Jewish Week

The Blaire Hitched Project

by Esther D. Kustanowitz - Special To The Jewish Week

Right after the somberness of Tisha b’Av, I find myself pondering the other Av holiday — Tu b’Av (Aug. 2), the Sadie Hawkinsesque day in which single women traditionally took to the fields to look for mates. The women would dress similarly, so that they would not be judged on financial status, but on individual beauty and personal appeal.

With all due respect to the Shabbat social scene on Central Park’s Great Lawn, the fields of Tu b’Av probably find their modern analog in the vast pastures of the Internet. From using online dating services to Googling our blind dates, love has gone digital. And while the Internet may not always be a level playing field, it is where women, in particular, have sown their hopes of romance.

Some women are being extremely proactive. For instance, you may have seen Blaire Allison’s Web site, www.marryblaire.com, which announces that she’s looking for her husband. “Every weekend I plan amazing evenings for lucky ladies who are getting married,” Blaire proclaims, referring to her company, Metro Event Planners (www.metroplanners.com), which specializes in bachelorette parties. “I’m around love all the time and I’ve decided it’s my turn to get a dose of it!”

Over drinks, Blaire explains that her original idea was to create a flyer, to be followed by a Web site, posing the single girl’s eternal question: “Have You Seen My Husband?”

Technology being a more compelling force than flyer-making, the Web site came first. By the next morning, with no publicity, the site had 50 hits. Then, 600. At press time, the number of page views had skyrocketed to over 400,000. The viral marketing of Blaire’s site was now officially airborne. A recent New York Times article about Blaire prompted another increase in traffic, and the self-promotion has yielded a bumper crop of notes from men around the world. “This was meant to get out there,” the event planner and self-proclaimed “soon-to-be-bride” says with conviction.

Blaire goes on one to two dates a week with men she’s met through the site; if the chemistry isn’t there, she moves the guy’s picture and profile over to the “not my husband” page — even if he’s “not her husband,” he could be someone else’s. The matchmaking instinct is no doubt a vestige from her days as a “love guru,” when she helped singles to discover who they are and what they’re looking for.

There’s bound to be backlash. Those of us who are still single in our 30s and 40s might become annoyed with the 5-foot-3, 110-pound former personal trainer. To her declaration that she deserves happiness and is tired of waiting for Mr. Right, we might want to say, “Get in line, honey. We’ve been at this way longer than you.” We might even call her December engagement deadline “impossible” or “unrealistic.” But Blaire is unfazed by potential disapproval. “There’s nothing wrong with saying you want to be married, but for some reason, people are not supposed to talk about it,” she said. “Twenty-seven’s not young; I don’t want to play around. I want to share my life with someone for a while, and grow with him before we have children.

In contemplating the singles scene, Blaire’s spiritual side asserts itself. “I put my intentions out there, and the universe will take care of me,” she says, noting that her long-term goal is to conduct workshops on love and romance. “I was put on earth for this purpose. … I’d like to write a book, and be on TV, to do something substantial.” I notice the red string around her wrist, and have to ask. She took Kabbalah classes before Madonna, Blaire says, explaining that she considers herself spiritual, rather than religious. She doesn’t keep kosher or observe Shabbat, but has been studying at and attending events sponsored by Aish Hatorah.

Despite the looming deadline, Blaire’s not settling. She describes herself as a motivated entrepreneur, and is looking for the same in a husband — “an expert in his field, a real winner who strives to succeed — powerful, honest, witty and cool, a good-hearted family man. I’m not ashamed to say I want him to support me emotionally and creatively. I want us to be a power couple — that’s really sexy,” she says, leaving me thinking of a never-married, Jewish Mr. Big who is no older than 32, her stated age limit.

Blaire fully believes that her strategies will work: her e-mail messages come from “The Bride Blaire” and every voice mail message says, in the same cheery voice: “This is Blaire, the soon-to-be bride …” Whether or not a positive attitude and determination will help her to reap self-fulfilling prophecies or marriageable fruit by a December deadline, it’s bound to be interesting as Blaire traipses through her Internet field of dreams.