Michelle Stevens, VIP of the Day

The Internet is a truly amazing place. You can find out all sorts of information about a person without even having to leave the comforts of home. Which is perfect for me because it’s currently pouring rain outside. And, say I did have an irrational urge to drench myself, I’d be stuck for a long while since my house uses electronic keys and the power’s out. So I decided to stay INSIDE and commence the stalking.

Diigo introduced me to a Very Interesting Person, a VIP of sorts. Her name is Michelle Stevens. She calls herself the girl-next-door, among other things. To use her own personal description,

“I'm the awesome girl-next-door who knows how to stay on top of the grade book as well as my buddy list. I can also offer you the 411 on how to snag a guy – at any time or place. Check out my collection of videos, which come complete with all the tips and tricks you need to catch the hunk of your...

I am interested in dating :) I love the feeling of being inlove.. I'm sweet and sensitive. I love to party as well :). My favorite music are love songs. Movies: the notebook,ever after,titanic and twilight saga. i love to watch romantic movies... TV: vampire diaries. Books: there's this book from sidney sheldon that i really love but i forgot the title lol!. My Heros are God :).”

If you think she sounds a little cray, don’t worry because I do, too. BUT she does have a lot to say about college “relationships.” I say “relationships” (as opposed to plain ole relationships without the quotation mark bookends) because she mostly bookmarks and annotates articles about hook ups, one night stands, and the like. Those aren’t exactly traditional relationships, hence my distinction.

Michelle is a frequent Diigo user. Or at least she was. She joined in July of 2012 and she bookmarked pages every few days consistently until September 2013. In that short amount of time, she amassed 165 items. She is VERY thorough—every bookmark has multiple, uniquely descriptive tags.

Those were clues that she might be a good resource. And I was right; I found some new sites thanks to her. She most often tags posts by Sexy College Life, on tumblr. Some of SCL’s topics are: “How to Keep the Women Coming Back Without a Relationship,” “Knowing the Signs of a Girl Who Wants a Boyfriend,” and “How to Get the One Night Stand Out of Your Place.”

In that same vein, College Girls Know How has similar posts, such as “How Do You Know if He is Ready to Commit?” and “Dealing with the Ex Who Keeps Coming Back.”

The problem with Michelle, though, is that she is very inappropriate. Every article she helped me find was pertinent to my topic, but nothing had any academic value whatsoever. I’ll be able to use her stuff to help come up with future blog topic ideas, but if I want to be taken seriously as a writer Michelle will not help me (assuming I’m not stupid enough to believe the kind of advice offered by someone who calls himself “Sexy College Life”).

The reason I’ve chosen Michelle, though, is because she directed me to websites that would give me more insight into the college relationship mentality. Because, let’s face it, the stereotypical college kid is more concerned with getting laid than with building a lifelong romantic relationship. I think it is very easy to be promiscuous in college. You have your own place devoid of Mommy and Daddy to supervise if you have a friend of the opposite sex over. I’m not going to comment on whether that’s good or bad. And I’m not going to recommend that you ask Michelle for advice on how to “snag a guy” like she promises she can do.

Here is the proper way to use Michelle as a resource if you would like more insight into college hook up practices: look through some of her bookmarks, find a topic you like, and then use her tags as search words in a more respected database, such as ProQuest.

Alright. Time to do something with my day other than sit in the dark flipping through hook up advice columns. My laptop battery is about to die anyway. Oh, electricity, how I need you!

Which is More Effective, Nifedipine or a Gentleman Friend?

I have Raynaud’s Disease, which is fancy way of saying that my fingers and toes go numb when it gets cold outside. You’re probably thinking, “Okay, so what?” Fun Fact #1: I’m from Arizona. Not the North Pole. By normal person standards, it should never be cold enough for an Arizonan to lose all feeling in her hands and feet, but this is exactly what happens to me and it’s actually quite painful.

WTF does this have to do with the picture? Read to the end and I’ll tell you. Or skip to the end. It’s not like I’ll know.

Fun Fact #2: My disease is exploitable. There is only one drug to treat Raynaud’s, and it’s called nifedipine. Yet I’ve never bothered to get a prescription, because the alternative “cure” is so much better. Time and time again, I’ve been out with a guy, and when he eventually notices my hands are yellow or blue (depending on just how subzero my body thinks it is), he feels the need to warm my hands with his own. Does it work? No. Gloves don't even help much. But his over-concern almost always leads to hand holding, and who doesn’t like hand holding?

Have you ever considered that hand holding might mean something different to men and women, though? One thing I’ve noticed in college is that hook ups NEVER show affection in public places. That stays in the bedroom. But why? In my mind, here’s how I think of things:

Notice how kissing and sex (and everything leading from Point A to Point B) fits into the center portion, but how hand holding is strictly Left Circle. What makes hand holding so much more intimate than sharing a bed?

I asked a few of my guy friends for their opinions about hand holding.

“Holding hands? It may seem like a harmless display of affection, but I think it gives girls the wrong idea. You can never hold a girl’s hand without her reading into it. Unless you want to make both of you confused, don’t do it.”

“Holding hands is kind of like saying, ‘Hey, this one’s mine. Go get your own.’ So I’m not gonna hold hands with a girl unless I know I want to be exclusive with her.”

“When I hold my girl's hand it’s to let her know that I feel close to her, and that I feel comfortable expressing it physically without being sexual. It’s my way of saying, ‘I have you. I’m holding you. You cannot leave me right now.’”

“Holding hands is how I protect her from physical harm, like if we’re crossing the street, and it’s my reassurance she has feelings for me, too. It shows I’ve invested a lot emotionally in a girl, and that I don’t want to lose her.”

Fun Fact #3: Hand holding is a pretty big deal. A much bigger deal than sleeping together. Hand holding represents commitment. It’s basically a public declaration that you’re taken. So if hooking up is what is best for your situation right now, that’s why he’s not holding your hand. It doesn’t belong in the Right Circle. That circle is for things like having fun, and having someone to spend the weekends with but not the weekly emotional roller coasters rides.

Now before you tell me to get off my high horse, and before you say, “I hold hands with my friend who’s a guy all the time and it doesn’t mean anything!” let me clarify. The hand holding I’m talking about isn’t of the friendly, hand-cupping, arm-swinging variety. I’m talking about the finger-lacing kind. The kind which sometimes ends with a joint knot of ten fingers in her jacket pocket.

So regardless of whether you have the Raynaud excuse, and regardless of whether you need to take some Nifedipine, I think it’s safe to consider hand holding a dividing line between hook ups and relationships. Because, clearly, it means a lot if a guy wants to cross into Left Circle territory. Left Circle guys don’t give your hand back once your fingers are no longer blue.

Anyway, as promised, here’s the mystery object. For all of the Raynaud-afflicted ladies in relationships out there.

Will You Still Love Me Without my Mascara?

So something happened to me last weekend. I accidentally fell asleep at my boyfriend’s apartment. It was the first time I had ever spent the night. Even though all we did was sleep, when we both woke up the next morning something between us had changed. It felt like we had been stitched closer together. Since I haven’t been a part of the relationship scene for two years, this scared me a little. I couldn’t place why, at first, but then I decided to consult the all-knowing Internet and see what the authorities have to say about intimacy.

Both hook ups and relationships involve intimacy, but vulnerability is what distinguishes the two. Vulnerability means taking risks, being okay with uncertainty, and emotionally exposing yourself. Hooking up doesn’t require you to make yourself vulnerable, which makes it very attractive.

Hooking up also lacks many of the pressures of dating. It doesn’t involve all of the formalities of making plans (and being judged if the restaurant you pick is too cheap or too fancy) and being over-polite. There aren’t any awkward lulls in conversation, no Oh-my-God-how-long-have-I-been-talking-with-food-in-my-teeth realizations, no accidental hand brushing as you reach for popcorn at the same time. 

What’s more, hooking up allows people to be more emotionally detached, something which our culture supports. If a guy falls “too hard” for a girl, he’s “whipped.” Likewise, a girl is “clingy.” Neither of these adjectives is very flattering. Hooking up allows people to circumvent these negative labels by allowing them to experience all of the contact comforts of intimacy without truly baring themselves and potentially getting hurt. 

 

Networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter create artificial intimacy, the false sense you actually know what’s going on in other people’s lives because you know what they ate for dinner. They are great ways to get information about someone without fully committing yourself. In this sense, social media are enablers of hooking up.

 

In fact, the Tinder app was designed for this very purpose.

What is Tinder? Essentially, you create a profile for yourself with a few pictures and a short bio. People within a certain mileage can view your profile and swipe right to “like” or swipe left to “pass.” When two people “like” each other, they can chat and decide to meet up. The encounters are not dates, though. 

They’re somewhat more like this:

Tinderella, a Modern Fairy Tale

You see, Tinderella didn’t have to wake up with her guy. Because he wasn’t really hers. And he wasn’t really rejected when she left, because he was never playing “the game.” There were no promises. I must admit, I myself have played that card to make myself feel better. I asked a hook up to my sorority formal last year, and when he left to use the bathroom and never came back, I told myself I had no right to feel upset because it’s not like he was boyfriend. He didn’t owe me anything. He’s an asshole, but so what?

Now let’s go waaaay back to the beginning of my ramblings. You’re at your most vulnerable when you’re asleep. You’re completely relaxed (can’t suck in that food baby!), your hair’s in tangles, your makeup’s all smeared, you’ve got horrible morning breath—all in front of the person whom you’re trying to impress most. So when I woke up next to my significant other for the first time, I knew the moment could go one of two ways. He could (figuratively) disappear into the bathroom, never to return. Or he could stay. I held my breath and waited. The air was charged with the possibility of rejection. But I got a kiss instead, our stitches got a little bit tighter.

~~The Authorities~~

Why a "Real" Date is Better than Hooking Up

Vulnerability: Love's Secret Ingredient