Reliable gentleman seeks company - now via the Internet
Fresh study examines personal ads over the decades
By Leena Pallari
“Do you come here often?”
This overused opening-line does not faze Professor Pirkko Muikku-Werner at all, but one simply put it to this leading authority on dating.
Muikku-Werner, a professor of the Finnish language who specialises in colloquial speech, has long researched contact advertisements in newspapers and magazines, and has just had a book on the matter published by the Finnish Literature Society.
No, Muikku-Werner does not go to Helsinki-Vantaa Airport very often. Now she is coming from Copenhagen and is waiting to catch a connecting flight home to Joensuu.
The energetic professor woke up in Denmark at four a.m. She had hoped to catch some sleep on the plane, but was distracted by Sudoku puzzles. “They raised my adrenaline.”
Contact ads have fascinated Muikku-Werner over the years. She has studied them since 2001, and once, as a single mother, she actually answered one.
Her research focuses on advertisements placed in Helsingin Sanomat and the Joensuu newspaper Karjalainen over a number of decades.
All great social changes are reflected in the personals columns, and a massive amount of information can fit in their condensed code, the professor says. “For someone in the humanities, it has been quite fascinating to get to know such a broad range of topics.”
First of all, contact ads reflect increased equality in society.
Women no longer yearn for someone to provide them a living. Instead, they specifically want someone to accompany them for travel and hobbies, for instance.
In recent times, young men have been appearing in the classifieds, looking for the company of more mature women.
The sexual liberation of years past brought advertisements asking for the opportunity to share “daytime coffee”, and added a certain meaning to the concept of a “prosperous, reliable gentleman”. Obviously a person placing such an advertisement was looking for sex for money.
Muikku-Werner has wondered why older men looking for company for "daytime coffee" define themselves as trustworthy.
“At least they do not seem to be very trustworthy from the wife’s point of view”.
Greater sexual diversity brought those seeking the company of the same gender to the leading newspapers, as well as the entire spectrum of sexual preferences.
Immigration is the most recent change: some will only go for a Finn, while others would accept responses from foreigners.
When an advertisement is dissected into its constituent parts, five main points come out: the goals of the relationship, information about the person taking out the ad, the characteristics that the respondent is expected to have, and some comments and contact information.
Adjectives alone are very revealing. During the time of postwar reconstruction, men wanted energetic women. Women liked to define themselves as “pleasant”. It was not until the 1980s that people started asking for a sense of humour. It is not until fairly recently that anybody bothered specifying that they are heterosexual.
Although contact advertising has largely moved onto the Internet in the new decade, there are still some people who rely on newspaper advertisements.
There are still holdouts, who do not use the Internet, and an advertisement that is printed on paper might seem like a more reliable solution than a dainty wish floating in cyberspace.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 14.3.2009
LEENA PALLARI / Helsingin Sanomat
leena.pallari@hs.fi
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| 17.3.2009 - THIS WEEK |
 Reliable gentleman seeks company - now via the Internet |
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