ShareThisNo boyfriend? No problem!
Well, no problem if you don't mind replacing actual human companionship with inanimate objects. Imaginary boyfriends are everywhere these days, from your clothes to your scent to the cushions that cradle you at night. These aren't blowup dolls. These are products aimed at women, designed to comfort the lonely.
If you're in a relationship, you can wear his shirt, spray your sheets with his cologne, keep his photo on your desk. But if you're unwillingly single? Simulating a partner could be "Lars and the Real Girl"-level strange, but it could also make sense in a pinch.
"Everyone needs to do whatever they need to do to make themselves feel good," said Nancy Wall, life coach and founder of Tampa Bay MatchMakers in Florida. "People, especially this time of year, are lonely with the holidays. Everyone seems to be paired off. They're trying to fill the gap."
Androgynous fashions have come and gone for a century. But the rumpled chips-on-the-couch look bloomed in 2009, when baggy boyfriend jeans hung off the hipbones of actors Katie Holmes and Reese Witherspoon.
Browse "boyfriend" on craft site etsy.com, and you'll find stickers made from retro yearbook hunks, designed for covering up loser exes in photos.
The most overt faux-beau on the market is the Boyfriend Pillow, available on Amazon.com. It's torso-shaped with a blue oxford shirt and an arm nook. An amorphous hand wraps around the small of your back. Online reviews are aplenty.
I spritz a little bit of Axe body spray on the "torso" and wrap that arm around me for a long, blissful night of rest.
I love this thing more than my real boyfriend. It doesn't talk.
In 2010, "Private Practice" star Kate Walsh launched a fragrance called Boyfriend on HSN. It sold out her first time on air. It's available at Sephora now.
"I was inspired to create Boyfriend about five years ago after a breakup," Walsh wrote in an email. "I missed my boyfriend's scent, and it hit me. You don't need to have a boyfriend to get that boyfriend scent. I realized that what I really missed was the memory of his scent as it lingers on my skin, or his white dress shirt, or our sheets, that subtle mixture of his cologne and my fragrance that makes you feel safe, sexy and loved."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service www.scrippsnews.com)
Must credit St. Petersburg Times.
