Singles Bar Guide

What in the hell is a bar scene? And what makes a bar or nightclub a meat market? What is so humiliating about being observed and how can we possibly know what strangers might imagine about us anyway?

Characterizations of bars and clubs as degrading, danger-filled traps for singles are sooooo frequently hears they are taken as rock-solid reality. A lot of people might think the world is still flat, too, but that doesn't make it so. In fact, the bar scene bogeyman is another one of those sacred dogmas of single life that frightens us away from the full range of choice to which we are entitled. I say it deserves a sound rational thrashing!

Confessions of a Bar Phobic
Before I lay into this favorite of all singles delusions, I must confess that I was once bar phobic myself. Twenty-four years of married socializing did not prepare me for the first time I walked into a country-western nightclub after my divorce. I had come there to live out a promise to myself that, once single, I would grab all the gusto I could. Or at the very least, go dancing as much as I pleased. I was astounded to discover that a crowd of strangers having some raucous fun could shake me to the core.

Dazed by the sudden onslaught of light and sound, overcome by piercing self-consciousness, I didn't even have time to avoid eye contact with any of the men in the club. I just knew I was being eyed critically, and within a few seconds I realized dancing was out of the question. As for gusto, well . . . a friend guided me compassionately to a table where I could sit with my back to the wall and avoid drawing the attention I was ashamed to admit I had come there to get.

I had fallen under the power of the Mythic Meat Market. It was an unexpected come-down for me. After all, my friends consider me a veritable Jaguar Woman of personal risk-taking. What could be so intimidating to Jaguar Woman about a building with music and dancing and strangers in it? The intensity of that fight or flight panic aroused my indignant curiosity and I began to question what, precisely, I was afraid of.

Fear of People and Places
Do people have anxiety attacks in English pubs? Do women freak out in German Gasthauses or at wein and bierfests? Do grown men grow rigid at Mardi Gras or flee in panic from community dances in small villages?

My travel experience and education say "No". Yet in all those cases, with variations, the same generic mating rituals occur, similar efforts at contact take place, the basic experiences of acceptance and rejection prevail, men and women still look at each other and try to draw the "right" attention. All over the world people publicly schmooze to music and return home safe but tired and thinking they had a good time. With exceptions, everyone survives the social exposure. After all, making merry in mixed company, whether at a Native American pow-wow or a tribal feast in Africa, is a tried and true interpersonal methodology.

So what causes this exaggerated reaction to public socializing which excluded me from yet another opportunity to connect casually? How did bars and clubs get such a bad rap from single men and woman?

Here's what I've figured out: underlying the endless disdainful jokes about singles bars is the emotion of fear. Okay, some people might call it anxiety, uncertainty, or shyness. Some people will tell you, in a voice gooey with virtue, that they don't drink, hence don't have any reason to go to bars. Only a scant, honest few will acknowledge they are downright scared of the opposite sex and that their fear puts them vigilantly on guard wherever they come directly in contact with one of "them".

Places where we directly experience the sexual tension of the mating process - bars, dance clubs and restaurants - have come to symbolize this fear of unmediated contact between men and women. Such places and circumstances become emotionally tainted for the many who fear to look too alone, therefore unacceptable in some way, hence more vulnerable - and begging for bad treatment.

This emotional contamination spreads by association. More and more places become off limits due to their anxiety-arousing potential. The place itself - the very building - begins to have anxiety-arousing potential. Underlying the anxiety is the question of control: what if I encounter someone and don't know what to do?

The most unfortunate aspect of this avoidance behavior is that it can become a self-defeating habit of social and sensory deprivation. The message seems to be that it is embarrassing to want to meet other people. Even wanting the contact is proof of pathology. And the desire for fun after dark is, well suspicious and tawdry. This attitude didn't work well for Jaguar Woman and it won't work for you, either.

Singles Bars and Human Evolution
For excellent reasons we have been taught to be cautious with strangers. But new relationships start between strangers, so the habitual fear of them poisons the potential for spontaneous exchanges which could lead to aquaintanceships and eventually, to perhaps something more and better. Or even something less, but still gratifying.
Single people have a natural urge and a basic right to seek contact with the opposite sex. After all, human evolution has been depending on this prelude to courtship and mating since time began. Diverse cultures have generally made social and physical spaces for the display of desire and desirability. In some way, opportunities are provided for strutting, preening, casting the sidelong glance, flashing eyes, acting our sexual identities and social roles. In this culture, one of those spaces is called a bar.

For crying out loud, men and women are supposed to look at each other! Not always, of course, to calculate one another absolute value as a human being or to judge them as a potential life partner. Just to survey the field of possibilities and make casual contact. That is an evolutionarily valid motivation if ever there was one. The instinct for preliminary casual contact doesn't make anyone a piece of meat, it makes them a member of a dimorphic species, with two sexes which have to start somewhere. Only humans - and particularly American humans, are so dysfunctional ashamed of such natural behavior.

And let's not leave our basic human recreational freedoms out of the equation: the freedom to listen joyfully to live music of your preference, to dance from the heart until you drop, to join in communal vibes you cannot obtain from a cathode ray tube, to get and give mild, appreciative attention. In many bars and night spots favored by singles, these freedoms are generally available to anyone who dares to enjoy them.

Reality Check
With a lot of thinking and a little social practice, Jaguar Woman reasserted herself. I learned that the bar isn't the bogeyman: it is the object rather than the cause of Meat Market mythology. Not that sexual objectification doesn't happen. But when it does, it is not the bar's fault.
I also concluded that an exaggerated disdain for the figurative bar scene covers an exaggerated fear of unmediated social encounters which is self-defeating in the Age of Singlehood. In fact, the likelihood of a self-possessed grown up being treated contemptuously in a bar is slim compared to the guaranteed loss of freedom involved in surrendering to anxious fantasies.

If you want to increase your casual connections and maintain a varied and adequate diet of sensory stimuli, you can't afford to turn your nose up at the full range of options because of a myth. Take it from a really experienced Woman.