In contempt of courtship: why we love to watch other people date, but hate to do it ourselves.

• Author: Austin, Elizabeth

MONICA LEWINSKY HAS A NEW JOB: doling out her sage dating advice as host of a new Fox TV "reality" show, "Mr. Personality." In the show, a babelicious young stockbroker named Hayley is asked to choose a lover from a group of 20 masked suitors. The masks, we're told, are used to conceal the men's looks and force Hayley to base her decision on personality alone--a concept that assumes a lady never glances below her date's chin. Unlike Ms. Lewinsky (described in the show's promotional materials only as a psych major-turned-handbag designer who "currently lives in New York City and is considering a future career in law") Fox execs limited their pool of eligible suitors to unmarried men who do not live on Pennsylvania Avenue.

As host, Ms. Lewinsky functions as Hayley's on-site girlfriend, giggling with her at hidden-camera footage that shows the suitors misbehaving at a party and helping her to make the undoubtedly difficult decision to dump the guy who slipped off into a bathroom to share a few intimate moments with a hula dancer. The show has spawned plenty of off-camera controversy--the spurned suitor later claimed that the sound of a zipper opening, heard through the bathroom door, was a sound-effect added in post-production--but primetime audiences' enthusiastic reaction to it has skipped over one huge question: What does it say about our society that we now consider Monica Lewinsky qualified to help anyone find her soulmate?

Lewinsky's show is only the latest in a whole slew of dating-based "reality" TV shows, which include "The Bachelor," "Meet My Folks," "Married by America," "Blind Date," "The Fifth Wheel," "Elimidate," "A Dating Story" "Dismissed," "Rendez-View," "Change of Heart," "Shipmates," "Temptation Island," "Looking for Love," and "EX-treme Dating." In my personal favorite, "Joe Millionaire," 20 women were whisked to a romantic French chateau to compete for a man's affections. The women were told the young man had recently inherited $50 million and was "looking for a special someone to share his newfound wealth." I spent the show's entire seven-episode run wondering where Fox managed to find 20 grown women gullible enough to believe that a tall, underwear-model-handsome guy with $50 million might need professional help in finding a date. But the success of these shows--40 million viewers tuned in to watch Joe Millionaire choose his guileless mate--shows how much we love to watch other people date, especially when there's a better-than-decent chance of witnessing an emotional trainwreck. Why do so many eligible singles prefer to sit at home watching other people go out to dinner, walk hand-in-hand, and smooch in bubbling hot tubs than actually go out on dates? When did we start to consider dating a synonym for hell?

It's almost impossible to find a positive depiction of contemporary dating anywhere. Television sitcoms from "Friends" to "Frasier" delight in the antics of lovelorn singles--not because they're more glamorous than their married counterparts, but because the vicissitudes of modern dating lend themselves to easy laughs. In novels, we...