The Season of the DC Skin-tern

We are smack-dab in the middle of the worst time for dating in DC: Summer (or let me be more clear, Summer Intern season).  The Summer Intern (I should be more specific, the skin-tern) in DC is the young career man’s weakness. Every young single career woman in this city is well aware for the trouble that the dreaded skin-tern will bring to their love life.  You see them walking down the halls and see how the men (if you can call them that) look at these scantily clad co-eds bounce around.  If life is truly awful for you, you may even have one in your office.  If you are their supervisor, then you have the task of telling them that they need to dress more appropriately or that flirting with male staffers is unacceptable.  

I guess I see why the men of DC fall for the elusive skin-tern.  I do not agree with it, but I can see the appeal.  In a conservatively dressed city, these girls bring some sex into the office.  It doesn’t matter if the sex shouldn’t be there, or if these girls are barely old enough to have a cocktail (and some are not).  Skin-terns play dumb, even if they aren’t.  There are no intellectual conversations or philosophical debates going on.  Conversations are filled with talks of parties, the craziest things they have ever done, and anything else that make horny guys foam at the mouth.  Then there is the real kicker: they are only here for two months.  It's not enough time to get serious and you have a guaranteed out at the end of the summer.  They will return to school and the rest of DC will return to our regular dating patterns.  

Skin-terns just get on my last nerve.  I want a light-hearted summer romance too.  I want to have faith that the men I surround myself with aren’t fooled by a short skirt, low neckline, and fake giggle.  Unfortunately, every summer without fail, one of the good ones falls prey to the skin-tern.  It’s either one of my guy friends or my current crush, which stings worse than a jellyfish at the beach on the 4th of July.  They are Lindsay Lohans  and I am Marylin meets Jackie.  I am put together, poised, and sexy in a subtle “why wouldn’t you want me” kind of way.  These girls think you have to show it all to get attention, and yes it works, but then they are just a story without a name.  

These so called gentleman tell their friends they are calling their skin-tern, not whatever that girl’s name might be.  It’s then, when I overhear such stories and comments, that I feel a tiny bit of pity for the skin-tern.  No one falls in love with a skin-tern.  It’s not like anyone is falling in love with me either, but I, unlike the skin-tern, do not mistake lust for love.  I do not mistake a summer fling for the perfect romance with a staffer.  The pity fades quickly when I realize that it is the way these Jersey Shore want-to-bes carry themselves that puts them in that position in the first place.    

I do want to be clear about one thing.  Not every female intern is a skin-tern.  There are plenty of well dressed, ambitious, well-behaved interns that come to DC every summer as well. But every time I see some seemingly great guy flirt with a skin-tern over a classy, intelligent, age-appropriate staffer, I pray for summer to be over.   I pray for the day that I and all single career women of DC raise our cocktails and cheers to the the end of the summer skin-tern, at least until next year.