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Geography of Desire

Aired December 01, 2003 - 15:21   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, listen up. If you're portly in Portland, you might be excited about this. Dating is not just for the svelte in that city. And some other unique characteristics are hot in other places across the USA.
All this dating data comes to us from match.com's files. Trish McDermott is the vice president of romance for match.com. She joins us live from San Francisco.

Boy, what a job title. In charge of romance? Does that ever put you under pressure?

TRISH MCDERMOTT, MATCH.COM: Well, I have the somewhat daunting task of having to manage the love lives of about 12 million people. So, yes, we have some stressful days.

PHILLIPS: Oh my gosh. All right. Now, before we get into these graphics specifically, tell me what you did. You basically tallied up what each man and woman in your database is looking for or where they'd go for it? How did you do this?

MCDERMOTT: Well, when you join match.com, you tell us both about yourself and then what you're looking for in a romantic partner. The obvious things, like age, education, geographically how far they should live from you. But then also, really into the minutia, does he smoke, does she drink, what about tattoos, do they have pets?

And we take all of this data. And I think we can get some great insights into what's hot or not for single people in different regions in the country.

PHILLIPS: Well, that's exactly what you did. Let's get down to business. Here we go.

Portland, Oregon, I guess it's OK if you're a little on the heavy side, and it's OK if you don't have a Ph.D.

MCDERMOTT: That's right. It's the holiday season. You're drinking a lot of eggnog and you're wondering, you know, does your waistline impact your ability to get a date.

What we found is that singles in Portland were actually the most open to dating someone who was carrying around some extra weight. It may be because they're not wearing bikinis a lot in Portland, because singles in San Diego and cities like that, Miami, were actually very picky about thin you should be. PHILLIPS: Hmm, all right. But San Francisco, California said, you know, no Ph.D. That's going to be a problem. You've got a lot of educated folks in San Francisco. All those businesses and schools and such.

MCDERMOTT: But you have to wonder if all that education is really working. Because it's true that singles in San Francisco were the most likely to say that they'd like to date someone with a Ph.D. But in some earlier research we did, we found that men in San Francisco were the least likely to pick up the tab on a date versus men in all the other cities in this country. So they may be smart, but I'm not sure if they're really getting it in terms of romance.

PHILLIPS: All right. Austin, Texas, I guess you and I should head that way.

MCDERMOTT: That's right. Redheads are hot in Austin. Don't ask me why. But I think as we look at all of this data, it's very important to remember that these are statistics. And whether you have red hair or blonde hair or you're short or tall or young or old or gay or straight, wherever you live there's a tremendous amount of romantic opportunity out there.

We're coming into the holiday season. Some people are thinking about dating. We want to have someone with us during these very special times. And there's tremendous profound amount of opportunity on match.com, where we have 12 million single people, but also just in the country. There's something like 90 million single adults in the U.S. right now.

PHILLIPS: All right. And you mentioned Miami. You know, the svelte, non-drinking types, short-haired women.

You also hit on Detroit, Chicago, Denver. I guess long hair is hot for guys and girls. Are you actually -- now that you've done this survey, are you finding that folks are going to pick up and move and go for it? Are they really paying attention to this?

MCDERMOTT: No, I hope not. I mean, these are statistics. And for the most part, they're just for fun.

I mean, one of the things we have learned is that if you smoke, you're actually a little less desirable than someone who doesn't smoke. So it might be incentive for people to change the things we can change about ourselves.

PHILLIPS: Trish McDermott, match.com. I married a younger man. I can't complain. Thanks for your time, Trish.

MCDERMOTT: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired December 1, 2003 - 15:21   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, listen up. If you're portly in Portland, you might be excited about this. Dating is not just for the svelte in that city. And some other unique characteristics are hot in other places across the USA.
All this dating data comes to us from match.com's files. Trish McDermott is the vice president of romance for match.com. She joins us live from San Francisco.

Boy, what a job title. In charge of romance? Does that ever put you under pressure?

TRISH MCDERMOTT, MATCH.COM: Well, I have the somewhat daunting task of having to manage the love lives of about 12 million people. So, yes, we have some stressful days.

PHILLIPS: Oh my gosh. All right. Now, before we get into these graphics specifically, tell me what you did. You basically tallied up what each man and woman in your database is looking for or where they'd go for it? How did you do this?

MCDERMOTT: Well, when you join match.com, you tell us both about yourself and then what you're looking for in a romantic partner. The obvious things, like age, education, geographically how far they should live from you. But then also, really into the minutia, does he smoke, does she drink, what about tattoos, do they have pets?

And we take all of this data. And I think we can get some great insights into what's hot or not for single people in different regions in the country.

PHILLIPS: Well, that's exactly what you did. Let's get down to business. Here we go.

Portland, Oregon, I guess it's OK if you're a little on the heavy side, and it's OK if you don't have a Ph.D.

MCDERMOTT: That's right. It's the holiday season. You're drinking a lot of eggnog and you're wondering, you know, does your waistline impact your ability to get a date.

What we found is that singles in Portland were actually the most open to dating someone who was carrying around some extra weight. It may be because they're not wearing bikinis a lot in Portland, because singles in San Diego and cities like that, Miami, were actually very picky about thin you should be. PHILLIPS: Hmm, all right. But San Francisco, California said, you know, no Ph.D. That's going to be a problem. You've got a lot of educated folks in San Francisco. All those businesses and schools and such.

MCDERMOTT: But you have to wonder if all that education is really working. Because it's true that singles in San Francisco were the most likely to say that they'd like to date someone with a Ph.D. But in some earlier research we did, we found that men in San Francisco were the least likely to pick up the tab on a date versus men in all the other cities in this country. So they may be smart, but I'm not sure if they're really getting it in terms of romance.

PHILLIPS: All right. Austin, Texas, I guess you and I should head that way.

MCDERMOTT: That's right. Redheads are hot in Austin. Don't ask me why. But I think as we look at all of this data, it's very important to remember that these are statistics. And whether you have red hair or blonde hair or you're short or tall or young or old or gay or straight, wherever you live there's a tremendous amount of romantic opportunity out there.

We're coming into the holiday season. Some people are thinking about dating. We want to have someone with us during these very special times. And there's tremendous profound amount of opportunity on match.com, where we have 12 million single people, but also just in the country. There's something like 90 million single adults in the U.S. right now.

PHILLIPS: All right. And you mentioned Miami. You know, the svelte, non-drinking types, short-haired women.

You also hit on Detroit, Chicago, Denver. I guess long hair is hot for guys and girls. Are you actually -- now that you've done this survey, are you finding that folks are going to pick up and move and go for it? Are they really paying attention to this?

MCDERMOTT: No, I hope not. I mean, these are statistics. And for the most part, they're just for fun.

I mean, one of the things we have learned is that if you smoke, you're actually a little less desirable than someone who doesn't smoke. So it might be incentive for people to change the things we can change about ourselves.

PHILLIPS: Trish McDermott, match.com. I married a younger man. I can't complain. Thanks for your time, Trish.

MCDERMOTT: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com