Courtship Rituals of Cornellians: An Ethnography

There was, I imagine, a moment in history when courtship rituals among the young men and women far above Cayuga’s waters were fairly homogenous. That moment having been summarily executed in a parking lot, our current dating repertoires are sorely in need of documentation. It was the practice of pre-1990s anthropologists to write ethnographies that trampled all hopes of agency and otherized with grace rarely seen in today’s literature. It is my intent to follow in that tradition with this column.

Hipsters — Although sometimes thought to be a twenty-first century construct, the Hipster genealogy is long, with Bob Dylan throwing the term around the East Village in 1959 and Billy Corgan beseeching Hipsters to unite in 1993’s “Cherub Rock.” Any such illustrious lineage must carry entrenched norms of courtship and reproduction.

The scene is a house party in lower Collegetown. Brazilian Girls resonates. Everyone’s major is something that ends in “studies.” The people smoking on the porch outnumber those dancing inside. I think hipster norms have developed towards excessive porch-smoking in a sort of evolutionary way; it takes a lot of arm room to properly dance Tecktonik, and you get hit in the face if it’s too cramped indoors. It’s12 degrees Fahrenheit at most on the porch. Hipsters only come out when it’s below 12 degrees Fahrenheit.

The female Hipster identifies the male Hipster by the resplendent patterning on his shoes. If she finds it sufficiently resplendent, she’ll hint to her fecundity with remarks on either the male Hipster’s hair or her last road trip to Philadelphia. The ritual enters phase two as the conversation turns to mutual underappreciation of Brazilian Girls. The pair will migrate to the iPod. The male Hipster will demonstrate his worldliness by drawing on indie-rap as well as indie-indie. The female Hipster will at last offer up a gesture of submissiveness by conceding to The Smiths even though everyone knows they’re crap and people only listen to them because they assume everyone else thinks they’re an “acquired taste” or something. Then they can make out.

It is for the complexity of this ritual that the hipster geneology is so narrow, geographically sequestered in Brooklyn and Chicago’s north side. It is fact that all living Hipsters are in the extended family of Lou Reed.

Bio Kids — Having lived with Bio Kids for the past three years, I feel like I could write volumes on their behavior. Often, they evade comparison — the level of squalor in which different Bio Kids are comfortable living, for instance, varies widely. Yet a few constants emerge.

Female Bio Kids seem to be attracted to fleece, flannel and sweaters; male Bio Kids revel in this knowledge.

Male Bio Kids also seem to employ an across-the-board strategy of attraction via introspection. They’re less likely to go out on weekends, and less likely to speak when they do. The tactic is informed with assumptions of their own enigma and gravitas, supported by a philosophy of “I only like girls who like me on my own terms” (i.e. the flannel). I’m not yet sure if it works.

The Johnny O’s Crowd — I actually did fieldwork for this one, so you can be assured of its accuracy.

Everyone is standing Ellis Island-style on the sidewalk outside Johnny O’s circa 1:16 a.m. Before conducting my fieldwork I had assumed the agendas of dudes consisted of a) hook up and/or b) fight, and that the agendas of girls were limited to option a. I was heartened to find that option b is on the table for girls as well.

Unlike Hipster males with their resplendent shoes, it doesn’t seem this crowd has developed a visible means of differentiating themselves from others of the same sex. This isn’t of great consequence, as inter-gender communication occurs primarily via text message. When face-to-face inter-gender communication does occur on the sidewalk outside Johnny O’s, its point of inception is always marked by overzealous drunken hugs — the sort that have surely been prefaced by the same kind of hug on a previous occasion. In fact, virtually all of the inter-gender communication takes place within a pre-ordained sub-set of two to three members of the opposite sex. A central paradox emerges: the kids outside Johnny O’s don’t try to meet anyone new during this ritual, yet simultaneously seem to have little on their minds besides hooking up (or fighting, or pizza, or all three on an ambitious night).

I have to conclude that the sidewalk afterhours cycle is more ritual than goal-oriented. If the routine itself actually gave the average Cornellian increased chances of hooking up, you’d see it unfold in front of Ruloff’s, Pixel, the Nines, etc. This routine, rather, is place and people-dependant. It’s a more long-term demarcation ritual, the success of which depends on the same group of kids attending Johnny O’s at a relatively high frequency. If, over time, the constituency of the group remains constant, one individual can consider another the type of person who stands on the sidewalk outside of Johnny O’s and thus a legitimate potential partner. Just as important is the self-identity assumed through this routine. Thus, while College Ave. — counterintuitively — doesn’t supplement the forum that texting provides for negotiating the details of hooking up, its skillful appropriation does clearly delineate who falls within the scope of potential texting.

Non-Heteronormative kids — First may I point out that the years from 1865-1870 probably hosted the gayest Valentine’s Days in Cornell’s history, for obvious reasons.

Today, every Cornell girl seems to be a wealth of knowledge on gay courtship. This is probably because girls like to go around collecting gay friends who they can idolize in a manner that patronizes. Most gay guys appear to play into the patronization though, so it works out. The intricacies of lesbian courtship, in contrast, remain elusive for most. I think most straight people are scared of lesbians for being less mainstream than gay guys.

A couple weeks ago, my friend asked me if I wanted to play wingman on her date. I don’t know if I expected it to be noticeably different than a heterosexual date. The subtle differences I did notice, however, were sort of nice. Neither party was bent on dominating conversation or averting pauses by launching into loosely-connected stories intended to confer wit upon oneself. Both were far more relaxed than most people I know ever are, let alone during a date. In short, it was refreshing.

That’s probably the nearest I’ll ever get to offering relationship advice in a column.

Happy Valentine’s Day.