Sexual Freelancing in the Gig Economy
By Moira Weigel
New York Times
A friend of mine complains about how many of the men she meets on Tinder use corporate language to chat her up. First, they “reach out.” Then, after spending the night together, they “follow up.”
This kind of flirting is banal, but it makes sense. We constantly use economic metaphors to describe romantic and sexual relations. Few people today refer to women as “damaged goods” or wonder why a man would “buy the cow when he can get the milk for free,” but we have “friends with benefits” and “invest in relationships.” An ex may be “on” or “off the market.” Online dating makes “shopping around” explicit. Blog after blog strategizes about how to maximize your “return on investment” on OkCupid.
We use this kind of language because the ways that people date — who contacts whom, where they meet and what happens next — have always been tied to the economy. Dating applies the logic of capitalism to courtship. On the dating market, everyone competes for him or herself.
When parents worry about how their 20-something kids are (or aren’t) pairing off, or the authors of trend pieces lament “the death of courtship,” they seem to forget that the pursuit of sex and romance didn’t remain unchanged from the moment when the first Homo sapiens sidled across the savanna toward his soul mate until Steve Jobs rolled out the iPhone.
If you want to understand why “Netflix and chill” has replaced dinner and a movie, you need to look at how people work. Today, people are constantly told that we must be flexible and adaptable in order to succeed. Is it surprising that these values are reshaping how many of us approach sex and love?
Back when most people punched clocks at fixed hours, a date might have asked “Shall I pick you up at 6?” But part-timers, contractors and other contingent workers — who constitute some 40 percent of the American work force — are more inclined to text one another “u still up?” than to make plans in advance. Smartphones have altered expectations about when we are “on” and “off,” and working from home or from cafes has blurred the lines between labor and leisure.
The average American may not be asking someone out on “a date” today because he works longer hours than he used to. The 2013 and 2014 Work and Education Poll conducted by Gallup found that the average full-time American worker reported working 47 hours per week. Moreover, 21 percent of the people surveyed reported working 50 to 59 hours per week; and another 18 percent said they worked 60 or more hours a week.
53 percent of never-married Americans still say they want to get married someday), but marriage rates have declined significantly since 1960. The median age of first marriage has risen to a record high: 27 for women and 29 for men.
Sometimes social class can make a difference. Growing numbers of working-class Americans are eschewing marriage and having children outside of marriage. In a 2013 study conducted by researchers at Harvard and the University of Virginia, working-class respondents cited low wages and a lack of job security as the primary reasons for these changes.
But a high average salary doesn’t necessarily mean stable relationships. A 2013 report called “Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America” observed that young adults have gone from seeing marriage as a “cornerstone” of adult life to its “capstone,” something you enter only after you complete your education and attain professional stability. Until then, you may be better off swiping through Tinder.
Still, for all of the challenges, it’s worth noting that the gig economy has also brought some much-needed flexibility to dating and relationships. Young women today face less pressure to build their lives around marriage and childbearing than their mothers or grandmothers did. If you are gay or lesbian or if you want a relationship that is not monogamous you are likely to meet less resistance than you might have in the past. Still, as the work of dating has become increasingly flexible, it has also become increasingly precarious.
DATING itself is a recent invention. It developed when young people began moving to cities and women began working outside private homes. By 1900, 44 percent of single American women worked. Previously, courtship had taken place under adult supervision, in private places: a parlor, a factory dance or church social. But once women started going out and earning wages, they had more freedom over where and how they met prospective mates. Because men vastly out-earned women, they typically paid for entertainment.
Today, we refer to a man inviting a woman to dinner as “traditional.” At first it was scandalous: A woman who arranged to meet a man at a bar or restaurant could find herself interrogated by a vice commission. In the 1920s and ‘30s, as more and more middle-class women started going to college, parents and faculty panicked over the “rating and dating” culture, which led kids to participate in “petting parties” and take “joy rides” with members of the opposite sex.
By the 1950s, a new kind of dating took over: “going steady.” Popular advice columnist Dorothy Dix warned in 1939 that going steady was an “insane folly.” But by the post-war era of full employment, this form of courtship made perfect sense. The booming economy, which was targeting the newly flush “teen” demographic, dictated that in order for everyone to partake in new consumer pleasures — for everyone to go out for a burger and root beer float on the weekends — young people had to pair off. Today, the economy is transforming courtship yet again. But the changes aren’t only practical. The economy shapes our feelings and values as well as our behaviors.
The generation of Americans that came of age around the time of the 2008 financial crisis has been told constantly that we must be “flexible” and “adaptable.” Is it so surprising that we have turned into sexual freelancers? Many of us treat relationships like unpaid internships: We cannot expect them to lead to anything long-term, so we use them to get experience. If we look sharp, we might get a free lunch.
But for all the hand-wringing, this kind of dating isn’t any more transactional than it was back when suitors paid women family-supervised visits or parents sought out a yenta to introduce their children at a synagogue mixer. Courtship has always been dictated by changes in the market. The good news is that dating is not the same thing as love. And as anyone who has ever been in love can attest, the laws of supply and demand do not control our feelings.
By Moira Weigel
New York Times
A friend of mine complains about how many of the men she meets on Tinder use corporate language to chat her up. First, they “reach out.” Then, after spending the night together, they “follow up.”
This kind of flirting is banal, but it makes sense. We constantly use economic metaphors to describe romantic and sexual relations. Few people today refer to women as “damaged goods” or wonder why a man would “buy the cow when he can get the milk for free,” but we have “friends with benefits” and “invest in relationships.” An ex may be “on” or “off the market.” Online dating makes “shopping around” explicit. Blog after blog strategizes about how to maximize your “return on investment” on OkCupid.
We use this kind of language because the ways that people date — who contacts whom, where they meet and what happens next — have always been tied to the economy. Dating applies the logic of capitalism to courtship. On the dating market, everyone competes for him or herself.
When parents worry about how their 20-something kids are (or aren’t) pairing off, or the authors of trend pieces lament “the death of courtship,” they seem to forget that the pursuit of sex and romance didn’t remain unchanged from the moment when the first Homo sapiens sidled across the savanna toward his soul mate until Steve Jobs rolled out the iPhone.
If you want to understand why “Netflix and chill” has replaced dinner and a movie, you need to look at how people work. Today, people are constantly told that we must be flexible and adaptable in order to succeed. Is it surprising that these values are reshaping how many of us approach sex and love?
Back when most people punched clocks at fixed hours, a date might have asked “Shall I pick you up at 6?” But part-timers, contractors and other contingent workers — who constitute some 40 percent of the American work force — are more inclined to text one another “u still up?” than to make plans in advance. Smartphones have altered expectations about when we are “on” and “off,” and working from home or from cafes has blurred the lines between labor and leisure.
The average American may not be asking someone out on “a date” today because he works longer hours than he used to. The 2013 and 2014 Work and Education Poll conducted by Gallup found that the average full-time American worker reported working 47 hours per week. Moreover, 21 percent of the people surveyed reported working 50 to 59 hours per week; and another 18 percent said they worked 60 or more hours a week.
53 percent of never-married Americans still say they want to get married someday), but marriage rates have declined significantly since 1960. The median age of first marriage has risen to a record high: 27 for women and 29 for men.
Sometimes social class can make a difference. Growing numbers of working-class Americans are eschewing marriage and having children outside of marriage. In a 2013 study conducted by researchers at Harvard and the University of Virginia, working-class respondents cited low wages and a lack of job security as the primary reasons for these changes.
But a high average salary doesn’t necessarily mean stable relationships. A 2013 report called “Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America” observed that young adults have gone from seeing marriage as a “cornerstone” of adult life to its “capstone,” something you enter only after you complete your education and attain professional stability. Until then, you may be better off swiping through Tinder.
Still, for all of the challenges, it’s worth noting that the gig economy has also brought some much-needed flexibility to dating and relationships. Young women today face less pressure to build their lives around marriage and childbearing than their mothers or grandmothers did. If you are gay or lesbian or if you want a relationship that is not monogamous you are likely to meet less resistance than you might have in the past. Still, as the work of dating has become increasingly flexible, it has also become increasingly precarious.
DATING itself is a recent invention. It developed when young people began moving to cities and women began working outside private homes. By 1900, 44 percent of single American women worked. Previously, courtship had taken place under adult supervision, in private places: a parlor, a factory dance or church social. But once women started going out and earning wages, they had more freedom over where and how they met prospective mates. Because men vastly out-earned women, they typically paid for entertainment.
Today, we refer to a man inviting a woman to dinner as “traditional.” At first it was scandalous: A woman who arranged to meet a man at a bar or restaurant could find herself interrogated by a vice commission. In the 1920s and ‘30s, as more and more middle-class women started going to college, parents and faculty panicked over the “rating and dating” culture, which led kids to participate in “petting parties” and take “joy rides” with members of the opposite sex.
By the 1950s, a new kind of dating took over: “going steady.” Popular advice columnist Dorothy Dix warned in 1939 that going steady was an “insane folly.” But by the post-war era of full employment, this form of courtship made perfect sense. The booming economy, which was targeting the newly flush “teen” demographic, dictated that in order for everyone to partake in new consumer pleasures — for everyone to go out for a burger and root beer float on the weekends — young people had to pair off. Today, the economy is transforming courtship yet again. But the changes aren’t only practical. The economy shapes our feelings and values as well as our behaviors.
The generation of Americans that came of age around the time of the 2008 financial crisis has been told constantly that we must be “flexible” and “adaptable.” Is it so surprising that we have turned into sexual freelancers? Many of us treat relationships like unpaid internships: We cannot expect them to lead to anything long-term, so we use them to get experience. If we look sharp, we might get a free lunch.
But for all the hand-wringing, this kind of dating isn’t any more transactional than it was back when suitors paid women family-supervised visits or parents sought out a yenta to introduce their children at a synagogue mixer. Courtship has always been dictated by changes in the market. The good news is that dating is not the same thing as love. And as anyone who has ever been in love can attest, the laws of supply and demand do not control our feelings.
