LOS ANGELES TIMES SUNDAY CROSSWORD PUZZLE “ELEMENTARY” By DAVID P. WILLIAMS
FRAUD PRINCE I broke up with a guy I was dating after discovering he’d lied about his age on the dating app we’d met on. (He’s 48, not “39.”) I’d told him honesty is a big deal for me. He claimed he’s honest with those he cares about and at work, and argued that everybody lies on dating sites. I’m not buying that. Isn’t someone either honest or not? — Skeptical There’s that saying, “Act your age,” and he is – as a guy cresting 50 who wants a girlfriend who still sometimes gets carded. Chances are you consider yourself an honest person. But you’re not. None of us are. In the words of TV’s Dr. House, “Everybody lies.” Social psychologist Bella DePaulo concurs. In her research on lying, she explains that people can’t be “tossed into one of two moral bins, one for the people who are honest and the other for the liars.” In fact, we all lie in ways we don’t even recognize as lies. Do you wear control-top tights or Spanx? A push-up bra or a squish-you-down bra? How about under-eye concealer? (Note that it isn’t called under-eye revealer: “All the better to show off my
ginormous, dark, puffy eyebags!”) These less-than-truthful forms of self-presentation are a lighter shade of the lie this guy told: an “instrumental” lie – a lie used as an “instrument” to get others to give us “material rewards or other personal pleasures or advantages” they wouldn’t if we told the truth. But consider that people who don’t lie their way through life might see lies in an online dating profile as sort of Spanx-type fibbies: a way to game an unfair system, a la, “I’m so much younger than my real age, and the hot young women I want would see that – uh, if only I could get around their searches where they cut out my age group.” Getting a realistic sense of a man’s true character probably takes listening and watching over time, especially when he doesn’t know you’re doing it. That should help you avoid missing out on good guys who occasionally retrofit the truth with a little Spandex. And you’ll know to ditch those who are ethically iffy – or worse: for example, some other 48-year-old dude who has the firm body of a man half his age – and if he keeps it in his basement freezer, no one will be the wiser.
TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THONG I’m a senior in college, and the woman I recently started seeing is a sophomore. My buddies told me she has a “reputation,” as in, she’s hooked up with half the men’s soccer team. She’s beautiful and intelligent, and I don’t understand why she has the low self-esteem to behave that way. — Rethinking Our Relationship Turn the tables, and imagine a guy who’s hooked up with half the cheerleading squad. Your first thought: “Dude must have a huge...” (and correct me if I’m wrong) “...set of mommy issues.” There’s a pervasive stereotype (held by both men and women) that women who engage in casual sex have low self-esteem, explains evolutionary social psychologist Jaimie Arona Krems. The underlying assumption: Women who have casual sex don’t really want it; they’re just settling for it. However, Krems and her colleagues find that this insulting stereotype persists even when women are “explicitly described as choosing to have casual sex.” The researchers surveyed participants (about their own self-esteem and their perception of others’) using the generally accepted definition of self-esteem: “Feeling good about oneself and having a solid sense of one’s self-worth.” The stereotype – that women have casual sex because their
self-worth is in the dumpster – “appears to be unfounded.” (Women’s “sexual behavior was not significantly correlated with their self-esteem.”) They speculate that the stereotype might stem from evolutionary “mismatch”: our living in a modern world with a sometimes-outdated psychological operating system. The psychology guiding us today evolved back when locked knees were the only reliable birth control. It would’ve served ancestral women with high mate value – those with their pick of men – to hold out for commitment before having sex (and possibly offspring) with a man. Thus, we might have “default assumptions that women pursue casual sex only when committed sex is unavailable to them.” (In simple terms, despite all the birth control technology of today, the dial of human psychology is still set to “slut shaming.”) As for your situation, assuming the rumors aren’t just “guy-perbole,” maybe your girlfriend worked her way through the soccer boys not because she’s a human broken toy but because she’s hot, enjoys sex, and wanted some naked fun while looking for her Mr. Boyfriend. What does this say about her? Well, after the initial steamy phase of the relationship, the sort of animal she’s most like in bed probably won’t be shrink-wrapped supermarket salmon.
GOT A PROBLEM? Write to Amy Alkon at 171 Pier Ave, Ste. 280, Santa Monica, CA 90405, or email her at AdviceAmy@aol.com. ©2021, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. Alkon’s latest book is “Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence.” Follow @amyalkon on Twitter or visit blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon.
PAGE 38 THE ARGONAUT MAY 20, 2021
ACROSS 1 Market division 6 Subterfuge on ice 10 High-quality 16 Makes the rounds for rounds 18 Thick noodle 19 “No Reservations” host Anthony 21 One of four women with an EGOT 23 Early rotarywinged aircraft 24 “Winning __ everything” 25 Butt heads 26 “Elizabeth I” Emmy winner 27 “... going, going, __!” 28 Speedy shark 30 Give in to gravity 31 Joint winner of the FIFA Player of the 20th Century award 36 Magic’s org. 38 Martini partner 42 Foot rest? 43 Games go-with 44 “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” dramatist 47 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, e.g. 48 Sweet __ 49 Christmas opener? 50 Court exchange 51 Author Silverstein 52 Nothing in Naples 54 “The Waltons” actor 56 “Frozen” reindeer 57 Screen star, say 59 Horse trailer? 61 Red-wrapped cheese 63 PC panic button 64 __ Creed 67 Countermand 69 Scarcity
71 Tokyo, before the Meiji Restoration 72 N. Macedonia is its newest member 74 Capital of Latvia 75 Threadbare 76 Mo. once seventh 78 Immortal Babe 80 Stitched again 82 Whaler of fiction 86 Spanish bar food 88 Kind of trap 90 “That’s enough!” 91 Mild cigar 92 Grammy winner for comedy and banjo playing 94 Is for you? 95 Islands west of Lisbon 96 “Buss It” rapper Banks 97 One-named singer who directed “Music” (2021) 98 Emmy-winning comedian/actress 100 Airport calc. 102 In the __ of time 104 “The Kite Runner” protagonist 105 Rami Malek’s Best Actor role 110 Softly illuminated 112 Obstacle 116 Conspicuousness 117 First living magician with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame 119 Against the flow 120 Galena and others 121 Easy way to win 122 Mortarboard dangler 123 Field protector 124 Church cries DOWN 1 Fireworks reactions
2 Fe 3 It may be a long one 4 Prune 5 Ideal 6 Adds dialogue to 7 Super Bowl LIII MVP Julian 8 Divided land since 1945 9 Official language of Belize: Abbr. 10 Outings with buses 11 Make more than 12 Teen in a tux, often 13 Unconventional, maybe 14 Ingenue 15 Like some straits 16 D.C. area airport 17 Sweat spot 19 Main squeeze, in slang 20 House IDs 22 Highway toll, e.g. 26 South African metropolis, colloquially 27 Au 29 Dad-to-tot talk support 31 God of Guatemala 32 Small amount to give 33 One of four direcciones 34 Net defender 35 Subtlety 37 Shook, in a way 39 Lunar plains 40 Ag 41 Least well 45 Inspected 46 “The Elephant Man” (1980) director 48 Sn 49 Hg 52 Lack of musicality 53 Zap 55 Rn 58 First TV channel
with 24-hr. news coverage 60 Swing seat, maybe 62 La Méditerranée, e.g. 64 Stick-y spots? 65 Think 66 Cu 67 Whirlybird raisers 68 Cosa __ 70 Like old timers? 73 Bass in a band 75 “In Flanders Fields” setting, succinctly 77 Kipling’s RikkiTikki-__ 79 Scam 81 Shade of green 83 Hippocratic oath prohibition 84 Field or its measure 85 One on a fo’c’sle, perhaps 87 Union breakers 89 __ B’rith 91 Kingpin 93 Afternoon feature 94 Invite for dinner, say 95 Yellowfin 99 Firenze friends 101 Window sticker 103 Santa __, Calif. 105 Seminoles’ sch. 106 Spellbound 107 “Lohengrin” heroine 108 Morse sounds that can spell “hies” 109 Fashion line? 111 Swirl of smoke 112 Royal address 113 Ne 114 Contents of a monk’s bowl 115 Econ. indicator 117 Point 118 Blood, slangily
