Friday, April 17, 2009. Last night I watched The Millionaire Matchmaker on tv. I’ve seen it a couple of times before. Her website advertises it as “where successful men come to meet their beautiful and intelligent wives or girlfriends.” The matchmaker is Patty, who is a brash New York type who is almost 50. The word yenta comes to mind. She herself is attractive enough, she just has a coarse and rude way about her. And I always feel like blotting her lipgloss. She charges $25,000 for a one year membership for the men and the women can join free. What she does for that is has her staff go out on the street and approach attractive women and invite them to come for a group screening to be considered to be matched with a millionaire. She stresses to the women how much money the guys have, and she stresses to the guys how pretty the women are. Gosh, how can anyone pass that up, especially in Los Angeles?
I’m not criticizing her basic premise, since it keeps the millionaires from having to be on the street picking their own women and approaching them. My issue is with her telling both parties to be something they are not in order to keep the interest of the other. She insists women change their hair style and/or hair color, and tells them all they must wear a push up bra and form fitting clothes on the date. She gives the men hair and fashion makeovers and tells them they must act “romantic” according to her definition of romantic, which means spending a lot of money on the girls to impress them on the dates. She suggests lavish first dates, gifts, flowers, trips in private planes, the works.
Then we get to watch the dates on the show. Here is a man who may have lots going for him but he’s been made to look and act like someone he’s not, so the women rarely see who he really is. All she sees is that he’s spending lots of money and attention on her, and he’s got millions. We see women who may have lots going for them, but they’ve been told to look and dress as seductively as possible. That ensures the men get baffled by the boobs and sex appeal and don’t get to know what the women are really all about. She tells the men to not talk about business. My issue is with everyone being instructed to not be themselves. And the few who do “slip up” and just act like their authentic selves on the date, for good or bad, get dissed by Patty onscreen for being jerks or immature or otherwise “not Millionaire’s Club material”. She is proud of her no refund clause and seems to invoke it often.
Ok, it IS Los Angeles and, if you believe the media, that’s what happens out there. But if Patty is really interested in helping these men and women find their true love, which she keeps telling the camera over and over, she’d let them be themselves and know from the gitgo who the other really was. It would save a lot of time. She might have to work harder for her $25,000 fee trying different combinations, but she’d not be leading anyone into illusion via initial deception. And I’m sure she believes in what she’s doing and how she’s doing it. But we don’t always know what we think we know.
I sometimes think I know something, when in fact I don’t know it at all. And to make it worse, I think I know it, so I don’t take the time to contemplate it, so that I really can know it. I’m reminded of a story which Ram Dass accounts in his classic book, “Journey of Awakening,” about a group of monks who one day noticed that a crazy yogi had climbed to the top of their prayer flag pole.
They surrounded the pole and chanted the Heart Sutra (also here) and coming to the end, said the words, “By the power of our words, we beseech that this evildoer may come down,” at which point the yogi slid half way down the flagpole.
They then ended with “By the power of our understanding of these words, we beseech that this evildoer may come down,” whereupon the man climbed again quickly to the top.
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