Auction Popularity: A Look at Some Underlying Motives
The March of Dimes has staged nearly 100 “Bachelor Bids” since the first one took place in Seattle, Wash., in November, 1985, according to Starr Murphy, national special events manager at the charity’s headquarters in White Plains, N.Y.
She said that hundreds more are planned for 1987 and proceeds have already neared $1 million.
Big Brothers chapters have staged similar “Bids for Bachelors” in Los Angeles, Milwaukee and Denver. The Los Angeles sale raised nearly $40,000. Other charities say they are also considering holding auctions. The American Heart Assn. in San Bernardino County has a “Heart Throb” auction planned for this month.
Bachelors and buyers both say their motives are charitable, but experts attribute the auctions’ success to reasons other than a sudden altruism in the unmarried population.
Dr. David Viscott, a psychiatrist on KABC radio, and director of the Viscott Institute in Sherman Oaks, said that women use the auctions as a safe way to approach an attractive man. On another level, he said they may be playing out “love slave” fantasies and thinking: “Wouldn’t it be fun to purchase a man--(someone) we could approach and with the snap of a finger, get what we want without having to open a bottle of wine,” while the men consider: “If a woman buys me, does that mean she can do anything she wants with me--I pray, I pray, I pray.”
Francisca Cancian, a professor of social science at the University of California at Irvine, said that auction popularity results from the challenge to traditional power relationships. “You take ways in which men used to strut their power over women and now women have reversed it,” she said.”
Cable News Network psychologist Irene Kassorla, author of “Go for It” and “Nice Girls Do,” saw other motives for the women: “Their underlying motivation is this Prince Charming ideal whom they auction for will fall madly in love with them and they’ll quote ‘live happily ever after,’ ” she said.
The men who inspire such charitable spirit are generally chosen by committee. Peggy Corr, who coordinated the event, remembered that her group had gotten together and tried to select the most eligible bachelors in the county.
Certainly the invitations were flattering. Said Irvine realtor Richard Nimmo, who sold for $950: “It was an ego trip. Let’s face it.”
Many men expressed astonishment at the high prices they fetched for charity. Said Beard: “I was amazed. It’s just not worth that much money to have dinner with anybody.”
Said Costa Mesa advertising executive Martin Sanborn: “I had no idea there would be 750 screaming women.”
For that reason, some men, such as Michael Gooing, a Costa Mesa chiropractor and former San Francisco ‘49er, said never again. “I didn’t appreciate the auctioneer pawing at me,” he said, although his biggest complaint was the long wait for his turn. “I’m a big guy. I get hungry.”
But others have already volunteered for a second turn on the block. And 1980s women are prepared to write checks for them.
