Wonder Woman and The Online Dating Debacle

I love Wonder Woman in all her cheesy glory. Blue and white star hot pants and charming gold arm bands. A mix of pure strength, femininity and utter ridiculousness. If Wonder Woman really were cheese she's not going to be a soft creamy brie or even a dry chunk of asiago. No, Wonder Woman is a good old Kraft single. She's an individual. She stands alone in the pack of muscled spandex-clad superheroes and she's entirely wrapped in plastic. Plus, just like a Kraft single Wonder Woman shall last forever.

So, I've officially been divorced now for nine months and technically separated for about three wonderful years so I think that I'm officially over the rebound mind games and I'm ready to get real about this thing people like to call dating. My first attempt was “church”, I know blasphemous to use God in such a way, but hey, people do it all the time and I figured it couldn't hurt to sneak a little prayer into my search for love.

Church was not a good choice for me, since I'm a people pleaser ( I know I'm working on that) and I was immediately accosted upon entering the building by a group of “sweet little old ladies” who in turn talked me into joining practically every church function in existence. I looked into the faces of these women with their coiffed white hair and lipstick and of course I said yes. The worst of the bunch was the choir. Actually, joining a church choir has always been a small dream of mine. I imagined fabulous rocking Sister Act like performances and “fun”. The truth was it was grueling. Three hour practice sessions once a week, and this was after a ten hour work day. Five hours worth of services on Sunday, exhausting to say the least. Then those “sweet little old ladies” ended up not being very sweet or nice. They treated every performance like we were singing for the Queen of England and between the hoity toity attitudes and shrill once first soprano voices were the nasty biting remarks about everyone and everything. These were the new generation of old biddy, and of course there were no men to behold, unless you counted the 85 year old bass in the back row or the only other member under the age of 75, a 16 year old tenor who looked like he was having just as much fun as I was.

Thus began the quest of online dating. The first thing I needed to do was choose a user name. Easy you might think but actually a daunting experience. I wanted to send the right message. Sexkitten37 just seemed too overt and very un-me while chubbysinglemomof11yearold seemed well, only too true and entirely un-alluring. Therefore, I went with wonder_woman_me – strong, yet sweet, and a tad dorky – perfect.

Choosing my profile pic was thankfully easy since I'm unbelievably photogenic and always take a candid glorious photograph....NOT. Sorry, yes another problem. I chose an upshot of full cleavage taken in a bar. The only bar I had been in in the last six months, which might be another reason I am online dating. Let's just say it was a hit and not in the way I had wanted.

Online, truck drivers love me! The scary kind, the kind you hear about passing their STDs from state to state. Guys with user names like bigrig10incher and ridemehard69. Then there are the sad pathetic guys that you just feel bad for. The men who take there profile pics while wearing a towel naked in their bathroom mirror or spitting chew outside their travel trailer that they live in with their six kids and their mom.

I soon began to understand the problem and changed my picture to the more demure almost school marmish pic that I use for my business website. This picture is professionally taken, but it looks like what it's supposed to look like: preschool teacher extraordinaire seeks love. The new picture brought along an entirely different batch of men. Solid looking men, fellow divorcees, older, wiser, and definitely less despicable...or so I thought.

The Super Unintentionally Hilarious Magic Mike

While watching nearly nude men dry hump furniture can be entertaining in the right atmosphere, I do not recommend you do so while holding a large popcorn and coke. I say this with extreme discretion, for while I am not entirely embarrassed to have been viewing the humping, gyrating, or dangling manhoods, I am slightly ashamed about the popcorn and coke.

That said, I recognize that I am truly a “liberated woman”. I buy cheap Pinot Grigio and proudly pour it into my five-dollar Walmart wine glass. I pair the black dress I saved months for with my one-dollar Old Navy flip flops and call myself a fashionista. I’ve got this grown-up woman thing under control now, right?

I started seeing movies by myself way back in the 90’s. The sweet flick My Girl was my very first and after two hours of quiet crying by myself with that tear jerker, I was hooked. Liberation is sobbing (quietly of course) with the knowledge that no one has the ability to hold it over your head one day. Even your best girlfriend loves gloating about the time she walked in while you were dry heaving, covered in snot, during what can only be described as a “Steel Magnolias” moment.

Completely expecting a Flashdance sexy dance flick with a quiet role reversal of drama, I walked into the vacant theater.
“I’d like one ticket for the incredibly embarrassing Magic Mike,” I told the handsome young concession boy. He was polite enough to laugh as he took my credit card. Darling dimples and post pubescent chin hair. “That will be theater number one on your right,” he told me.

I had enough experience with this place to know that theater one was on the crappy non remodeled side of the cinema. The side that houses the almost finished low-money-earning hanger-onners. The mothball section where movies go to die.

Now twenty dollars poorer (oh so many Old Navy flip flops), I entered musty old theater number one. The initial aroma hit my nostrils like fifth-grade B.O. it was soon Febreeze-it-neutralized by my overly buttered large popcorn.

I was alone, free to choose any dust-mite-ridden seat that I wanted. I picked a cozy center chair and settled down to enjoy some movie magic...uhhh Magic Mike that is.  I felt a little relieved being alone. Perhaps no one would see me sitting in this dank movie house and think of, Pee Wee Herman ala 1991.

Moments later, and to my utter surprise, the theater began to fill with the most unusual bunch of movie watchers. Doting boyfriends holding firmly to their girlfriends’ hands, strutting down the aisles with an “I’m Not Gay” kind of swagger. Some pre-middle-aged women like myself. A gaggle of teenage girls that I can only imagine were garnered entry by the cute concession boy. And lastly, the cutest little Norman Rockwell couple that had to be well into their 80‘s.

The previews, always so foretelling, were of super sad looking horror flicks that my brain instantly compartmentalized into the wait-for-Netflix, not-even-worth-the-buck-twenty-at-Redbox category.

Then the moment!  Matthew McConaughey, all lean naked torso and leather chaps, spouting the sexy dialogue we’ve all seen in the previews.  “I bet there’s a lot of lawbreakers in here,” he drawls in that erotic southern way that is all McConaughey.

Okay, we were off to a great start and then...nothing...quiet morning...birds chirping five-minutes of dullness until beef cake Channing, aka Magic Mike, wakes up. And then BOOM! He’s out of the bed and his naked ass is displayed for all. The audience actually gasped. I think I may have been included in the gasping as well, but I cant be entirely sure because I was spell bound by the magic ass for the entire ten seconds it appeared on the giant screen. Bugle Boy jean ads be damned.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie was simply unable to live up to well...those buns. Seriously bad acting was mixed with a ludicrous story line. Plus, once you’ve seen the butt you can never go back.

Mike is a poor hard working entrepreneur by day, stripper by night. I know Flashdance flashbacks, right? Working as a construction worker, which you only see him do once, he meets another tough-on-his-luck hot-bodied young buck. Mike in a convoluted series of B.S., takes the young kid under his wing and after a very obvious older stripper passes out and misses his cue story line. The young kid is thrust into the stripper spotlight where he ridiculously and literally strips down to his black BVDs. I found myself praying that he had no holes or stains on those undies...that would have simply been embarrassing. Of course, the women go wild for his Like A Virgin dance moves and the kid becomes a regular greased-up, leg-shaving, penis-pumping imbecile.

There is a rather stupid sub plot where you slowly notice Mike’s attraction for the kid’s non-approving older nursing assistant sister, but I haven’t seen acting as bad as hers since I played mother number one in my sixth grade Christmas play. And of course, Mike has a dream of designing furniture that we never see him build.

All and all, Magic Mike was unable to live up to his name or his ass and I was more entertained by the eighty-year-old couple sitting in front of me than any semi impressive dance moves Channing had to offer. I suggest waiting for this one to come out on Redbox...and definitely watch it with some cheap pinot, give or take the Walmart glass!''