Everyone has a ‘type’. And I will die on this hill. Cat lover, high-achiever, tall and unattainable—we are magnets for a specific brand of chaos. No matter the damage it caused the last time. Dating in the time of swipe, match and smash is all about spoon-feeding the algorithm about your favourite flavour of fool. The two-rupee Twitter thinkerellas are completely out of touch in advising people to overcome their type. Our hearts are on autopilot, we like what we like.
This whole type business isn’t about deal breakers or just scraping by with the bare minimum in a partner. If I am not wrong, everyone wants to date a human. Unless you’re Bella—then you’ve only got the hots for vampires and werewolves. No judgement. Since we are more nuanced and fleshed-out characters than the dumb damsel of Twilight, our picks tend to be a bit peculiar.
Air signs like fire signs and water signs, although not more than other air signs. Some women have a thing for curly hair, full beards, thick thighs and married men, while others salivate over shaggy drug addicts, living-room comedians and brooding poets. Chocolate boys are a popular category, and so are muscular machos. My co-worker likes funny men who make her chase them. A big majority falls for guys who are ‘givers’ (wink, wink). And no, unhygienic is nobody’s type. That’s just a compromise straight women end up making.
What’s your type?
Mr Freud had a lot of say about dating types. Women raised—sorry, neglected and despised—by their fathers drift toward dudes who are complete departures from them. Daughters of alcoholics love teetotallers. Sometimes, anyone even slightly anti-dad looks like soulmate material. I, for one, really love dudes who openly diss their fathers. Nothing says bonding like a good ol’ session of father-hating.
Then there’s the gang that is too problematically attached to its roots. What we absolutely don’t like to admit is that an upper-caste person’s type is, surprise surprise, almost always another upper-caste person. This, of course, excludes those who decide to “diversify” their type by deliberately hooking up with “others”—you know, for the woke points. Despite the horror stories about Kashmiri men, some women just can’t resist them. The grapevine informed me of this girl who’s into Marwari men. She keeps matching with the same breed (they all share the same surname) on Hinge and puts them through identical banter just to see if they truly fit her type. She even consulted a psychic to help her nail this sub-genre of males.
Also read: Dating for ‘potential’ is the futures trading of modern romance. A stock that never grows
Breaking out of the type prison
Maybe this is what you do when you’re imprisoned by your type. After each breakup, you say: Abki bar, lower the bar. Sadly, SRK-ians are also forced to follow this motto. They are so romantically ruined by King Khan and his outworldly charm that no mortal being seems to fit the bill. Ever.
However, many do break out of the type prison before their 30s. My childhood friend, now engaged to a fellow travel enthusiast, took a decade. If all her exes are lined up, anyone can tell she really likes her tiny dudes with extremely low aura points. In their unwashed shirts and crass manners (all proud UP boys), they’d address her like they were herding cattle. One even yanked her hair to stop her from breaking up with him. It wasn’t hot at all for her college friends, who were watching it happen with gaping mouths. Is toxic a type? Absolutely.
To be honest, it takes a certain level of self-awareness to identify one’s type. I was clueless for the longest time, so it was quite a shocker to realise that I like my men as hairy as Anil Kapoor and as layered as onions. It’s especially heart-fluttering if they are a little lost. One of these days, I’ll definitely guide one home.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
Is this what journalism has been reduced to?
Such a pity!