This fall, Ivyfed is bringing sexy back, and by sexy, we mean dating.
Look, we know dating has had its issues—when you think of dating you probably think of arcane gendered rituals that involve push-up bras and chastity belts for girls and $$$ for boys. In a place like Harvard, which is pretty liberal when it comes to things like sex, gender norms, and LGBTQ issues, that kind of dating is pretty useless (wtf are you supposed to do when a boy dates a boy or *scandal* a girl dates a girl or *doublescandal* the girl is the one with the $$$). When we say dating, we’re not talking about waxing your eyebrows or your Mustang. Our definition is a lot simpler:
A date is doing an activity at a place with a person[1]
Now, we know that Harvard kids can be tricky little bastards, mostly because we are tricky little bastards (and we’ve seen the Social Network) so we’re going to put a few restrictions on this definition:
- Activity ≠ sex, homework, or class
- Place ≠ your dorm room, dining hall, library, or lecture
- Person ≠ your blood relative, high school student, or professor
Mini quiz time!
- Office hours is/is not a date
- Watching youtube videos on your futon is/is not a date
- Studying for your 21a midterm is/is not a date
- Afternoon delight is/is not a date[2]
The answer to all of the above is “IS NOT a date”, in case you were wondering. There’s nothing wrong with watching Youtube videos on your futon, studying with your cuddle buddy, or putting your skyrocket in flight but these things are not dates.
So what is a date?
A date is a fun, relatively notawkward way to get to know someone outside of school or work. A date is a way to test drive a relationship in the “real world”—to carve out a little space in your life that’s just for you and your sigO. A date is a way to communicate to someone that you value their company enough to make time for them outside of your normal routine.
Over the next few months, we at Ivyfed are making it our mission to convince you that dates are great, whether you’re a swingin single or practically married. Tune in this fall for our first installment of Date Night, where we cover, you guessed it, First Dates!
