Despite what you may be currently thinking, this is not a movie review. If there was a movie called, “What Guys Wish I Knew” though, I’m sure all of us would watch it (including me).
I guess the better question, then, is why do we even care what guys wish we knew? Or what other people think we knew anyways? Why should we care what guys think about us? Are we supposed to mold our own character and personality and body and image to fit the perfect “wishes” of a man?
Before I begin to sound like a raging feminist, I ask all of you to just sit on this idea. Every time I walk into a Walmart or open my Internet browser, somehow these end up popping up:
I don’t know why, but they always capture my attention, along with other many impatient customers waiting at the check-out line. However, we constantly degrade this idea of model beauty and what a guy actually wants compared to what the magazines say a guy wants. Whether we want to deny it or not, every time our eyes become engaged in this visual story, there is a part of us that wishes we were those celebrities or models or women who can date beautiful, flawless men. There is a part of us that thinks that if we could just get a little hint or secret to the insides of a beautiful man’s turning wheels, then we could grab him off the sidewalk any day now.
Thanks, media. We all really needed that.
Yet it’s not entirely the media’s fault, though. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I have ever met anyone with full confidence in themselves: they either had too much or too little. When they came off as cocky or having too much confidence, that only made me think of how little they really had. So all in all, we don’t always have the full confidence in ourselves that we wish we had.
And that’s okay.
Like many others will tell you, I’m not sure if we need a man or anyone, for that matter, to tell us how we should feel or look or act. This isn’t really their life.
Yet, we do it anyway. We like to engage ourselves in the conversation because who doesn’t want to be desired? However, if you do like to build your love life around these articles, here’s my two cents: every person is different. You are different. He is different. She is different. In reality, would you want to do something that you wouldn’t normally do as…well, you? Do you want to pretend to be someone you’re not?
To reach a little bit outside the internal psychological box, I actually think I will put the media in the spotlight for this. Earlier yesterday, I read this ridiculously long list, just out curiosity. This is not from a big corporate magazine, like Cosmopolitan, but rather another blogger on one of the more popular sites visited by high school and collegiate women: The Odyssey. On this list is simply a ton of statements that guys have said they wanted women to do: wear a ponytail and a sunny dress, shave your legs, respect his “bro” space. Despite whether or not you think these are valid reasons, the essential premise of having someone else telling you what to do only pulls you back to the time when you were five and your mom told you that you had to eat all your broccoli.
What happens when you don’t agree with any of these rules? Or don’t feel comfortable following any of them? Does that make you any less worthy of a guy’s attention?
Let’s break it down at a technical level. So exactly how do these big magazines that sell out quickly obtain their evidence to give you the “best” sex advice or the “best” secrets into a man’s brain? They do these supposed “surveys” where they “randomly” ask guys to answer questions about their personal life and what they’re looking for in a girl or a significant other. Right?
How many people will tell a stranger about his or her intimate sex life and what he or she wishes to see in another person? Well, maybe the probability is rather high. But how many of those people are in a relationship? Hm…doesn’t have to be a lurking factor. Okay, then – how many of these people, assuming that they’re telling the truth, have the same interests, same tests, and same desires?
It’s a very simple answer.
So what is the media trying to do? Well, what the media simply does best which is to sell! And so many people are gullible to the point that it affects their own self-image and perception of their own bodies and, even worse, personalities. My high school senior quote was this one from Dr. Seuss (not considering the fact, that a lot of people would have thought Ayn Rand said it…):
“You are you. That’s truer than true. There’s no one alive that’s you-er than you.”
When I was younger, along with a lot of other little girls, all I wanted to do was look like these glossed-over magazine covers. No matter how much I denied it, I wanted to be wanted – like I said, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, over time, they all began to look the same to me physically (and personality-wise if you read into some of the media coverage of celebrity gossip). Blended and bland. As I matured and grew up a little bit more, I realized that there was nothing really that attractive about being the same as them. Because if you were, how would anyone, including a man, even notice you long enough to want you in the first place?
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