Personals

Personals are advertisements, not unlike classified ads, in which advertisers seek companionship with others for friendship, a committed relationship, sex, or other romantic encounters. Research indicates that personal ads have been around since at least sixteenth-century Britain and that people all over the world have used them (Jagger 2001). In its most contemporary and prevalent form, the Internet-based personal ad enables advertisers to streamline searches for companionship while juggling the demands of careers and personal lives.

Evidence suggests that personal ads often reflect the normative values embedded in the culture in which they are written. For example, American personal advertisements reveal capitalistic societal trends such as casting a woman's appearance as a commodity in exchange for a man's wealth and social status (Rajecki, Bledsoe, and Rasmussen 1991). Moreover, the American personal ad often indicates a cultural preference for individualism, whereas its international counterparts may reflect other social values, such as community. For example, in China many personal ads reveal cultural preferences for family and community, "even," as Ranna Parekh and Eugene V. Beresin note, "at the expense of individual needs" (2001, p. 223). In India most personal ads prize heterosexual marriage as an ultimate goal for seeking companionship. In fact, Indian ads are typically referred to as "matrimonial advertisements." Once referred to as "lonely hearts" advertisements, personal ads have been popular in Britain since the early twentieth century, particularly from 1912 until the mid-1920s (Cocks 2002).

While personal advertisements are typically placed by heterosexuals looking for more traditional relationships, they have also provided opportunities for people with less-mainstream preferences to seek companionship. American personals, for example, have provided a greater degree of anonymity and safety for gay men and women since at least 1946, when F. W. Ewing's The Hobby Directory gave men opportunities to discuss "common interests" (Harris 1997). Since then, personal advertisement services have evolved to cater to a variety of interests and appetites. From gay fetish to extramarital affair ads, from mainstream heterosexual romance ads to alternative subculture community forums, there now exists, thanks largely to Internet services, personal advertisement for almost any preference.

Not only has the Internet provided virtual spaces for a variety of preferences, but it has also reshaped the face of personal advertisements and made them more accessible to wider audiences. Moreover, because Internet services are not as restricted for physical space, they have provided users with the opportunity to provide longer descriptions of both their selves and their desires. Traditional newspaper personals typically restrict the advertiser to no more than twenty-five words, whereas the Internet services typically impose fewer restrictions in length of ads (Paap and Raybeck 2005). Moreover, the prevalence of Internet advertisements has helped break the negative stigma surrounding the use of personal advertisements. Internet personals services have grown steadily, both in revenue and number, coming in second only to pornographic services as leading the Internet in paid services. In November 2004, for example, Internet personals services netted more than $220 million in revenue (Flass 2004).

Research has also shown that Internet-based personal advertisement services have facilitated a change in adherence to social norms in demographically determined mate selection. Because the Internet provides a space in which people of different backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, and locations can more easily meet, it has been suggested that the Internet enables advertisers to choose mates they may not have otherwise chosen (Jagger 2005). Moreover, such Internet services have been both praised and criticized for enabling advertisers to manipulate and create the version of their identities that they present. On one hand, such services allow users to "put their best foot forward," while, on the other hand, they have also enabled users with less-honorable intentions to deceive others. To those in search of companionship, an important rule applies: caveat emptor.

Since the beginning of personal advertisements, there has been a specialized language consisting largely of initialisms such as SWF, which stands for Single White Female, to ISO LTR, which means In Search of a Long-Term Relationship. These initialisms may have developed in part to conserve print space and reduce costs for services that charged by the word. These initialisms/acronyms have survived the move to virtual spaces and remain a part of the genre. Some of the more common terms are as follows: BBW (Big Beautiful Woman), BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Domination and Submission, Sadomasochism), D (Divorced), M (Married), S (Single), B (Black), W (White), G (Gay), Str8 (Straight), Bi (Bisexual), MOTOS (Member of the Opposite Sex), MOTSS (Member of the Same Sex), MW4MW (Man and Woman Seeking Man and Woman), DDF (Drug and Disease Free), WLTM (Would Like to Meet), NSA (No Strings Attached), and DTE (Down to Earth). Hypothetically, an ad could read "SBM ISO BBW 4 DDF NSA BDSM," which would mean "Single Black Male In Search of Big Beautiful Woman for Drug and Disease Free, No-Strings-Attached Bondage and Discipline Sadomasochism."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cocks, Harry G. 2002. "'Sporty' Girls and 'Artistic' Boys: Friendship, Illicit Sex, and the British 'Companionship' Advertisement, 1913–1928." Journal of the History of Sexuality 11(3): 457-482.

Flass, Rebecca. 2004. "Bloom Off the Rose: Online Dating Services Struggle to Keep Market Share." Los Angeles Business Journal 26 (50), December 13.

Harris, Daniel. 1997. "Personals." Antioch Review 55(1): 284-301.

Jagger, Elizabeth. 2001. "Marketing Molly and Mellville: Dating in a Postmodern, Consumer Society." Sociology 35(1): 39-57.

Jagger, Elizabeth. 2005. "Is Thirty the New Sixty? Dating, Age, and Gender in a Postmodern, Consumer Society." Sociology 39(1): 89-106.

Paap, Kris, and Douglas Raybeck. 2005. "A Differently Gendered Landscape: Gender and Agency in the Web-Based Personals." Electronic Journal of Sociology 2005. Available from http://www.sociology.org/content/2005/tier2/paap__genderedlandscape.pdf.

Parekh, Ranna, and Eugene V. Beresin. 2001. "Looking for Love? Take a Cross-Cultural Walk through the Personals." Academic Psychiatry 25(4): 223-233.

Rajecki, D. W.; Sharon B. Bledsoe; and Jeffrey Lee Rasmussen. 1991. "Successful Personal Ads: Gender Differences and Similarities in Offers, Stipulations, and Outcomes." Basic and Applied Social Psychology 12(4): 457-469.

                                              Jeremy C. Justus