I name my houseplants after movie characters that die. That way, if they don’t survive, it’s less tragic and more like a plotline.
This is all according to my Hinge profile.
It’s also real, unlike profiles that embellish (“where’s my happy place? with you gurl”) or lie (“still figuring out my dating goals”).
My plants are genuinely named after characters that die because I think it’s funny. Dobby (from “Harry Potter”), the snake plant. Fantine, the Zanzibar Gem. Goose (from “Top Gun”), the monstera. Tarzan’s Dad, the spider plant.
It’s not what men expect on a dating profile. And among the photos and prompts I must use to arrange myself for the male gaze, I get one sentence where I get to be me. Where I get to show my weird, honest self, and it feels like an exhale, the unbuttoning of ill-fitting jeans after a long day, a reprieve from curating photos of myself that feel like costumes.
Because those photos essentially are costumes, the product of the dating profile photo shoot I did this summer before moving from North Carolina to Nashville to restart my life. Five outfit changes, one meltdown and a carousel of props later, I had 147 photos and one video to document that I am in fact a person who exists in a body. She holds books! She pets dogs! She holds wine! She holds coffee! She laughs so naturally! (There are approximately three usable photos from this shoot.)
All summer after my divorce was finalized, my friends had been hoping I would start dating and raced at the opportunity to help get me back out there. I couldn’t exactly date while unemployed and sleeping in my friend’s unused nursery.
