Miss Dakota Fanning’s Cosmo cover caused a bit of a stir because she’s not quite 18, but I really didn’t see the issue, considering they made this gorgeous, youthful, vibrant girl look like an overworked 45 year old soccer mom who got dragged to this photo shoot after staying up all night with her vomiting toddler. Definitely one of the least flattering covers I’ve seen as of late.

I haven’t picked up an issue of Cosmo since, like, 2007, but I still felt an intense sense of deja vu while flipping through it. I am amazed at the way they can regurgitate the same sex tips over and over and over again.  Did you know that guys like when you stroke them and suck them at the same time? That they love both girl-on-top and doggy style for their respective views? Unreal, right? And their “too naughty to print on the cover” tip? Is an acrobatic version of 69. Thrilling. (Although maybe I should be grateful that it wasn’t anal. *yawn*) Read More »

Now that all the presents have been opened, the cookies have gone stale and all the decorations have been disassembled, it’s time to start that awful period of reflection…similar to when you try to relive your Saturday nights in order to find your cell phone (or your underwear).

So, while we’re looking back at all the wonderful moments (and the not so wonderful ones, i.e. that time you threw up in your new boyfriend’s bed) here are a few articles that made my year just a smidgen better. I know for a fact after reading them you’ll feel ten thousand times better about all of your not-so-great moments of 2011. Read More »

Well, you probably read the first 10 reasons that annoy us when we first start dating someone. Unfortunately, 10 just wasn’t enough for you guys. We read your comments, listened to your arguments and put all our heads together here at CollegeCandy. Without further ado, we give you 10 more things that drive us absolutely crazy when we first start dating. Get ready to sound off below!

initiating the gallery...

Not surprisingly, there are more things that annoy us than don’t annoy us when we first start dating someone. Come prepared, boys – we wish you luck.

What annoys you when you first start dating someone? Let’s hear your experiences!

There a man life lessons to be learned from television series How I Met Your Mother — from how to craft the perfect “get psyched” mixed CD, to finding out that nothing good happens after 2 a.m. However, my most recent favorite comes from the “Mystery vs. History” episode where Ted and his date promise not to do any secret research online about one another prior to their first date.

Lesson #45 – Don’t Facebook Stalk A First Date

As much as we may not want to admit it, Facebook has become an integral part of the college experience. We use our profiles to track our lives and the lives of others’ and more importantly, we do it all the time. At this point, social media stalking has become second nature. So when the guy in your sociology class finally asks you out, you almost can’t help but look him up on every social media platform you can think of. Read More »

So when I originally had the idea for this Weekly Ten my plan was to make a real list of first date faux pas – you know, like eating off your date’s plate and talking about the ex – but then I started thinking about it. None of these things have ever actually happened to me. And even if they did they wouldn’t even make the cut on the list of first date horror stories I’ve heard. I mean a date can recover from a little trip down memory lane, but it can’t recover from a date asking if he can take home your leftovers…

You think that’s bad? Just keep reading for some truly horrifying (and true!) first date faux pas.

10. Looking at other girls. Yes, guys have eyes. Yes, they’re attracted to women. Yes, it’s hard wired into them to seek out pretty girls in tiny garments. But there is a difference between subtly glancing at the woman next to you as she passes by and a guy openly gawking at that girl in the short dress so often that the guy serving your food tells him to cut it out. Happened to a friend of mine. True story ladies, true story.

9. Not understanding sarcasm. I don’t know if you ladies have noticed or not, but I am a very sarcastic person. It’s not my second language, but my first. It’s how I communicate. From me, snark is a form of love. So when a guy doesn’t understand that the opening of the Dunkin Donuts on my corner was not, in fact, the talk of the town for weeks we’ve got a bit of an issue, wouldn’t you say?

8. Insulting my major. Maybe not a major offense for most people. But it is for me. I am a proud English major, one who spends her free time reading and corrects people’s grammar in her head while they speak. I work hard in my classes and so do my classmates. So when upon answering the cliche “what’s your major” question with English, and receiving the response “Oh. That’s easy. I bet you never do any work” I was a tad bit insulted. Read More »

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. Sometimes with mean words. We love a strong woman (unless she happens to be charging at us with her fists raised), so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like cyber spying!) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

This week, in keeping with my usual studious habits, I was surfing around the internet watching cute cat videos when I came across this article which posed the question; is the first date dead? My instinctual reaction was that this is just another one of those things where people freak out because technology changes things, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if they don’t have a point.

Looking at it one way, OK, so maybe guys aren’t asking us down to the malt shop to share a giant milkshake with two straws, but so what? There was a time in history before the whole dating idea was around, isn’t it inevitable that at some point we would move beyond it?

Is it so bad that our society might lose something that most people dread and find painfully awkward? Is it such a bad thing if we ‘hang out’ with guys instead of being stuck sitting through dinner and a movie with a dude who won’t shut up about dressing his cats up as the Justice League for Halloween? Yeah, I’d really hate to miss out on that. Should we really be mourning the fact that now our first bits of information on a guy (besides, ‘holy crap, he’s hot’) come from his Facebook page instead of rumors our friends have heard and inane conversation over cheap food, because that sounds like a step forward to me.

Read More »

8 topics to avoid on a first date

Isn’t this ironic

Are dating sites based on looks ok?

I hate football and this play impresses me

The secret to successfully layering your neckline

Jennifer Hudson sings, so it’s good

Meet your national homecoming queen

Ke$ha explains her trashy look

An older friend of mine once advised me that I should stick with my college boyfriend. I thought this was strange advice at the time. I had warned so many friends of mine upon high school graduation that sticking with their high school boyfriends was a terrible idea, so I figured the same would go for college.

Weren’t you supposed to explore your options? Date? Have fun in your twenties before settling down in your thirties? Now that I’ve graduated, I know exactly why she said it. Dating post-college is a major shock to the system.

I went on a date recently with a guy who I’d met at a poetry reading. I thought he might be a few years older than me and I was okay with that, but on the date it came to light that he was actually many, many years older than me, fourteen to be exact (that’s Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher territory). I figured I’d dated older men before, so I decided to give him a chance. We talked about jobs, our shared neighborhood haunts (we both lived in the East Village), and then the subject of past relationships came up and he told me about his ex. Read More »

I have never really been good at the whole dating thing. Well, maybe not dating – I rock on first dates and have been told by many a-man that I am quite the kisser — more the patience part of it. I have a tendency to get super excited, super soon. A common case of falling too hard, too fast. I sit by my phone/computer willing the boy to communicate with me in some way.

An IM?

A text?

Something.

And when it doesn’t happen, I jump into action. A cute text message here. A hilariously witty email there. I am not being crazy or stalkerish; I am just being cute. Giving him something to fall in love with.

I never really questioned my actions (even though every book on earth tells you to play hard to get) until I found myself on the receiving end of the “cuteness.” I met a guy online and began IMing with him. We had some good conversations through AIM, so when he asked me for my digits a few days later I obliged.

So, he called. And he called again. And he texted. And he sent me Facebook messages, IMs, emails, more texts. They were clearly attempts at being cute (“We are in a fight”, “Did you forget about me?”), without success. They were not funny or witty; if anything, they made him look completely pathetic. Did he have nothing better to do than sit around and wait for me to call? Didn’t he have friends, or something else to occupy his time? Read More »

As embarrassing as this is, I must admit, that during my four years in college I, like most college students, had my fair share of random hookups.

Of course, as this was college, these hookups were mostly–well actually–completely fueled by extreme levels of intoxication and in some cases by peer pressure, with my girls telling me, “Oh you should totally hookup with him, he’s so hot.”

It’s not that I didn’t date in college, I did. It was just that the guys who wanted to date me were well, boring. I went out on fancy dates with guys, many of whom I eventually became good pals with, that were not guys I could see myself with long term (and for me, at the time, long term meant at least three months) and more importantly, were not guys I could see myself having sex with long term. Read More »