie you will be:
None of this is attractive.
Probably better off cruising the sidelines of local footy looking to snag a Dad-bod.
So, we’ve all moved on a little bit from the Hipster, having become vaguely concerned about the hygiene issues associated with the bushranger beard and before we had time to celebrate the demise of the overused mason jar, we have, the Dad bod. Described as being ‘a nice balance between a beer gut and working out’, its not belly-the-size-of-a-beer-keg schlepping around the mall in trackies, but more like the footy-guy you liked in year eleven with a little time in a decent paddock.
However you describe it, the Dad Bod is out there and we’re on it like white on nutritionally bereft rice.
Here’s why:
Their natural habitat? Everywhere
Whilst hipsters are strictly confined to inner-city suburbs, free-trade-coffee houses and the occasional paleo cafe, Dad bods are everywhere. They can be found wrangling the kiddies in hi-vis at Little Athletics, frequenting suburban golf-clubs and enjoying a beverage in the Bullring at the the footy. Dad bods are in abundance.
Even celebs are into it
Dad bods are not merely a product of a few Coronas and a pie night at the local footy club, but can also be painstakingly crafted by the rich and famous via time spent on super-yachts and Mexican beaches. Seth Rogen, famed modeliser Leo Di Caprio and Mad Men’s Joh Hamm are all purveyors of the Dad bod.
If ever there was a hot-off-the-press example of the pulling power of the Dad bod – our own James Packer has used it to snag the songstress for whom the term diva was coined – Mariah Carey.
Your own insecurities? #gone
If you are like 40schick, and prone to a sobfest over genetically inevitable arm fat, and can be occasionally seen sporting a triple-cream-brie baby, you are going to suffer by comparison with a partner sporting ripping biceps and a six pack. No such danger with a Dad bod. Sharing a little roundness at the edges means that you will feel like you are, by comparison, simply rocking ‘curvy’ with all the sass of a Kardashian.
Food choices
Dating the Dad bod means that you won’t be tied to a Paleo-led conversion that is championed by from-generous-to-gaunt Pete Evans.
You will be free to indulge in the odd pizza, to not run screaming from a basket of something fried and there will be no more demonising of the defenceless carbohydrate. You’ll also be pleased to hear that alcohol is a legitimate food group in the Dad bod world.
What’s not to like?
So some smart techno-boffins in the backblocks of Bangalore have come up with BeLinked, the dating app that draws upon your Linked In profile and pairs you up with allegedly like-minded professionals.
It’s like Tinder for the grown-up and employed and allows the swipe-righters amongst us to trawl the urban professionals with slightly less risk of ending up on a blind date with a taxi driver.
In theory it all sounds great. You are connecting with those in your industry, presumably also your socio-demographic and likely someone with the credit-card balance necessary to foot the obstetrics bill as your baby-daddy.
But it has all the inherent perils of mixing business with pleasure. Here’s a few.
The photo
It’s a headshot. It’s the ‘you can trust me with your $70milliion project’ not ‘I’m totally able to go shot-for-shot with you in Tequila laybacks’. In reality the answer is somewhere in between. My linked-in photo is one taken upon exit from a seven day stint at a health-spa. I’m all fresh faced, sparkly eyed and eminently capable, not the girl that wakes up dusty after a few too many sauv blancs after a night on the tiles. In the photo, I’m just far too Gwyneth and not quite enough vodka lime and soda. No fun.
The fakers are still out there
Ironically, the unemployed amongst us have the most time on their hands to craft a fake Linked In profile. When your only commitment is a once-a-week appearance at Centrelink, you have ample time to select great pics and craft a creative backstory complete with a procession of roles within the Top 100 companies. The irony is that if you claim to work for any of the top 4 banks, the tier-one consulting companies or mining magnates, due to sheer weight of numbers, no one will ever figure that you are faking it.
The Missteps
If you do date within your industry, the consequences can be less than desirable. Someone you frivolously swiped, who seemed interesting and engaged when you chatted over lattes in South Melb may in actual fact turn out to be the mailroom dude at BMW Head Office and slightly less than the captain of industry that you might have imagined.
Dating the Competition
There’s a natural order of things. It’s fine to have a desire to connect with someone on a similar wavelength. It’s problematic to place yourself in competition with someone who will fight you to the death to be the one to capture the action points from last week’s board meeting. Its one thing to find someone who has similar goals, it’s another to find someone who will shred you mercilessly for a chance to curry favour in the boss’s eyes.
Embarrassing the Big Guy
There’s a chance that your married boss, smart enough to navigate the requirements of running a listed company, has not been clever enough to anonymise his appearance on a dating app. This leaves you with the Sophie’s Choice of the interwebs. Out your superior for playing away? Or stay mum and capitalise on the fact that someone is eternally grateful for your discretion.
There has to be some advantages? Really? Call them out in the comments.
This post was written for Beamly after a request that I write about a kids show with the audience being Mums. The last kids show I watched was Humphrey B Bear in the 70s and I am not a Mum. PERFECTLY QUALIFIED!!!!
After watching nine episodes of Adventure Time (over wine) here’s how it turned out…..
40s chick has been a bit AWOL. It started with a diversion to writing for a fun blog that necessitated seriously weekly scrutiny of The Bachelor ,
a little dating advice for the guys on the Big Bang Theory
and a jaunt back into the 80s and 90s episodes of Neighbours. This then overlapped with some well-earned downtime in a remote part of Western Australia where it was too ridiculously beautiful to sully beach time with the presence of technology.
However, I’m back on a plane to Melbourne and feeling like I need to give the 40s chick blog a little lovin.
What I didn’t fail to miss during my time beachside, was the fact that, despite their protestations that they wouldn’t wed until there was marriage equality for everyone, Brangelina bought into the urgings of the marital mafia and tied the knot.
Given I felt the need to keep sand out of my iPad, I know nothing of how this shindig went down. I only saw the news through that flickery ticker tape thingy on the bottom of the screen while I aimed to wrestle away the pool comp title at the local pub.
I’m sure the interwebs and some lucky publication with the exclusive have the deets, but in the absence of all that, here’s what I think NEVER happened at the Brangelina wedding.
Shiloh went frou-frou
From birth, Shiloh has demonstrated an anaphylactic-style aversion to girl clothes. Early on, she became the natural antidote to Suri Cruise and just kicked some androgynist stylin’ butt.
So I’m tipping that this wedding did not see Shiloh clad in emerald taffeta, with carefully custom-dyed silk shoes and a prom-worthy corsage.
If it did, I’m thinking she kicked down some doors till she found the waiter’s ante-room, funded a superannuation fund for some poor local with this week’s pocket money in exchange for his uniform, and then happily attended the rest of the celebrations in trousers, albeit a little generous for her tiny frame.
There were Team Jen protesters
Jen’s supporters are still hurting from the way Angelina ALLEGEDLY/TOTALLY snared the married Brad during the filming of Mr and Mrs Smith.
No one wanted the golden couple torn asunder by the predatory Angelina – it spawned a Shenzen-province production line of Team Jen T-shirts and a Twitter hashtag before really understood what a Twitter hashtag actually was.
Just as the sad SaveAlbertPark clan are still attaching yellow ribbons to oak trees to protest the Melbourne Grand Prix some eighteen years after the Grand Prix took up residence around the track, there are no doubt similarly resolute Team Jen die-hards waving their T-shirts aloft.
I suspect they are still drinking NY coffee over old eps of Friends rather than picketing Chateau Miraval, but I’d like to think they are still there staging a teeny but heartfelt protest nonetheless.
Ange and Brad’s outfit
Designers would be slitting the throats of their first born children to be dressing the couple for their matrimonials. However I’d like to think of Brad and Ange defying tradition by rocking a little double denim a’la Brit and JT
Or Ange shucking skinny shoulders into a Diana-style gigantic sleeve.
Oh Yes.
The Celebrant
Given Brangie’s indifference to the Moses commandments, eg coveting those married elsewhere, I suspect that they may have engaged the services of someone less religious, but rocking the following elements in their CV:
No. I want the guru of the Brangelina nuptials to have been a chain-smoking, Wild Turkey-swilling Elvis impersonator, a little on the fuller side and likely to bust out of the white suit at any given moment.
How YOU doin’?
The history
I’m pretty sure that the Brangelina celebrant, Elvis-impersonator or not, would have acknowledged the journey that brought these two together, including:
Instead, I’d like to think they ritually emptied Billy Bob Thornton’s blood from that vial that Angelina used to tote around and re-used it as receptacle to throw down some quality Tequila shots.
I don’t know, you tell me, what did you expect from Brangelina?
Hello friends! This week I posted some sisterly advice to the ladies of The Bachelor 2014 for my friends at Beamly. Check it out!!
http://au.beamly.com/exclusives/2014/08/04/6-signs-wont-last-long-bachelor-2/
40schick is sick. Not that well-deserved sick that comes from a riotous night on the vino with the besties or the body meltdown that comes from a marathon of consecutive school-night social festivities. On the contrary, it actually occurred on the first day of Dry July which I suspect was my body’s way of protesting against its very own human rights violation.
Just your average, someone-sneezed-near-you-on-the-tram kinda sick – but it packed a punch. Quarantined from work and banned from running (surely the coach could get a defibrillator into a backpack and we could just wing it?), I was left with waaaay too much time on my hands.
By Day 3, it was very clear that I had some real sick-girl quirks. This prompted some codeine-fuelled musing about just another of those dating-in-your-40s rituals like meeting the parents for the first time – being super-sick in front of your new significant other for the first time. To avoid anyone experiencing that horror unprepared, here’s what it looks like.
Delicate lungs
Although you wouldn’t know it from my ill-advised propensity to belt out a karaoke tune, my lungs aren’t up to much. (actually, you WOULD know that if you had heard me try to nail Sweet Home Alabama or Dancing Queen) These lungs will latch onto a single stray atom of cold germ and draw it deep into lung tissue with the enthusiasm normally demonstrated by an 80s Wall St type with a line of cocaine.
Once there, the germ finds an ideal haven in some lung tissue that has been decidedly dicey since my birth – given this birth took place in an era where smoking during pregnancy only warranted a single eyebrow-raise rather than a blaring cigarette-packet warning and the engagement of Child Protection Services.
This culminates in a hacky cough that will convince anyone sharing a couch with 40schick to half expect to find themselves suddenly seated next to a glob of forcibly expelled lung tissue.
Never happens in The Notebook.
Tendency to over-dramatise
Just as there should be a breathalyser app on the iphone to prevent drunk-texting, there should be a thermometer on the keyboard to prevent you invoking Dr Google if your temperature is even a mili-degree higher than rock-solid normal (which is 37 degrees as I learned this week from Doc G)
No good can ever come of this. Do this and you’ll know that coughing is not designed to cleanse your lungs of germs but is in fact evolutionarily favourable to the bacteria by spreading it far and wide. I will naturally skip past the entry that suggests coughing is favourable, to the bit where it suggests malignant lung tumours may be to blame.
I even found myself doubting the highly trained staff at Epworth Hospital this week and began staring intently at my chest X-rays sticky-taped to a window, looking for sneaky shadows, applying everything I’d ever learned from weekly instalments of ER.
No one likes a drama queen. Romance over – faster than you can say acute interstitial pneumonitis.
There’s no glamour
No one looks glamorous when sick. Some of us however, are able pull off a pallor with the skill of Cate Blanchett. I am not this person.
By day 5, my unwashed hair had taken on additional thickness by virtual of a few feverish night sweats and now had a touch of the 80s Bon Jovi about it. And not in a good way.
I had also taken to schlepping round in a bathrobe. Not a classy Egyptian cotton waffle-weave, but a 10 year old beige concoction in a fabric not found in nature but now favoured as a foundation for animal-print onesies. Said bathrobe has long since lost its belt to the bottom of the wardrobe (where a seething morass of shoes have devoured it in that cannibalistic way they regard rival accessories) and is now held closed with a clothespeg.
Glam-factor-zero.
Weird food habits
Being unwell makes me contemplate everything I may have done to contribute to this state, most notably inattention to a balanced diet.
It is at this point that overcompensation kicks in ie I
None of this maketh a Nigella-style domestic goddess.
In short, it’s best that you grow up together in your 20s, experiencing gradual and well-spaced shared episodes of sickness generated by great nights out with multi-coloured cocktails, when the only help you needed was a scrunchie to keep your hair out of the action and youthful enthusiasm to do it all next weekend. Somewhere in this journey you sign up for ‘in sickness and in health.’
Far easier than coping with your new 40-something girlfriend turning into a barking, tatty-fleece-clad hypochondriac overnight.
At least I’ll never be ill enough to think I can rock a onesie.
Dearest readers, I’ve been feverishly prodding you in a forward direction along that big dating parade of the post40s age group, helping you dodge the rookie mistakes, drawing on the quirky unanticipated learnings from the experiences of our local celebs and generally doing my level best to help you #findlove despite how vociferously every core of your being might protest the prospect.
But every now and then I need to go on the defensive and declare a certain area the no-go-zone, the Chernobyl-two-headed-fish of dating, the veritable Fu-Ku-Shima of coupledom.
And here I declare of one the prime DMZs of the dating world….
The supermarket
The supermarket is NOT a place where you will meet your #notebook Ryan Gosling, find a chance to press your fevered forehead against a protruding Hemsworth forearm vein, or frenetically swap sustainable recipe ideas with that delightful hipster chap from River Cottage Australia.
Here’s why…
Bad lighting
Just as you are never going to look your best in rehab, you are never going to look your best in a supermarket (and when it comes to deprivation and despair, these institutions are on par)
No one shines bright like a diamond under the industrial lighting appliances that our supermarket chains buy in bulk (their purchase order must read: ‘150 x the Lets Make You Look Like A Long Term Inhabitant Of Guantanamo’)
Unlike the skinny mirrors in the department store change rooms designed to stop you crying over swimwear, or the soft focus lighting of cosmetics counters, supermarket electricals are hard-core. Believe me, until Instagram launches a #supermarketfilter, there’s not even a remote Kardashian third cousin that will post a gluten-free-aisle selfie to the world.
It’s not designed to make YOU look good. The supermarket gods pick a carefully-patented hue that makes the mystery-meat in Chorizo appear caramel smooth and thrice frozen prawns dredged from Thailand look like freshly-deceased local crustacea.
You? You will look like every downtrodden before-pic of any one of the #realhousewivesofanywhere without the costly attention of a cosmetic-surgeon-on-retainer.
Judgement abounds
You thought you were scared of gymnasium mirrors or Eastern suburbs kindy drop-off fashion faux-pas?
In your local supermarket, there is judgement everywhere:
If they are in there, they won’t be for long.
Available men are about as likely to venture into a supermarket with any level of enthusiasm as 40schick is likely to spend quality time in either Bunnings or Baby Bunting.
If there is an available man in a supermarket he will whip in and out of there quicker than you can squeeze an out-of-season avocado (given you WILL spend time evaluating whether paying more for an avocado than a double shot expresso is worthwhile)
Blink and you’ll miss one of them checking out their big-serve Lean Cuisine and 1kg bag of grated cheese (the only thing that makes Lean Cuisine bearable) – even if they are slowish by virtue of being rank self-checkout amateurs.
97% of men are there under duress and not actually available
Most of these are easy enough to identify
Your only shot?
Your only hope is to snag a hipster who hasn’t had time to tram it in to Mediterranean Wholesalers and who tried to sneak anonymously into Woolies. In this case your strategy is…Go Random
Stock up with any combo of the following
Or…. Just Go Kale. You will snag any well-researched male who is trying to Nutri Bullet his way beyond his 20s obsession with Alpine lights, forgive his early-apprenticeship ignorance of asbestos or thinks greenery will help restore a Jim-Beam-rotted liver.
It’s your only shot.
Just. Go. Kale.
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