With the exception of the Iron Chef shows, I readily admit that I do not watch a lot of reality cooking programs. I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to be getting from these shows that pit big city chefs against each other and force them to concoct 12-course meals without using flour, sugar, water and milk and instead focusing all their food on lavender-infused soy milk. And I supposed I’ve worked in to many kitchens to care about the heightened drama TV tries to lend to those places.

That said, I am addicted to $12 Challenge. It’s a dating and food competition all rolled into one. The tag line for the Web-based series on Food2.com is: “2 Love-Hungry Cooks. 1 Hot Date. 1 Ticking Clock and $12. Oh, and the City is their only kitchen.”

The competitors are regular people — not real chefs — and they have $12 and two hours to buy and cook a meal of the datee’s choice. And they have to use their creativity to figure out how to cook these meals. In the most recent Webisode, for example, Chanell and Athena are competing for a date with Larry who wants steak and eggs (and is, “Hungry for everything — love, food…” Such a player!). Chanell cooks her meal at a dry cleaners using an iron (it turns out that you CAN cook eggs with an iron if you have to) and Athena uses a blowtorch at a body shop for hers. Other wannabe lovers have talked their way into deli’s and restaurants and used real kitchens, but it’s much more entertaining to watch the girls wielding their improvised searing implements to get their food done.

Best of all, the episodes are about five minutes long. Perfect for procrastinating work without demanding too much of a commitment.

Flirting with disaster on February 23, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Why is it okay for dudes to flirt with all kinds of gals but when a gal does it they think we’re hooches?

— Steph

Dear Steph,

Oh, because there’s been this idea since the dawn of history that there’s not enough room in Western Civilization, in the Garden of Eden, or wherever, for both men and women to have sexual experience and power. Because, in a broad psychological/biological sense, it’s a little nerve-wracking to have no real way of knowing if you’re the dad. Because the more sown your oats, the more alpha your malehood. Because … oh, Breakup Girl could go on for hours. Those are just a few of the many reasons why it’s “okay.”

But it is NOT OKAY.

And gals: you are SO not off the hook. Yeah, you complain about guys who are “players,” but you still hook up with them. You also call your sistahs hooches, sluts and hos — when what you really mean is “Damn, I wanted him!” or “I hope I look cool in front of the guys when I agree with them.” You are not helping.

Homework for everyone: Read Promiscuities by Naomi Wolf. Not a flawless book, but it’ll (a) answer your question, (b) make you feel bad about what you should feel bad about, and (c) make you not feel bad about what you shouldn’t feel bad about.

Love,
Breakup Girl

True story: Somewhere between our initial flirtations over email and the end of our second date, I found out that my fiance-to-be’s surname was not Jaffe; it was Lorre. Thank goodness his friends tend to call him by his last name, so that all I had to do was listen to another one of his long, boring stories (j/k, babe!) to realize that I’d remembered it wrong.

But if you don’t get lucky like that, Tango’s got a short list of other memory tricks that just might work. One comes straight from ex-Prez Bill Clinton, who reportedly repeats a person’s name back at him or her while looking him or her in the eyes… I’m guessing this explains much about Slick Willie’s usual effect on the her’s.

Of course, as the story points out,  you can always just ask. I like to ask while feigning a moment of memory-escaping befuddlement (hand to forehead, squeeze eyes closed a sec), and then when I ask “What’s your name again?” and inevitably receive the person’s first name, I say, “No, no, no, I’m sorry — I meant your last name.” It works!

Two guys and a girl on February 23, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I am currently sleeping with not one but two of my really close guy friends. The problem is one of them asked me about starting a public relationship with him and I told him I wasn’t interested in starting something like that and from then on he has been treating me like a bitch. The other guy recently told me he loved me and I don’t believe in love and don’t want to experience it. My friends know about this and I will tell anyone who asks me the truth, but I was wondering if this make me a slut ???

— Clueless in Idaho

Dear Idaho,

Having sex outside of a “relationship” does not make you — or anyone — a “slut.”

But having sex with people who you know want more of a relationship than you do, and then hurting their feelings, does make you: lonely.

Love,
Breakup Girl

Getting “friendly” on February 23, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I’ve been going out with my boyfriend for five months; he’s 17, I’m 16. Things were giong really well until I noticed how “friendly” he is with other girls. He says he loves me,and I truly know that he does, it’s just that he cannot seem to stop “flirting” with other girls. I am his first serious relationship and he was used to having a lot of close friends, but whenever I am present or not, he playfully frolics around with their hair and their clothes and I don’t think it is appropriate! Maybe he just likes attention, but it drives me insane! I don’t want to have to break up with him over it, but he also creates these double standards where he gets jealous if I even receive e-mail from another guy. What should I do?

— Feeling Betrayed

(more…)

Of all the things I’ve done with possessions from failed relationships — trash, garage sale, bonfire — it never once occurred to me that I should start a museum dedicated to my failed love affairs. But that’s exactly what two Zagreb, Croatia artists, Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic, did when they broke up.

The pair told the BBC they wanted to do something creative with the pain they were feeling. They collected objects that represented their relationship and asked their friends to do the same with their past breakups. More than 100 objects later, the Museum of Broken Relationships is up and touring.

Currently showing in Kilkenny, Ireland, the museum has plans to return to North America in 2010 with possible stops planned in St. Louis; Providence, R.I.; and Toronto.

Among the objects in the exhibit: a wedding dress, a bicycle, a prosthetic leg from a man who fell in love with his physical therapist and an axe from a woman who chopped up the furniture of her cheating female lover.

The museum is still collecting exhibits (details of how to donate are on its Web site). I have a stupid Texas Longhorns bottle opener that plays the university’s fight song that might look good on one of its shelves. What would you donate?

The opposite of sex on February 23, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Do you think it’s possible for someone in a serious/committed relationship to be close friends with someone of the opposite sex? Based on my own personal feelings and experience, I don’t think so. I argued a lot with my girlfriend of almost three years about this, yet she always assured me that the guys she hung out with were “just friends.” Well, I put up with it, until she finally cheated on me with one of them. Do you think it’s too much to ask of a girlfriend to not have guy friends? Personally, I don’t think it’s possible for a guy and a girl to be “just friends.” I mean, all of my relationships have started out as a friendship first…

— The Man

(more…)

There are some situations in which Breakup Girl sticks firmly to her double standards. Examples:

• Good music. I conveniently forget that the Godfather of Soul is the Mother of all Wife-Beaters.
• Yum! I turn up my nose at milk-fed veal, but my bare hands have gleefully brought death and dismemberment to countless Maine lobsters.
• Statements, fashion and otherwise. War is bad, but my 82nd Airborne-surplus Corcoran paratrooper boots are good.

Basically, double standards occur when someone adheres both to a principle and also to a big fat self-serving exception to that principle. And usually, the big fat self-serving exception means that someone (wives, lobsters, civilians) gets dealt a lousy hand. That’s how BG describes it, but just to make this official, let’s have a look at the definition of double standard in Breakup Girl’s American Heritage Dictionary (a high school graduation gift from an ex-boyfriend, who like all of her high school boyfriends, is now married with child. See also “harsh.”):

"double standard, n. A set of principles permitting greater opportunity or liberty to one than to another, esp. the granting of greater sexual freedom to men than to women."

Aha. So Breakup Girl has backup when she says: Guys. Cut it out. All of you.

Boys/men: No fair expecting girls/women not to do or have done anything you would do or have done. (Also see “madonna/whore complex”.)

Girls/women: No fair letting boys/men treat you like milk-fed veal.

Breakup Girl is about to go After-School Special on you, but listen up: respect each other’s — and your own — actions, choices, and dumb mistakes. If you feel like someone is doing something mean and lousy to you, get up offa that thing and call them on it. If you feel like someone is getting away with some bad behavior by flashing some fake “that’s how men/women are supposed to be” license, call them on it. Realize that in relationships, these boy/girl double standards are, deep down, all about (more After-School Special words) insecurity and self-esteem. As in, “If she looks at another guy, she might not like me!” As in “If I call him on his double standards, he might not like me!” (Or, worse, “Wow, he won’t let me look at another guy — he must really like me!)

So, basically, Breakup Girl is allowed to have double standards, and you’re not.

Every day this week we will showcase an advice letter on this theme. Call it the “Daily Double Standard!”

Too much information on February 23, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I was in a relationship for almost a year and it finally ended last week. It has had ups and downs, breakups and reunions so many times that I cannot remember the numbers. I love him very much, but he cannot live with my past (which really isn’t shady at all!). When he was asking me some very personal and unnecessary questions, I lied to him for fear of losing him. The truth came out. For five months, we have been trying to work through this, him accepting my past (three other men) and the fact that I lied to him; I’ve been trying to move on from his insults. Last week, he told me he couldn’t stop thinking about my “mistakes” and he wanted to see other people. I should be happy to be free from the arguments, but I’m not. I love and only want to be with him. I go to a very small school, so his presence and any girl he takes home are always near. I don’t want to sit in or go out anymore on weekends. How can I go out and deal with the fact he’s with other girls, ones who are in the place where I want to be? Breakup Girl, I obviously can’t change the past, but my future seems in peril! I wish he would accept the past and that I love him. Instead, he’s thrown me away like yesterday’s garbage! HELP!

— Discarded and Depressed

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