Subscribers get access to special offers, my quarterly book club, a monthly group coaching call, and my in-depth insights on how singles can reshape their love lives to match their authentic selves and find a life partner.

And if you’re already a subscriber—ignore this! Thank you for your support.

Matchmaking is in the news. Both New York Magazine and The New York Times published articles in recent weeks about modern matchmaking, the clients who pay for the service, and why singles are turning to us to help them find love. As a matchmaker, I’ve had a lot of thoughts on these articles, so I’m putting them all in a 3-part series. This week, I’m explaining why the cost is so prohibitive, my conflicting feelings about access, and what people who can’t drop $100,000 on a contract can do instead.

Love has a price tag in 2026.

To be fair, love (or marriage, to be exact) has always had a price tag. From dowries to monthly app subscriptions, we have always paid for love.

Modern matchmaking is just one of the ways.

One of the very first comments I get when I tell people that I’m a matchmaker is, “Wow, that’s a real job?”—so I want to start by establishing that this is, in fact, a real profession. I have clients who pay me real money to find good romantic matches for them, with the hope that one will be the person they marry.

Matchmaking is one of the oldest professions in human history, but one that was historically rooted in community. I read New York Magazine’s recent article about the “good man shortage” about a dozen times in the past week, which reaffirmed what I already knew: matchmaking is now something of a luxury.

Most matchmakers I know are not so removed from reality as to know that their services are inaccessible to the vast majority of people, even people in New York, where there is a higher concentration of millionaires and billionaires (and where my services are based). The article only captured the slice of the industry that charges upwards of $75,000 for six months of service, but it’s not a small slice. And even though my head spun at how many 5- and 6-figure numbers I saw in the article, I’m no different than my peers. My fees are more accessible than the numbers cited in the piece, but are still, objectively speaking, inaccessible—especially when you consider the fact that:

• Around 60 percent of the U.S population lives paycheck-to-paycheck;

• The U.S. median household income is roughly $83,000;

• Roughly 1 in 4 people have zero emergency savings, and only 63 percent of adults say they could cover a surprise $400 expense using cash, savings, or a credit card they could pay off at the next statement.

My starting fee of $18,000 for a full-service 3-month package ($30,000 for six months), while it may look like pennies compared to the $100,000-plus many of my esteemed colleagues charge, is still prohibitive for the vast majority of the population.

And I’m not proud of that.

First, let’s get into the very simple reason why matchmaking services are so expensive.

We’re headhunters for love—and charge accordingly because the search is hard. And the harder the search, the more time we spend on it or the more people we recruit to search on our behalf. Boutique matchmakers like myself, the professionals who offer highly personalized and tailored services, only take on a handful of clients at a time. I take on no more than six, but even that’s a stretch for one person.

Boutique matchmakers, in a lot of ways, are also acting as therapists—or at least as mirrors for their clients. We have (or should have) experience reading between the lines, offering emotional support, and holding each client’s hand through the process and the emotional highs and lows (like rejection). It’s emotionally taxing in many ways, especially when clients are less receptive to our feedback.

And as a BIPOC woman, I insist on doing for myself what I have never experienced before: get paid fairly.

Sure, you have the national matchmaking agencies that are typically less expensive (though honestly, not by much, and sometimes not at all). But half of my Discovery Calls every month come from men and women unhappy with those national agencies because their criteria were never met and matches were presented to meet a quota (a concept I’m all too familiar with, coming from the editorial world).

All that to say: the cost of the service is proportional to the labor performed.

But the ability to find love in an environment that doesn’t support in-person connection shouldn’t be just for the one percent (I could write an entire article about why more and more people are seeking matchmakers, but I think you already know that between work-from-home policies, hustle culture, social media addiction, performance theater, and more, there’s more than one reason why).

So even though I’m charging what I believe my time and labor are worth, I’m still deeply uncomfortable with the price tag. I want everyone to experience the kind of deep love that I have with my husband, but the cost prevents most people from benefiting from the service. I grew up solidly middle class and once balked at the prospect of spending more than a few bucks on a meal, but my clients don’t blink at the prospect of spending upwards of $30,000. And maybe most glaringly, I’m not shy about vocalizing my values—in fact, my entire business is built on them. I advocate for social justice and racial equity, and I’m a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America. I believe that there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire, and I support labor unions. I believe that essential workers like educators, caretakers, sanitation workers, and journalists should be paid more than CEOs. Access to housing, food and water, and healthcare is a human right. I believe that we need to defund existing policing and prison systems, and I am pro-reparations for Black Americans. And yes, I voted for Zohran.

So what am I doing in an industry that, at least at face value, is not aligned with my values? Seems like a bad match on paper.

And for a hot minute after reading the New York article, I thought it was too. In the immediate hours following my first read, I paced back and forth in my living room. I went to a yoga class to soothe the bubbling anxiety. I vented to my yoga instructor. I vented to a friend. I went to a mixer and only half-heartedly talked about my business. I couldn’t reconcile the nature of the industry with my personal convictions.

I also vented to my husband, who gently reminded me what I already knew (if you’ve read some of my other articles, you know that this isn’t unusual): I could do things my way. I could literally choose to do things differently.

In fact, one of the very first things I quickly learned about this industry is that no two matchmakers work the same way. Every matchmaker does things their own way.

I put my strategy background to good use. What do people want? And what can I do to meet that need without sacrificing my values? What is the grey area in the industry that seems untouched and unexplored—something that actually nurtures real connection that’s not a dating app or AI?

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Subscribers get access to special offers, my quarterly book club, a monthly group coaching call, and my in-depth insights on how singles can reshape their love lives to match their authentic selves and find a life partner.

And if you’re already a subscriber—ignore this! Thank you for your support.

On a random Monday afternoon in January 2025, I hugged my husband and said, “As long as I’m good at my job, I’m okay.”

“That’s what I thought about myself, too,” he replied.

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Subscribers get access to special offers, my quarterly book club, a monthly group coaching call, and my in-depth insights on how singles can reshape their love lives to match their authentic selves and find a life partner.

And if you’re already a subscriber—ignore this! Thank you for your support.

I’ve been grinding lately.

I’m no longer working my 9-to-5, and as I go through the stages of that breakup (honestly? It’s been freeing—more on that another time), I’ve been working hard on the projects I put on hold for the sake of a steady paycheck. Singles events, webinars, workshops, a membership plan, this Substack and the adjacent book club and group coaching offer I plan on launching—it’s all coming together now that I have more time to dedicate to my business, time that I’m not spending with or on behalf of clients.

But new clients and match candidates don’t appear out of thin air. A healthy portion of my time has been spent connecting and networking and following up with new friends. In short, I’m taking my own advice, the advice that I give every single coaching or dating strategy client:

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The narrative I run in my head is that she’s trapped in an ugly marriage and an even uglier situation. Part of me wants to give her grace. I know from experience with my clients that years of messaging from your family, your culture, and the rest of the world can shape your beliefs in ways that make you abandon yourself. So when I see Usha Vance, the part of me that wants to give her grace is the part that believes that, as a Brown woman, she was taught that proximity to whiteness wasn’t just power. It was economic and social safety. And as the daughter of Indian immigrants, she learned two other things: the caste system (in other words, the manifestation of internalized racism) applies just as much in America as it does in India, and that power and safety are what she had to value the most in all of her endeavors, including in her search for a partner. (If you want to know more about the caste system in America, Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an excellent read.)

And as the daughter of immigrants myself, I know this first-hand. These are the two strongest threads that link everything my parents ever told me and asked of me. And honestly, I’m not sure I can say the same of my husband’s upbringing. We’re very similar in a lot of ways, but what was emphasized in our worlds does not appear to be the same.

That infamous pat on the knee during the Father’s Day special episode of her podcast, Storytime with the Second Lady, brought all this back to mind. Not because of how awkward the knee pat was, but because of Usha Vance’s reaction: she literally recoiled.

A woman who recoils from her husband is not a happy wife.

Obviously it’s hard to know what’s happening behind closed doors. I don’t pretend to know anything deep about their relationship; I can only address what’s in front of me from a professional point of view. But I can confidently say that I would never recoil from my husband, no matter how awkward the situation or the touch. And while you could argue that Usha was simply taken aback by the awkwardness, I stand by my statement. A happy wife does not recoil from her husband. An even more generous interpretation of the moment is that J.D. Vance doesn’t know how to show genuine affection in public, but he does know how to show performative affection (re: that viral Erika Kirk hug).

So this brings me to his new book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith. I’ve been reading parts of it online (because I’m not giving that fool my money), and while there was nothing truly shocking about the memoir itself, it brought me back to Usha.

He makes her a central character in his book, and he credits her for a lot of things. But he reduces her to a person he was just attracted to for her looks (and… height. Very specifically). He downplays her ambition, and when she is ambitious, it’s for his career and his potential. He qualifies her as independent, but her independence is palatable and acceptable because it happens on his terms.

This is the exact trap I see so many smart women fall into.

This is the story of a woman whose intellectual labor got absorbed and spit out all wrong by a lousy, mediocre white man with “potential”. And yet, that mediocre white man is the Vice President. I could rant about how mediocre white men are rewarded all the time for just existing, but that’s not what this essay is about. I’m now even more perplexed by the widening gulf between Usha’s intelligence and J.D.’s mediocrity.

Like Usha Vance, presumably, many of the women I work with learned that mediocrity (not said in so many words, but implied in cultural messaging) was acceptable as long as the man was white. When you live in a white patriarchal society, what your husband looks like matters more than what’s in his brain or what his values are. But the difference between the women I work with and Usha Vance is that these women want true partnership. They want to be emotionally supported and valued. They want their career wins to be celebrated. They’re not ignoring white male mediocrity—they just don’t interpret it as mediocrity.

But in the knee pat heard (and seen) around the world and, more importantly, the recoiling, Usha told me a different story of who she is and how she’s different from my clients. She’s intelligent. She knows her husband is mediocre, and she can’t pretend otherwise. She’s even—dare I say—disgusted by it. But she chooses it anyway. The same way she’s fully aware of the atrocities of this administration, and she chooses to participate anyway. She is educated about concepts like white patriarchal social structures and how they harm BIPOC, and even actually believed that they existed at some point in her life—but chooses to support policies that disadvantage people who look like her. She’s protecting herself and her social and economic interests regardless of her personal views, and despite the violence caused by her husband and…that other guy.

And I find that despicable. It’s a rage that’s spread across her as an individual and the social systems that created conditions that trap women of color in these marriages that appear to be genuine partnerships but are actually subordination in disguise. The truth is, Usha isn’t the only educated woman of color who chooses to protect her own personal interests, and in that way she’s truly a conservative. Studies show that people who lean conservative tend to have more empathy for the people directly in front of them (likely in the same socio-economic class), whereas people who are progressive in their politics tend to have universalist empathy—empathy that transcends socio-economic lines.

Usha Vance is now the clearest illustration of a strategy with a long, long history: for women who exist outside the dominant power structure, alignment with it through partnership and marriage has always been one of, and often the best available route to power and safety.

Marriage is political.

When I first started matchmaking and dating coaching, a lot of my colleagues who have been doing this work for far longer told me that I couldn’t bring my values into my work and that I couldn’t bring politics and race into my work other than when asking my clients what their values and preferences were. And just like any job in any industry, you take experience at face value, and you’re willing to believe anything to get a foot in the door. You follow in the footsteps of those who came before you, hoping to reach the same level of success.

But one of the core reasons I started my business, Toi & Moi Matchmaking, was to help people of color make an informed decision about one of the most consequential choices of their lives: who they were going to spend the rest of their lives with, and how they could recognize that person to begin with.

As the kids say, it all gave me the ick—not just because of my own experience putting myself out there dating, but because I’m so aware of how much our environments dictate our preferences, our beliefs about ourselves, our values, the conditions we date in, and yes, the outcomes.

So between the ick and my personal convictions, I had a full-blown existential crisis about my business. I had to question the very nature of an industry I didn’t know much about.

Does matchmaking only make sense as a profession when it pretends not to have a point of view? Is neutrality a professional requirement? If I’m openly values-driven, does the market stop trusting me? Does having a point of view make me seem less professional, less objective, less legitimate as a matchmaker?

Am I incompatible with matchmaking?

My gut feeling was always ‘no.’ Relationships don’t exist in a vacuum. Neutrality fails more people than it serves, and it serves the matchmaker’s interests more than it serves the client’s interests. When we’re neutral, we’re ignoring the fact that mainstream dating advice was never created with minorities in mind—people who have had to navigate society when they are considered to be less deserving of love, care, and compassion. People who have had to navigate society with unequal opportunities in dating and other realms. The modern matchmaking industry was built primarily by straight white women who serve clients for whom neutrality is possible because the systems already work in their favor.

Another matchmaker I know (and if you’re reading this, no shade, I just respectfully disagree) believes that marriage isn’t and shouldn’t be political. She’s lamented how prioritizing motherhood and marriage and homemaking have been politicized when those priorities were just “common sense” for most of history.

This reminds me of a man I met at a networking event last year who lamented the fact that women have to work now and have to be responsible for owning homes and cars and…having independence.

Let me be clear: there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting a partner and motherhood. That’s exactly why people hire matchmakers. But to pretend that marriage isn’t political is not an apolitical stance. And more importantly, marriage has actually always been political. Marriage, motherhood, and homemaking were imposed on women by society. Women didn’t have a choice—it wasn’t necessarily common sense to them; it was what they had to do to survive.

Marriage is political because politics dictates who is allowed to marry and who is not. Marriage is political because laws establish what rights you have as a spouse. It is political because access to wealth and power is transferred through marriage, and that has been the case for a large portion of modern human history (ie., dowries, political alliances between families). Marriage is political because marriage doesn't just reflect class, it reproduces it. Marriage is political because the domestic sphere was never pre-political. It was where the original subordination was organized and then declared natural, so it wouldn't have to be examined. Who does the unpaid labor inside a marriage is a political question with economic consequences, because it determines who builds a career, who builds wealth, and who has leverage. Laws around marriage determined whether or not you had certain rights to your own body (marital rape was legal until 1993—the year I was born—and states still had loopholes in laws that prevented husbands from being prosecuted in cases of marital abuse). And for people of color, especially women of color like Usha Vance, partner selection has never been purely personal. It has always carried questions of survival, assimilation, community belonging, and political alignment.

So no. I am not incompatible with matchmaking. Matchmaking is incompatible with its own neutrality myth.

The women of color I work with have never had the luxury of treating partner selection as apolitical, whether they realize it or not. By the time we meet, they’ve been told they’re intimidating, that their success is a liability, that they’re too selective. They’ve been passed over for women who feel less threatening. They’ve been conditioned to read mediocrity as potential. They’ve shrunk themselves, including their standards, their successes, and their ambition, trying to be chosen. That is a political condition. And they need a matchmaker who knows the difference and can name it as a such, and not a personal failure.

Usha Vance chose a partner within a system that made that choice rational. The women I work with are trying to make a different choice, and my job is to believe that’s possible, to understand every structural force working against it, and to find ways to work with those forces in mind by naming what shaped them, separating conditioning from genuine desire, and helping them choose from clarity rather than from fear.

Want to work with me? Schedule your FREE Discovery Call here.

I had also recently joined Facebook, and my Facebook feed was a constant stream of my peers expressing support for their teams.

Middle school and high school were not easy for me, socially. Being multi-racial, I looked different from my white peers. I was ambiguous at best and Asian at worst—and constantly bullied for it. I was told constantly that I spoke French with an Asian accent (whatever that means), despite the two facts that I do not speak an Asian language and that I excelled in French class. I earned much higher grades than my peers from the motherland. In every class, at every turn, I was denied my own identity as a French person and citizen simply because I was born in the U.S. and I wasn’t “100 percent French.”

I have a French family. I speak the language fluently. I grew up in French culture through my education, which was conducted almost entirely in French from Pre-K through my senior year in high school. I knew more about French culture than I ever did about American culture.

And on Facebook, when I expressed support for my favorite teams (Spain, because I was a Barcelona fan at the time, and France), I was repeatedly told that I “wasn’t allowed” to support any team except the U.S. and the Philippines—that’s a direct quote that has never left me, even after all these years.

Looking back on those experiences over a decade later, I realize that I didn’t experience the bullying because I wasn’t 100 percent “pure-blood” French. After all, we had French-Italians, French-Spaniards, French-Swiss, French-Germans—students who were half-and-half just like me. We had students who weren’t French at all. But they were all allowed to root for Les Bleus, and I wasn’t, because I wasn’t white.

This (racist) mindset isn’t new, and it isn’t restricted to fans. World Cup players experience this all the time. Les Bleus themselves weren’t spared from the same hateful rhetoric denying them their culture and identity when fans started turning on the national team, claiming that the players weren’t really French because the majority of them weren’t white.

A little history: France has a long history of colonization. Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, Mali, Haiti, Cameroon, Vietnam, Côte d'Ivoire—these are just a few of the many places France colonized that are home to non-white people. Colonial subjects were taxed by France, conscripted to fight in France's wars, educated in French schools, and governed under French law. That makes them French by France's own legal and historical definition. And when citizens of those colonies (and later former colonies) migrate to France, French people living in the motherland cannot act surprised when their grandchildren show up speaking French, immersed and participating in forming French culture, and calling themselves French, because France made them French before they ever had a say in it. And yes, this also includes the people now playing for the French national team.

There are loopholes in this rule. Kylian Mbappé, French forward extraordinaire, is an example of how BIPOC exceptionalism works. Despite being Black, he’s allowed in and accepted by the French because he’s, in a single word, exceptional. Mbappé is a top scorer by world standards and is considered to be one of the best players in the world.

In other words, when his peers are denied their culture and heritage because of the color of their skin, Mbappé earns his French identity because of his exceptionalism. But the price he has to pay is perfection: as soon as he makes a mistake or doesn’t live up to the extremely high, borderline impossible expectations, the consequences are severe. When he missed a penalty kick during the 2020 Euro tournament, the racist abuse he received online was abominable. And after the 2022 World Cup final, when France lost to Argentina in penalties, both Mbappé and teammate Kingsley Coman (also a Black man) were called apes and slaves, with the public telling them to "go back to the jungle".

This is called conditional belonging. It’s belonging that has to be re-earned; it's revocable, and it quietly confirms the bias it appears to disprove, and that’s disguised as inclusion. This mirrors what happens in dating for BIPOC singles all the time, especially if they choose partners of a different race and background.

Conditional belonging for BIPOC singles can look like this:

• Being told that you “aren’t like the others” of your race or culture;

• Your date/partner telling you that they’re not typically into people of your race or culture, but you’re different;

• You stop being the exception the moment you express anger, assert needs, or set boundaries;

• A partner expressing shame in private and/or in public;

• BIPOC are generally considered more attractive if they adopt Western aesthetics.

And if you’re a person of color who has heard these things before and felt pride in being different, that’s not your fault. That’s entirely by design.

We’ve been trained since childhood through the media, our peers, and the logic of the “good immigrant” narrative, among other things, to flatten any markers of non-Western and non-white culture, appearance, and heritage. And so when we hear that we are the exception, we read that exceptionalism as a compliment instead of a condition. Nobody tells you that acceptance is offered in exchange for distance from your own people and history. In other words, it doesn't feel like a trap—it feels like being chosen. And who doesn’t want to be chosen?

Conditional belonging shows up in dating in ways that are so normalized, BIPOC singles often don't clock them as racism until years later, if ever. And that has consequences: the first is that the very foundation of your relationship is built on shaky ground.

When acceptance is granted because you met a standard, because you were “different,” and because you didn’t trigger a bias, your partner is never forced to examine their beliefs. The relationship itself is built on a performance of palatability meant to preserve the bias, not dismantle it. And as the relationship progresses, conditional belonging can also become conditional love.

Cracks in the foundation start appearing with low-grade hypervigilance that BIPOC partners often interpret as anxiety or insecurity. They start believing that their needs and self-expression are too much and start monitoring their tone, reactions, and even how much respect and consideration they demand from their partner. They continue to tone down the expression of their culture and heritage to maintain the relationship and to continue to be chosen.

Another consequence for BIPOC singles is that it forces them to confront some very uncomfortable truths about their partner: that they may be more biased than they seem to be. Every disagreement and conflict becomes an assessment of whether or not those biases exist and to what degree, and what you, as the BIPOC partner, need to do to counteract and dismantle them. That’s exhausting labor that takes its toll mentally and physically over time.

And finally, BIPOC exceptionalism and the performance of palatability teach you to mistake exception for safety. You start to believe that being chosen despite your race is proof that the relationship is solid, when it’s actually proof of the opposite. It’s proof that race was always part of the equation in the form of a standard you had to meet.

So, to BIPOC daters, I invite you to think about ways you thought you were chosen. Ways you were rewarded for flattening your race, culture, heritage, religion, or anything that made you different from your partner. Ways you’ve self-monitored out of the fear that expressing more or who you are would hurt your relationship. And conversely, how you can show up more authentically and express your full identity.

Let me be clear: None of this was your fault. It was designed by years of internalizing the same message. But noticing it is how you stop choosing it.

Want to work with me? Schedule your FREE Discovery Call here.

Last week, I promised a little bit more about my final statement: White women are not the friends of people of color.

Let me be clear: I have white friends. I have white family members. My husband, whom I love more than anything, is white. I’m not talking about individuals. I’m talking about whiteness as an institution. Whiteness as an institution refers to a structure: a set of historical, legal, economic, and social arrangements that have consistently privileged white people as a group and marginalized BIPOC. When I say that white women are not our friends, I’m making a politically and historically based claim about how white women have functioned collectively within that structure: this means voting patterns, suffrage exclusions, weaponizing the police, workplace dynamics, etc.

That is categorically different from saying anything about any individual white woman’s character, values, or love for me. But knowing me or even loving me does not exempt anyone from participating in systems that harm non-white people like me.

Last year, I was the target of racism at my corporate job by a white woman.

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In my Millennial brain, that was 40-something years ago. Not quite, but it still wasn’t that long ago. Quick math: it was 59 years ago.

That’s younger than some of our parents. My parents. Our lawmakers.

When my husband and I started dating 9 years ago, that ruling had only taken effect 50 years ago. And it got me thinking about how I never even questioned whether or not we would be able to marry. I had never even questioned the fact that, in my parents’ lifetime, I may not have been able to exist as a mixed-race person. It’s so easy to take interracial marriage for granted because there are so many interracial couples loving freely today. Even in my industry, some matchmakers focus solely on interracial marriages (I may or may not agree with the focus—more on that in a bit).

But we know that the anti-miscegenation laws didn’t exist because one person decided they should—they existed because an entire generation of people believed that whiteness was to be preserved, because whiteness was superior.

A little research suggests that neuroscience supports the idea that cultural norms take several generations to shift. When racism is a cultural norm, we have to acknowledge that the thoughts and beliefs that shaped the laws of who we are allowed to love are still with us. Racism is alive and well in dating, and it shows up in swipe behavior, who we deem as attractive, and more. And that’s why I got into this business.

I can talk about my villain origin story all day, but that’s not where I want to focus my attention today. I want to talk about the matchmaking industry and how I’ve observed how my esteemed and experienced colleagues talk about race.

For the most part, they don’t.

I’ve met matchmakers who only work with white men seeking Asian women. I’ve met matchmakers who don’t know what the word ‘fetishize’ means. I’ve met matchmakers who don’t even bother getting curious about why a person of one race only wants to date a person of a totally different race (it’s not necessarily wrong, but we still want to understand why). And I’ve met matchmakers who, upon meeting me for the first time, have done some…racisms…unto me, without knowing. And I couldn’t help but feel a teensy bit icky about it all.

I have a lot of respect for my colleagues and the work that they do. But I also believe it’s our responsibility to protect the people we’re matching our clients with. I started my business to reflect my values, and I would not be standing by those values if I ignored the fact that the fetishizing, infantilizing, and exoticizing of BIPOC singles was real and, most importantly, deeply harmful to those individuals. When someone is objectified and hyper-sexualized to that degree, we’re reducing them to sub-human status. And by assisting that process, we’re perpetuating the systems that continue to disadvantage people of color. Frankly, that’s exactly what I’m trying to counteract in my work.

My positioning has gotten me in hot water before, mostly because it’s a practice in self-awareness and strategic criticism. And when applied to a very well-known figure—say, Taylor Swift—it’s hard to get your messaging across.

Listen, I’m a New Yorker, born and raised. I took issue with the fact that she was cosplaying a New Yorker at Game 4 of the NBA Finals (go Knicks). She’s not a New Yorker. Living in New York for over 10 years, singing about New York, and loving New York—none of these things make you a New Yorker.

You know what does? Contributing to the fabric of New York. I also disagree with J.Lo. about this (I’ll add that most people I know who were also born and raised here agree with me). The bodega guy who keeps his store open during a hurricane to make sure his community has essentials is a New Yorker, even if he immigrated from Pakistan. The Chinese couple running a take-out joint in Flushing—they’re New Yorkers for keeping their community fed. The Filipina nurse who goes back home to Jackson Heights and puts in another shift to volunteer at her local shelter—she’s also a New Yorker.

A New Yorker is someone who meaningfully engages with the communities here, who adds to them and supports them, and who cares about them. It’s care, compassion, and connection that transcend race, culture, language, generations, and social-economic status.

So I maintain that Taylor Swift is not a New Yorker. I would love to see her walk through a neighborhood like Bed Stuy or Harlem or Flatbush. Even just being seen somewhere that isn’t Tribeca. When all you do is stay in the same posh neighborhood and go to fancy restaurants, you’re taking away from what has always made New York the most wonderful place to be. Part of the beauty of New York is that we’ve always had both - but having both takes supporting both.

I had a lot of people come at me for saying that she was cosplaying a New Yorker because she was supporting the Knicks. No—I know that she’s been a Knicks fan for well over a decade. My main issue was this: the chain at her hip.

You might be like, “It’s fashion!”

Yes, but we need to take a look at two facts:

• Taylor Swift has a long history of profiting from appropriating other cultures without meaningfully engaging with them—in fact, she’s only made acknowledgements when it has been self-serving or too late. Remember when Matt Healy made racist comments about Ice Spice? Taylor’s damage control to her reputation (since she was dating him at the time) was to feature Ice Spice on a remix of one of her songs. That’s just one example (Google the ‘Shake It Off’ controversy if you want another one, or just watch the video).

• The hip chain (and body jewelry in general) has roots in Black culture and is heavily associated with hip hop and R&B from the 90s and early 2000s. New York culture was also heavily influenced by Black culture. Timberland boots, for example, arrived in New York in the early 80s and were adopted by hardworking communities in the outer boroughs and by hip-hop culture, which was itself rooted in Black and Latino communities in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Harlem. As hip-hop became the dominant culture of New York across all demographics, the Timb became shorthand for “I’m from New York” — but that identity itself was built on a Black cultural foundation. It’s the same story with the chain.

So Taylor Swift, as a wealthy white woman who is NOT a New Yorker, is appropriating both New York culture and, most importantly, Black culture. I arrest my case.

I actually looked this up—the chain comes with the jeans (which are well over $300 by the way). But this only proves my point: self-awareness is everything when it comes to knowing how you’re contributing to upholding white patriarchal social structures, or if you’re dismantling them. In other words, it plays a huge role in how you are actively harming people or if you’re supporting equality and equity for all.

I’ve always maintained that two things can be true at the same time. Taylor Swift is the frequent target of misogyny, but she can also be problematic in how she shows up. She can be a feminist, but she can also continue to support whiteness and how it dominates, and how we allow it to disadvantage Black, Indigenous, and other people of color.

This tracks historically: white women have not been friends of people of color. More on that next time.

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And it’s not absurd because of the price itself. The idea of paying someone to find you a life partner is absurd. She pressed me for more details.

“The people who pay me for this work don’t have time to date, but they have disposable income.” It was a shortcut way of explaining the dating culture in the United States, at least in the biggest cities, but it was by no means the entire explanation.

Anyone who is dating right now knows the plight. Dating apps are oversaturated, with everyone and their mom looking for love. It’s hard to find someone on your “level” (whatever that means to you). In your mind, it shouldn’t be that hard to fall in love, but it seems like you’re stuck with the worst leftovers—and you’re one of them. And what does that say about you?

Of course, that last bit isn’t true. There’s a wealth of high-quality singles out there. It’s how you date that’s not working. In fact, everyone wants to meet someone in person, but no one seems willing to put in the effort.

That’s both your fault and not your fault, and that’s one way the French do it differently. Let me explain.

French people notoriously work 35 hours a week, which leaves a lot more time to pursue other hobbies. They have a life, whereas here in the States…it’s hard to find a person who isn’t relentlessly chasing a raise or promotion by working overtime. People live and breathe their jobs. In France, people just…live and breathe.

Social connection is embedded in French culture. From l’apero (after-work drinks) to clubs around hobbies and interest, French people regularly come in contact with their networks and strangers alike. This creates so many opportunities to find that one person who will become your life partner. My cousin and her partner met because they were part of the same improv group, for example.

Us? We regularly hang out… on the couch. Alone. After a very long work day, we just want to spend time at home.

And it may seem so simple, but that’s because it is. There’s no big secret. The French practice the one thing that continues to create and foster human connection: repeated exposure to individuals. It’s through repeated exposure that we come to understand the values and the characters of the people around us. And that’s how you end up falling in love (or at least, developing a crush).

So if you want to date like a French person, live like a French person first. Go out and hang out with your friends regularly. Do new things. Explore new places. Talk to the stranger sitting next to you in a cafe. Volunteer and talk to other volunteers. Create a community or become part of one. And don’t just do it to find a partner (French people don’t do these things with that explicit goal). Do it to form new connections. Because connections—friendly or romantic—create a full life you’ll love, with or without a partner.

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