Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

I looked at personal ads at not only a genre but also as a culture with its own language, norms and counter cultures. The personal ad, surprisingly, has a much older and interesting part in society than one might suspect.  Personal ads began appearing in newspapers became about 300 years ago, and became regular features in the mid-19th century.

It is believed that Helen Morrison of Great Britain was the first person to place a personal ad in a newspaper. In 1727 she persuaded a local newspaper - 'The Manchester Weekly Journal' - to write an advertisement - stating that she was looking for someone nice to share her life with. It was not long before the ad was reported and she was hauled up to face the mayor of the Manchester city who quickly had her committed to a mental institution. The report is documented by the People Almanac and goes as follows: In 1727, Helen Morrison, a lonely spinster, became the first woman to place a Lonely Hearts advertisement. It appeared in the Manchester Weekly Journal. The mayor promptly committed her to a lunatic asylum for four weeks."
~The People's Almanac

Symbols, codes and word choice are the key elements required to create a personal ad. Within the confines of the ad’s space a new, secret language is developed that takes on a life of it’s own as it references codes with body type, sexual orientation, and interests. It is as if the body has been translated into binary code: succinct, but complicated.

Like the picture described by Paul Gilroy in Race Ends Here (254),  personal ads also “point to the unresolved issue of how ‘race’ interrelates with sex, gender, and sexuality; something that is further than ever from being settled and which focuses a new urgent agenda for future work.”

The codes and abbreviations are important aspects of the personal ad, and they are also the most mysterious to people who only casually peruse the personals. There are websites devoted to decoding and translating personal ads in a satirical fashion.

< http://www.slangcity.com/realenglish/personals.htm>

And it is there are many sites devoted to translating what people believe the codes REALLY mean. Here is an example:

There are some personal ads that go beyond relationships and focus completely on sex. The Stranger’s Lust Lab is a prime example. In many cases the ad is not about sexing the body but about sexing body parts. Here is an example from September 6^th 2007

I love huge cock and giving head all day long.

I am a pro at hand jobs. I like it deep and rough.

I love anal and everything about sex. I take it in every direction as well, so join me.

Katyusha, 21

This ad isn’t saying, “I want to please your body,” it says, “I want to please your cock.”

And here is another which includes using an electronic prosthesis as a sexual tool.

I want a hot dominate man to text me a picture of his fat cock cumming…Txt me what if felt like! Maybe we can meet. I have a virgin ass and want it ripped open by a huge cock!

Naughtyboy, 22

These kinds of ads use a language that reflects a sort of disembodiment that has a kind of instant gratification attached to it. It also greatly annihilates the possibility of a real emotional relationship occurring because the personality is so far removed from the pleasure of the bodies.

The personal ad plays a role in our economy. Personal ads are a great way for newspapers to make money. Prior to 2011 The New York Times felt itself too prestigious to print personal ads, however its finances began to deteriorate and it began printing them as a source of income. According to nytimes.com it costs $2.99 a minute with an additional $2.00 connection fee to respond to an ad unless you want to pay $3.49 per minute with a credit card.

It’s too expensive to be a joke. http://thestranger.selectalternatives.com/gyrobase/Adult/Join

I don’t have that kind of money so I applied for a Lovelab profile and here are some of the questions examples. *

<http://thestranger.selectalternatives.com/gyrobase/Personals/Profile?person=oid%3A1257998>

Body Type

Hobbies

So what can we truly say about the importance of personal ads?

Mary Douglas “Hence we would always expect some concordance between social and bodily expression of control, first because each symbolic mode enhances meaning in the other, and so the ends of communication are furthered, and second, because the categories in which each kind of experience is received are reciprocally derived and mutually reinforcing. It must be impossible for them to come apart and for one to bear false witness to the other except by a conscious, deliberate effort.”

Perhaps why the personal ad is such a phenomenon is because it is a way of finding control, reciprocity, and autonomy in a social context.

*In the week since I posted in the Lovelab I have received 8 responses.