The Blonde Theory

by Kristin Harmel

  Concealing my giggles as sobs, I pushed my chair back from the table as Scott stared at me.

  “I’m going to the ladies’ room,” I announced before grabbing my purse and stomping off in the direction of the restrooms.

  In the bathroom, I finally allowed myself to giggle, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. I doubled over with peals of laughter, ignoring the woman washing her hands at the sink, who was making no effort to conceal the fact that she was staring at me with blatant disdain. Not that I blamed her. I looked like a complete tramp in my clingy blue dress, and I’d just made a scene that had turned heads all over the restaurant.

  I was impressed, frankly, at how well I actually seemed to be doing. Once I had started acting like a dumb blonde, it had started coming more easily to me, helped, no doubt, by the fact that Scott was falling for my act hook, line, and sinker. I was a bit disappointed, actually, to see just how easily he had been convinced—and just how much he seemed to still like me, even after my abominable behavior thus far.

  But at the same time, this kind of act wasn’t answering any real questions for me. Sure, it was evident that as ridiculous as I acted, I could still keep Scott’s interest, because apparently a brainless ditz in a skintight dress has that certain je ne sais quoi. But I couldn’t go through the rest of my life—or even the next two weeks of this Blonde Theory experiment—acting like a space cadet. Besides, I had a hard time believing that most men would be as easily convinced by my bimbo act as Scott was. No, I would have to refocus The Blonde Theory and tone down the stupidity on future dates. But for now, I had to finish out this date with Scott. Well, at least I’d get a decent meal out of it.

  I reapplied the hideously pink lipstick Emmie had given me and made my way back to the table, where Scott was gazing at me with concern.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered nervously once I sat back down. He looked swiftly from side to side, as if to see if anyone was watching us. Evidently, he expected another explosion. But, I noticed as I looked down at the table, my beautifully sautéed frog legs had been whisked away.

  “I’m fine,” I chirped, blinking at him blankly as if I had no idea what he was talking about. “Why?”

  “Oh,” he said, looking confused. He obviously didn’t know how to approach me. Not that I could blame him. “Um, our meals should probably be out in a moment,” he finally said helplessly.

  “Great!” I bubbled.

  By the time our main courses arrived five minutes later—sautéed sea scallops in creamy tarragon sauce for me, and filet mignon in cognac sauce for Scott—he was back on track, bragging like a pro, my frog-leg outburst already apparently forgotten. His resilience was impressive.

  Inconceivably, he still seemed to be attracted to me. What an interesting observation: As my normal brainy self, I could act polite and socially acceptable yet still routinely freak guys out. But as a dumb blonde, I could create a huge scene and guys would still apparently come back for more. How odd.

  As we made our way through our meals, Scott chatted comfortably about his job, his income, and the fact that he thought he was irresistible to basically all members of the female gender.

  “I don’t know what it is,” he said with a forced sigh and a little grin. “But women love me. My patients, my nurses, my office staff, and women I meet out in bars.”

  “How nice for you,” I said drily, wondering what he was getting at.

  “Obviously, Harper,” he said, “that makes it difficult to choose just one woman to be with. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Of course,” I said flatly.

  “But you, Harper.” He sighed and shook his head at me in what appeared to be wonderment but was probably feigned. “You might just be the one woman who can capture my heart.”

  I simply stared at him. I didn’t know what to say. Did he use that line on all the women he went out with? And if so, did they fall for it? Or was he simply using it on me because I had seemed more empty-headed than the rest?

  “Um, lucky me,” I said finally, not having to fake the hesitance in my voice. Scott nodded heartily and winked.

  “You are lucky,” he confirmed. “There are lots of women who would give anything to trade places with you tonight.”

  Well, at least he was humble.

  “Like, I am so lucky to be here,” I chirped finally, not sure what else to say.

  “You are indeed,” he confirmed with a nod and a wink. “Now,” he said, waving his hand to the waiter to indicate that we needed our check. What, no dessert? I’d been craving crème brûlée! “What do you say we go back to my place?”

  Ew. Double ew.

  “And do what?” I asked blankly, batting my widened eyes although of course I knew exactly what he was suggesting.

  He smiled patiently. “I don’t know,” he said. “There are lots of things to do. I could show you my bedroom...”

  He let his voice trail off in a way that was evidently meant to be seductive, then reached across the table to intertwine his fingers through mine.

  “Um, won’t the gym equipment in your bed be in the way?” I asked the only thing I could think of. He looked momentarily frustrated.

  “No, I told you, I don’t have gym equipment in my bed, Harper,” he said, an edge to his voice. I continued to force myself to look at him blankly.

  “But you said...” I stopped and let my voice trail off, then shook my head in consternation. “I just get so confused.”

  Actually, what was confusing me the most at the moment was that an apparently intelligent man like Scott couldn’t tell he was being duped. He really thought I was this dumb. And he was seemingly growing more interested in me by the moment, apparently not despite my stupidity but because of it. It was enough to make me want to toss the remainder of my red wine all over him and his perfect suit. But I refrained.

  “So, do you want to come home with me?” Scott asked again. Well, you had to give him credit for trying. But really, I was done playing these games. Amused as I was by how easy it was to fool him, it also annoyed me that stupidity would be so appealing to a man who was so educated and successful. He should have wanted an intellectual equal, like me. Instead, he was looking to take home an empty-headed floozy.

  I thought about my response for a moment, then, without saying anything, reached into my purse to get out enough cash to cover my portion of the dinner. I plunked it on the table, smiled at Scott, and stood up. He looked panicked.

  “What...where are you going?” he asked, standing up, too, and looking at me desperately.

  “Home,” I said simply. I smiled sweetly at him and prepared to turn away. I was on the verge of blowing my blonde cover.

  “But...but we were having such a great time!” he exclaimed, desperation shining in his eyes. “You can’t leave now! Look, I bought you this nice dinner. You have to come home with me.”

  “I have to?” I inquired sharply, turning to stare at him incredulously.

  He shook his head. “I don’t mean have to,” he stammered. “Just that you should. You should. You won’t regret it. Besides,” he tried again, “I just took you out to a really nice dinner.”

  “I’ve paid my share,” I said softly, letting my real voice shine through for the first time this evening. I looked at Scott long and hard, then smiled again. “Besides, I have some briefs I need to get through tonight so that I can file them in the morning. I’ve had a lovely time, but I have a lot of work to do.”

  Scott stared uncomprehendingly.

  “Briefs?” he asked finally. “What are you talking about?”

  “Legal briefs,” I said nonchalantly. I snapped my purse closed with a tight grin.

  “I...I don’t understand,” he said desperately, stepping out from the table and moving in my direction. “You’re a dancer.” I just arched an eyebrow at him. All of a sudden, his face darkened. “Aren’t you?” he asked hesitantly.

  “Sure, Scott, I’m a dancer,” I said. I paused and looked him straight in the eye. “An
d you’re a gentleman.”

  It was his turn to look blank.

  I looked at him for a second longer, smiled—more to myself than to him—and turned to walk away. I could feel him watching me as I turned the corner out of the dining room and pushed through the doors of Café Le Petit Pont onto the bustling street outside.

  Chapter Seven

  O kay, this isn’t going to work,” I groaned to the girls over dinner at Spice Market the next night after recounting my evening with Scott. “It’s too much. Acting like a complete moron isn’t going to help anything. The guys attracted to that kind of thing aren’t my kind of guys at all.”

  “But that’s what the whole thing is all about,” Emmie protested, looking hurt. It took me a moment to realize that she probably felt like I was rejecting her, since she had “taught” me how to act like a dumb blonde. “Weren’t you convincing?”

  “Yes, I was convincing,” I said. I sighed. “That’s the problem, though. If this Blonde Theory experiment is about seeing if my job and my intelligence scare guys, then that’s all I should change, right?”

  Three confused faces looked back at me. I took a deep breath.

  “Look, I lost it with Scott last night because I was acting so stupid, and he still totally ate it up,” I said, trying my best to explain a feeling I couldn’t quite put a finger on. “That’s not going to tell us anything. I would never go out with a guy that shallow. The whole thing was just fundamentally off from the beginning.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Jill, wrinkling her brow in consternation. Meg and Emmie looked equally confused.

  “He was attracted to me because I acted so completely stupid and moronic at the bar,” I said. “Fine, so we’ve already proved that it’s easier to get a date as a dumb blonde than as a lawyer. That wasn’t exactly surprising. But what I really want to know is whether guys will be attracted to me for who I am—as long as who I am isn’t a lawyer or a Harvard grad or anything.”

  “So you don’t want to act like a dumb blonde anymore?” Meg asked slowly.

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying. Not exactly, anyhow,” I hedged. “I think I’d learn more if I acted like a dumbed-down version of myself rather than a full-out ditz. I mean, this isn’t some crazy chick flick. This is my life.”

  The girls stared back at me. Meg reached for a spring roll, and Jill took a delicate bite of her lime noodles. Emmie took a long sip of her kumquat mojito.

  “You’re right,” Meg said finally. The other girls nodded thoughtfully. “But,” she continued, “how are you going to meet guys? As you mentioned, it’s harder to meet them when you’re not acting like a blonde ditz.”

  “Yeah, it’s not exactly like they’re coming out of the woodwork to ask me out,” I muttered.

  We sat in silence for a moment, mulling that over. I took a bite of pepper shrimp and waited for someone to say something to make me feel better. No answer seemed to be forthcoming.

  “The Internet!” Emmie exclaimed suddenly, as if the thought had just popped into her head. We all swiveled our heads to look at her.

  “What?” I asked as my stomach began to swim uneasily. After all, the three of them had tried to persuade me more than once in the last three years to give Match.com or one of the other sites a try. But I hated the idea. I knew lots of women who loved the ease of meeting men online, but I was still a bit old-fashioned and didn’t quite believe that a lasting connection could begin in cyberspace. Plus, what if one of the partners at my firm somehow saw my profile and knew I was trolling for dates on the Internet? That would be humiliating!

  “Internet dating!” Emmie declared triumphantly with a toss of her short blonde curls. “It’s perfect!”

  “No, no,” I said quickly, shaking my head. “No, no, no, no.” I looked to Jill and then to Meg, expecting to find some sympathy and support. Instead, they were both nodding enthusiastically. My heart sank.

  “It’s actually not a bad idea,” Meg said, nodding sagely.

  “It’s not?” I asked skeptically. Because online dating sounded like a very bad idea to me.

  “No,” she said eagerly. “No, it’s not a bad idea at all. It’s perfect. I think this is it.”

  “It... it is?” I asked skeptically.

  “Sure!” she exclaimed. “It gives you the chance to flesh out your personality in your dating profile—but without saying that you’re an attorney or that you’re as smart as you are or as successful as you are or anything.”

  “So be me, for the most part, but leave out the things I feel drive guys away?” I asked. The three girls nodded enthusiastically.

  “That’s the whole purpose of The Blonde Theory, isn’t it?” Meg asked softly. “To see if those are the things that scare guys away? To see if they’re attracted to you for who you are—without all the so-called problems of your success or your intelligence?”

  “I guess it is,” I mumbled, feeling a strange blend of deflated and somewhat hopeful. After all, maybe this was the answer. Maybe I could meet guys who were marginally more normal than Scott. It would be a good chance to tone down the stupidity a notch but still attract guys without scaring them away through mention of my job. It was worth a try, I realized resignedly.

  For the next half an hour, with Jill taking notes in a pink notebook with her bubbly handwriting (complete with hearts over the i’s), we outlined what we wanted my profile to say. In the end, I was relatively happy with the wording we had come up with; I still sounded like me, but I didn’t sound like a particularly accomplished or successful version of me. It was perfect. Well, as perfect as I could get while lopping off an entire aspect of who I am.

  Meg took a cab uptown with me to my apartment. We sat down together, and I entered the information dutifully into NYSoulmate.com, a hot New York dating site that had debuted several months before with a mass advertising campaign in New York magazine, the Times, and the Post.

  INTERESTS: I like spending time with my friends, traveling, shopping, talking on the phone, and aerobics.

  (Meg had insisted I leave “reading” off the list, because it sounded too intellectual, and of course I’d been smart enough to leave off “chemistry,” “physics,” “particle matter,” and “researching legal precedents” on my own. Oh yes, and in real life, I didn’t exactly love aerobics. But it sounded good.)

  OCCUPATION: Bartender.

  (Meg and I had mulled this over for a while before deciding that “bartender” didn’t sound stupid, but it didn’t necessarily sound intelligent or educated, either. It left it up to potential dates to judge me for themselves without knowing ahead of time that they were going out with someone smart—or not.)

  LAST BOOK I READ: I hate reading. Why read when you have a TV?

  (Meg had again insisted that I couldn’t sound like I liked to read or do anything intellectual, which just killed me because reading was one of my favorite pastimes. “Isn’t that part of my fundamental personality?” I had argued, trying to convince her to let me put My Sister’s Keeper in as the most recent book I had loved. “No way,” Meg had responded firmly. “Too intellectual.”)

  ABOUT ME: I totally love to have fun. I like going out with my friends, meeting new people, and having a blast. I don’t have a college degree, and I never did that well in school. I’m more street smart than book smart, I guess.

  (I wasn’t crazy about the wording, and it pained me to leave out the entire lawyer side of my personality, but Meg made a strong argument for staying as vague as possible. As for the “admission” that I didn’t have a degree, Meg had insisted that I needed to lay it on the table that I wasn’t very smart if this Blonde Theory was going to work. I argued that nobody was likely to respond to me if I put that in there, but she just shrugged mysteriously and said, “We’ll see.”)

  WHO I’D LIKE TO DATE: I’d like to meet guys who want to get to know me, who want to talk, who want to listen to me, who want to go shopping with me, who like to dance, and who want to share some fun experiences. I lik
e guys who have good jobs, are self-confident, know what they want out of life, and want to get to know me, too.

  (Well, at least that part was mostly true.)

  “Anyhow, I brought my digital camera,” Meg said after we had finished with the profile. “Let’s take your picture to go with the profile, okay? Then I’ve got to get going. Paul is going to start wondering why I’m taking so long getting home.”

  For the next five minutes, with the assistance of a can of Aqua Net she had bought at the Duane Reade drugstore outside her office building, Meg teased my hair into heights previously unknown to my head (then again, my normal hairstyle was conservative and slicked-back). Then she insisted that I use the bright pink lipstick Emmie had provided me with, as well as putting too much blush on my cheeks. I reluctantly obliged and added an extra layer of mascara on my own. When I was done, I looked in the mirror and saw a dumb blonde looking back, which I supposed meant I had done my job.

  Finally, we went back to the living room, where Meg snapped a series of photos. We uploaded them onto my laptop and chose the best—one where I was staring vacuously off into the distance with a decidedly empty expression on my face. Thankfully, with all the piled-on makeup and teased hair as well as the angle from which the photo was taken, you could barely tell it was me.

  We logged on to NYSoulmate.com and uploaded both the photo and the profile Meg had written for me, choosing BlondeBartenderHotti as my screen name. A thought had begun creeping into my mind while we worked, though, and when we were done setting up my profile, I turned hesitantly to Meg.

  “Would you mind taking a few more photos of me?” I asked, feeling stupid for even suggesting it.

  She tilted her head to the side. “Sure,” she said. “But why? Don’t you like the one we chose?”

  “Well, I’m just thinking about it, and it seems like maybe I should put on a real profile, too,” I said slowly. “I mean, not that I would ever use an Internet dating site. But just for comparison’s sake, you know? Like, put up a similar photo—without the hair spray and lipstick—and write my real bio and see how many hits I get.”