Think back to 10 years ago. What was the world of online dating? For me, I think of websites like OKCupid or Match.com, with seemingly millions and millions of questions for you to answer so that an algorithm could help best determine who your “soulmate” should be.
Fast forward to now, it’s a similar algorithm. But rather than you choosing who you like based on their favourite food, it’s based on physical appearance, with only a short biography to accompany it.
Tinder has redefined dating in the modern age. It’s changed how the first move gets made. Gone are the days of making the effort of to go out and trying to meet someone. Your next relationship could begin with a simple swipe of the finger.
Tinder makes it much easier to be exposed to many different kinds of people, expanding your options from a few individuals in a bar to anyone within a 50 kilometre radius. Opening your options to more people increases your chance of making a connection. This means the chances of getting rejected for fear of saying the wrong thing are much slimmer, because you don’t actually have to see the person. This makes starting a conversation so much easier, because you’ve already skipped that awkward first barrier.
Of course, the pressure then falls on coming up with the perfect opening line. A “hey” is always reliable, or maybe a charming anecdote. Or my personal favourite: “Hey, I’ve never been with a coloured woman, wanna be my first?”
Hooking up with someone you find attractive is your call. However, hooking up with someone solely based on the colour of their skin as a little “experiment” for you, I would argue, is a little morally skewed.
Technically, dating different people is experimentation. However, experimenting when it comes to dating “different races” is something that shouldn’t be happening. If you’re dating someone of the same race, that’s also fine. If you’re dating someone who happens to be a different race, that’s fine. If you’re dating someone because they’re a different race, that crosses a line.
Every time I get a comment like “wow, your mocha/caramel/toffee complexion is amazing!,” I get uncomfortable. No one ever says anything like that to be demeaning, it’s simply because they find the colour of my skin different and unique. But the colour of my skin shouldn’t change my value as a person. Yet, it does. Being targeted for your skin tone is never a good feeling, though most people associate that with a place of anger. Exoticism is the opposite of that.
Exoticism means placing someone of colour on a pedestal, viewing them as something otherworldly and unlike anything else. Because it’s not something that you see everyday, it becomes more fascinating and more desirable because it represents a break from the ordinary.
It is something that is as messed up and backwards as it sounds, but there’s not that much discussion around it. Therefore, no one’s talked about a correct way to respond to that. Do I say “thank you” as if I’m accepting a compliment for an outfit? Do I say, “Hey, you commenting on my skin tone like that is making me uncomfortable,” even though they’re trying to compliment me and make me feel good about being who I am?
There’s no reason why any skin tone should be considered better than any other one. So why are things like race being fetishized?
There’s really no answer to that. The concept of exoticism has been around for a while, beginning with 18th century European art which showcased other cultures as mystic. This idea was then popularized through colonialism. This still impacts our culture through fashion trends, films and literature.
A fascination for other cultures is a very human feeling, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s a line; appreciating the culture versus appropriating it for your own benefit while stripping it of its significance are two different things.
The representation that other cultures are getting is amazing, and it’s wonderful that people are being really receptive to it. But this idea of other cultures representing something that’s “mystic” and “foreign” needs to change. A lot of first-generation or second-generation people often get this label attached to them too, even though they’ve grown up in a Western culture. Being a person of colour doesn’t make you unique, it’s an identity that is shared amongst many people in a population. What makes everyone unique is their own experience and who they are as a person. People on Tinder would do well to remember that.
