I tried not to think about the sudden upswing of male attention I would get when my hair was long and straight. I hated myself for questioning whether I should have kept my hair long for the MOY to make myself more “easily digestible” so that men, black or otherwise, would see me as a viable option.
“All the terrible stuff that happens outside the platform also happens within the platform,” she says, referencing the racial discrimination that often plays out on dating apps. “People come with expectations of what women of colour are ‘supposed’ to act like. We don’t get the same blank slate.” Antwi also helped me realize that a lot of the anxiety I feel is characteristic of what she calls “mission-based dating,” thinking of dating as a job or chore. She admits to experiencing the same uncertainties I felt during the MOY. “I often told myself ‘I’m dating to have fun,’ but I wasn’t,” she says. “The part of my brain that is feminist wouldn’t let me admit that I was on a husband-finding mission.”
Toronto-based Bridget Antwi started The Dating Doula, a dating concierge service for women of colour who, like me, want a better online-dating experience
That was me in a nutshell. I couldn’t remember the last date I went on that I actually enjoyed. Like Rhimes, I was scared – scared to fail, scared to be vulnerable and, above all else, scared to be alone forever. I had been putting so much pressure on myself to meet the man of my dreams ASAP that I thought that opening the floodgates would resolve issues that, in reality, are more about myself than any of my suitors.