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Proud and Angry

In August 2016, Patti Stanger, the Millionaire Matchmaker herself, appeared on an episode of Anna Faris Is Unqualified and told a female caller that to attract a man at a bar, she should simply “smile and signal.” No approaching a man, Patti said, not even to ask the time or the score of the game.

It was an eye-opening strategy for me, since for a long time my approach was pretty much the opposite of smile and signal. Instead, I called it “proud and angry.”

For a long time, I had incredibly low expectations of men, and I felt so smug every time a guy proved me right. I loved manipulating them into doing something to show they were as shitty as I thought they were.

It started in college. In the nineties, the University of Washington had about forty Greek houses and for whatever reason (or, for a very specific reason named Chad Burke) I wanted to lash out at them. And so I would crash their frat parties.

It was my freshman year, but I looked quite young. As the daughter of a sociologist (my dad was a professor before joining the advertising world), the concept of field studies was a familiar—and enticing—one. So I decided to conduct them at the fraternities. I played this really fucked-up game where I would crash their parties wearing tiny Catholic schoolgirl skirts and raver boots with garter belts and stockings and little crop tops. When I walked into the fraternities, I was clearly not a sorority girl. There was this rhythm I found. Guys would talk to me briefly and then say, “Do you want a tour of the house?” which I learned meant, “Do you want to go to my bedroom?” They barely talked to me before inviting me for the “tour.” I was in such an angry place that I loved the idea of guys validating what I already thought I knew—Men don’t want to get to know anybody! They just want to take advantage of women!