Ethics or Art?

I find personal ads so fascinating. Who doesn't? We have come a long way from the bare newspaper ads of classifed era, where one must learn the lexicon of various slang and have NO PICTURES-could you imagine doing business of personal relating today? Almost no one will talk (and I mean cyber-communicate) with anyone without a picture. Really.

I started looking at them last year at the end of a serious relationship (very LTR, mind you), and I found them so utterly fascinating. Every man is average, wants a goregous woman (maybe even starting at 18!), maybe even play, and thinks he is so fucking hilarious and clever. Yikes! But there are so many intriguing men out there as well. There aren't as many women looking for women, and I wouldn't trust a majority of them anyway due to a lot of lesbian ads are just straight men posing as lesbians to get to the sex talk and shit (pathetic but very true).

I started a mini-art project where I look at men across the US (and Canada) and draw and write form the profiles I find so enticing. I am honing some sketch details, and getting some insight as to what it is I find so alluring and maybe not so great about these guys. After all so many profiles I have viewed, these guys have a certain *something* that I am hoping to capture through art.

I will never meet these guys, but i love putting them on my "hotlist" (how juvenile! cheezy! amazing!) even if they live thousands of miles away b/c I want to keep them in one spot. I am intrigued. I want them to view me too as well, want to question "Why does this woman all the way out in Tempe, AZ looked at my profile...and bother to put me in her hotlist when there is no chance of me meeting her?" It is because I am inspecting, dissecting the very idea of you! The very VISUAL impact of you and the words you chose in this small box that made think "Aha-there is something there-room for desire or interest of some sort".

It seems wrong-a kind of lead on. And I am not sure how I would feel if someone was drawing and painting me from on-line. But once one posts images and words associated with themselves online, you let go of control of your image and words to another entity and to the world-crazy, huh?