The latest date-and-bait techniques!

By Noreen Flanagan My Sunday morning rituals include a one-hour stretch class followed by a tall latte and the
New York Times. Here’s what I learned this week about other people’s rituals. 1. New Yorkers’ dating habits are surprisingly lemming-like. According to data from the website
HowAboutWe.com—a dating network where you preface your pitches with a suggestion about how you’d like woo a potential mate—meet-and-greets over dried cricket tacos were popular in March. Fondues were chic in early April but by mid-month BYO-beer dates were suddenly oh, so fashionable. Noshing on lobster rolls ruled in early May, but eating oysters is now all the rage. The best non-foodie pick-up pitch? Walking the High Line to spot people with mullets. Now there’s a fashionable man with a sensitive and enlightened soul!
2. As magazine editors we have an innate interest in beauty rituals, but this one really caught my eye, so to speak. Circle lenses—round contact lenses that cover your iris as well as some of the whites—are used to create anime-style peepers. Creepers, if you ask me. Docs interviewed for the
New York Times piece cautioned again them, noting that ill-fitting contact lenses could deprive the eye of oxygen and cause serious problems. Sarah Daniel Dolphin—ELLE’s beauty go-to-gal, is looking into circle lenses in an upcoming issue. She’s also uncovered some other strange eye beautification treatments, which come from—you guessed it—LA. A city that’s spawned its own share of beauty obsessions and rituals.