Fredericton — Office administrator Mary-Beth Holton, 31, can’t comprehend why, after years of searching for her prince charming, she hasn’t found so much as a toad to kiss goodnight.
“I’m a smart, independent, decent-looking girl in my early thirties — it should not be this hard to find someone to binge-watch animated movies all weekend with, or to take to Disneyland for a couple weeks, just the two of us and my roommates,” said a mystified Holton, from the Charlotte Street apartment she shares with several other Disney-loving ladies.
“I couldn’t find any eligible men during my vacation last summer to Disney World — I went with three girlfriends and we were all on the lookout, but it’s like we were invisible to men between the ages of 25 to 45. I don’t get it!
“Granted, all the men I saw were with their kids and looked miserable, but there had to have been a few decent dudes hanging out in the Magic Kingdom by themselves, right?”
Holton said she’s tried all the dating apps, with no luck.
“I think I looked pretty cute in my profile pic — I’m wearing my best Goofy hoodie and Minnie Mouse ears — so why aren’t any guys swiping right?” asked the clueless woman. “Sometimes I’ll go on a date, but they never call me back after meeting me and hearing about my classic Disney VHS collection and how the Aladdin remake with Will Smith as the genie is an abomination.
“What do they want to talk about that’s so interesting, if not that??”
Matt Smith went on a date with Holton a few of weeks ago. He said she seemed like a nice person, but that he personally was “not into the whole Disney thing.”
“First of all, I wanted to take her to a nice restaurant downtown, but she said she only likes fruit juice and chicken fingers, nothing ‘gross’…Is she four years old?” he asked of the woman who proudly displays a Winnie the Pooh seat cover on the driver’s side of her Honda Civic.
“And, just an observation, here,” he said, “but the dating pool in New Brunswick is small as is, and it’s even smaller when you’re an adult woman who compares all her dates to Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid or to John Smith from Pocahontas…which she did several times on our date. At one point she said she just wanted to be treated like a princess and that’s when I asked for the cheque.”
Holton said she has some fairly specific standards that shouldn’t be too hard for her future husband to meet.
“He should have the muscles of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, the inner beauty of Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the attitude of Simba — voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas — from The Lion King.
“And I want him to know the words to all the songs. Well not all of them — I’m not crazy — but he should be able to sing along with the essentials like ‘Colors of the Wind,’ ‘Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo,’ ‘Be Our Guest,’ ‘Friend Like Me,’ and so on.”
At press time, the hopeless Holton was donning her Mulan onesie for a movie night with her roommates.