Hello, once again, dear reader. My audience. My public. My people. From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you for supporting me and my blog by reading this. I appreciate each and every view more than you will ever know. First, we started with the five-part prologue consisting of a romanticized, fantastical microcosm of a love story that provided you with a far-reaching smorgasbord of samples from all the themes, topics, tones, concepts, and viewpoints you can expect to find in this serial in The Piper Parable Prologue. Then, I kicked off The Female Enigma Serial by unveiling the origins behind MWM and what I plan to do with this platform moving forward in Part I—Woman: The Final Frontier.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, I think it’s high time we take a deep dive into some motifs that reside at the very heart of this serial: superficiality, attraction, and confidence. I will start by recounting just how deep the depths of my depravity go concerning my shallow views regarding women before moving on to expound upon the debased process I use to determine which of them I develop an interest in. After that, I will break down what I consider to be my ideal “type” of woman. Once I have established a solid through-line for the post, I will take a break from self-deprecation and allow myself a brief bit of respite by introducing slight doubt into my absolute, unequivocal villainy. Finally, I will explain how I came to despise the notion of having even a sliver of confidence myself while actively seeking out that same quality in women. As always on MWM, brutal honesty is the best policy; comprehensive transparency across the board is an absolute must, and remember: this is a confession, not an endorsement!

 

 

Shallow is as Shallow Does

I’ve been putting off this conversation for some time now, but there will be no more waffling. There’s just no way around it: I am a very superficial person when it comes to courting. More specifically, when determining which women I am or am not attracted to, I base my decision largely on their physical appearance. If a woman is obese or does not have a conventionally attractive face, I will likely never even entertain the idea of having her as my girlfriend.

 

Let me make one thing clear before we go any further: As I emphasized in the introduction, I am going to elaborate on these corrupt views of mine in the sections to come, but that is all I am doing. I am not proud that I think this way and am in no way, shape, or form trying to condone, justify, or validate myself or this way of thinking. I have no agenda other than to lay out my desultory methods for you as plainly and as matter-of-factly as I can, the best I can in my continued effort to account for the current kissless, cuddleless, girlfriendless predicament I find myself in today. This is just one more piece to the hulking puzzle that is The Female Enigma Serial.

 

“Don’t judge people for how they look on the outside, but for their actions and what they’re like on the inside.” That’s something I was raised to believe, and it’s something I always thought I did wholeheartedly until later in life, when I started to take a closer look at my thought processes behind which girls I developed an interest in. I don’t go through life actively thinking negative thoughts about all the girls I see; I don’t consciously label every woman that I think is fat or ugly, and I generally don’t think negative thoughts about people very often unless they give me a reason to. That’s how I always pictured shallow people living their lives—intently, consciously casting their harsh judgment on everyone they come across based solely on frivolous things like how they look—and because I’ve never done that, I grew up believing I wasn’t superficial in the slightest. As a matter of fact, I saw myself as the complete opposite.

 

Because I don’t think nasty things about everyone I see and was never one of the kids that harassed anyone who was different, I thought that alone made me a good person, and I spent my entire childhood genuinely believing I was every bit as altruistic and impartial as my goddess of a mother. I prided myself on being a compassionate young lad who treated everyone with the same gracious objectivity that every single human being deserved. I was in for a rude awakening when I got to college.

 

 

Superficial Selection

After attempting to kill myself at 18, I needed some sort of motivation that I could use to see me through the rest of senior year, and college fit that bill ideally. I started to see college as a sort of “promised land” and used the thought of what my life would be like there the following year as fuel to help me get through to graduation. It was my salvation, my north star, the light at the end of the suffocating tunnel known as high school, and the place I told myself I’d finally get everything I’d been wanting so badly for so long. After attending college for a few months, however, almost nothing had changed.

 

I was just as lonely as I had ever been, and there was still a massive, gaping void in my soul that I was waiting for my first kiss, my first cuddle, and my first girlfriend to fill. At some point my perpetual singleness became too much to bear, and it forced me to call a time-out with myself, take a step back from my own psyche, and take a good, long look at how I thought about dating, courting, relationships, love, and women in general. My goal was to identify the faulty wiring that was to blame for my unending desolation and nip it in the bud before it consumed even more of my precious time at college.

 

Carrying out this exercise in shrinking my own head prompted some extensive introspective soul searching, which eventually resulted in me analyzing everything about every major crush I could remember having in order to find any sort of common denominator that might somehow lead to answers. Doing this indeed led me to an earth-shattering realization about who I was, but it came with some connotations that were rather hard to swallow: every single girl and woman that I could remember being thoroughly infatuated with throughout the course of my life was slim, small, and had what would generally be considered conventionally attractive faces.

 

 

As far as I reckoned, I had never so much as felt butterflies in my stomach for anyone who was overweight or visually unappealing in any major way. And just like that, my prejudice had been laid bare, and the evidence spoke for itself: I’m not like my mother. I’m not better than any of the kids who tease. I was proven irrefutably shallow, and the way I saw myself was never the same. After digging even deeper, I managed to unearth the entire petty, piddling process I use to judge women and expose every facet of my clandestine animosity for women I deem uncomely.

 

The Petty, Piddling Process

I judge women by their looks: Although this hard truth was impossible to ignore once it had finally been brought to light, I had managed to overlook it for so many years primarily because the judgment process was something that happened on a near-subconscious level. This sexist sorting system permanently rests just below my normal stream of consciousness and remains set to “idle” whenever I go anywhere, ready at a moment’s notice to kick in and filter through any “plausible lover” who dares come into my sights. Combine that with a hefty dose of wishful thinking that I possessed all the qualities of a good person and my convenient belief that judging women the way I did wasn’t wrong anyway, and it’s easy to see how it managed to fly under my radar for more than a decade.

 

I think, until the epiphany that brought me to my knees early in my college career with the realization that I was just as shallow as all the womanizers and objectifiers I loved to despise, I didn’t have the ability to be fully honest with myself about any flaws that shed an especially damning light on my more unsound nature. Lacking both the maturity and mental fortitude to evaluate every aspect of my personality with absolute clarity, I only saw what I wanted to see. I chose to view my supercilious system of sorting through women by their outer allure as merely a game I played with myself for poops and giggles and completely overlooked its inherently degrading nature. Because I only judge certain women that I see as “plausible lovers,” and because I only judge the women I do judge by certain parameters that I feel don’t harm anyone anyway, I used the system for years before I even considered the possibility it was problematic.

 

If any woman has the grave misfortune of stepping into my crosshairs while I’m out in public and very clearly meets the requirements to be what I consider a “plausible lover,” I will, in fact, objectify her by judging her outward appearance. As the name suggests, a plausible lover is anyone that could plausibly be my lover, objectively speaking. This means anyone that is female, at least 18, under 45, and explicitly single. Single, meaning that they are not wearing a wedding ring, and they do not obviously have a boyfriend. If a girl meets all of these requirements, I will label her a “plausible lover” and proceed to coldly judge her exterior visage.

 

Fortunately for anyone I see in movies, on television, or on the internet, no one can be deemed a “plausible lover” and run through my judgment process unless they are right there before me in real life. Even if I did want any of them to be my lover, their sole existence as nothing more than pixels behind a screen pretty much seals their fate as “implausible lovers.”

 

The actual judgment process is as simple as it is curt and consists of just two stages. First, I will analyze their face, features, and figure to determine how much I fancy their outward appearance. After outright disregarding any outliers who are obese, have bad teeth, or whose semblance is otherwise prominently awry, I continue the process with anyone who still remains. I will then use how much I fancied the surface-level appearance of those that remain to answer this question: “Could I see myself being in a relationship with this woman?”

 

If the answer is “No,” I will shrug it off as I walk by her and continue to go about my day. If the answer is “Yes,” I will get a little giddy and relish the very thought of it, letting it linger in my mind as long as I can while I wring and savor every last drop of satisfaction I can derive from the notion. Then, after a couple of seconds of pure bliss, I will shrug it off as I walk by them and continue to go about my day.

 

If I happen to interact with a woman I’ve judged as someone I’d like to be with, the fantasy just lasts that much longer. If I ever actually get to know a woman and interact with her regularly, I will take the process one step further and factor in things like personality, sense of humor, confidence, and empathy, just to make it feel more authentic… but only if she makes it through my initial judgment first. And because I will never ask a woman out under any circumstance or harass her for being ugly, that’s about all it ever amounts to.

 

 

This judgment process I’ve gotten into the habit of applying to any “plausible lover” I see is like shooting at a jetliner passing overhead with a shotgun: I can take my shot or holster the weapon, but it doesn’t really matter either way because I never had any real chance of affecting it to begin with. It’s a diabolical contrivance as debased as it is discriminatory, and I may not be shooting jetliners by using it, but I’m definitely shooting myself in the foot. Who knows, one of these countless women I’ve so cavalierly dismissed over the years could have somehow ended up becoming everything I ever wanted in life, but by judging them by qualities largely out of their control and casting them aside, I’ve robbed them of the ability to ever disprove my hasty assessment, like a trial without a jury.

 

Because whatever conclusion I draw about whether or not I would want to be in a relationship with these women has never been anything more than hypothetical, I thought it did no harm to anyone. And because I’ve never let any judgment I’ve reached from this process hold any sway in determining how I view their worth as humans or dictating how I treat them, I let myself use this system as my guiding principle for more than a decade before I recognized it for what it was. The truth is that it’s just plain wrong and has likely been largely responsible for my complete and utter lack of significant others.

 

 

Apprehensive Closure

Judging by looks first and personality last: like dipping my ketchup inside my french fries, I’ve got the whole thing arse backwards. After this exercise completely obliterated all doubt as to whether or not I was a bad person and forced me to come to terms with the fact that I’m nothing but a sleazy, one-dimensional reprobate, I had no choice but to stop blaming everything and everyone else for my wearisome woes and eat a big, fat humility sandwich with a side of diffidence. I was forced to face the music and take accountability for the hollow loneliness that had been slowly eating me alive from the inside out since early in high school.

 

My lack of kisses and cuddles and meaning wasn’t due to the fact that I was the unluckiest guy in the world; it wasn’t because I was fat and ugly, and life hadn’t just dealt me a crappy hand—I was a shallow piece of shite and had no one to blame for my heartache and solitude but myself and my vile inability to see women who don’t fit my narrow definition of surface-level beauty for who they truly are. I’d always had a weakness for things like petiteness, tight tummies, and good teeth, but somewhere along the way those weaknesses turned into requirements for anyone I would even consider seeing as a potential mate. Really, if you want further confirmation of my objectifying ways, you need look no further than the lengthy list of gooner accounts I follow on Instagram.

 

The day in college that I blew the lid off this whole heinous operation of mine and exposed myself for the miserable miscreant I am was a reckoning the likes of which I have never experienced before or since. But that was more than 15 years ago now. I know it’s wrong. I know it’s dragging me down. I know it will be the death of me. But I’ve tried to change my wicked ways time and time and time again since then, and no matter how much I ruminate, meditate, or manifest, nothing I throw at the wall ever sticks. It’s my most toxic trait, my worst quality, and what I hate about myself more than anything. Try as I might, I simply have never been able to get the fires in my loins stoked for any gal with a less-than-perfect exterior.

 

 

The Physical Factor

Physical attraction undoubtedly plays a role for everyone in determining who they feel interested in romantically at first, but unlike me, I don’t think it’s one that most people put at the top of their priorities. When considering someone as a potential lover who lacks physical appeal but has other qualities that make up for it, like a good sense of humor or fierce loyalty, I think most decent people are willing to overlook that deficit.

 

In some cases, one might even become so profoundly enamored with their lover’s good qualities that it reverses their thinking entirely on their less appealing physical traits, causing them to see something they once considered unflattering as a delightful quirk that helps make them the special person they are. I, however, am not a decent person, and I can’t overlook someone’s lack of physical beauty for any reason—despite the fact that, if I ever get a girlfriend, that’s exactly what I’m going to ask her to do with the glaring shortcomings of my own appearance.

 

I’d love to blame things like MTV, Baywatch (1989-2003), and Playboy for setting my beauty standards for women so high, but I’ve never watched Baywatch, I was never big on MTV, and I’ve never even flipped through a Playboy. So, unless I want to start pointing fingers at Lola Bunny, the curvaceous anthropomorphic cottontail I grew up ogling in Space Jam (1996), I have no one to blame for this big fat stinker of a quality but myself.

 

 

 

My “Type”

Let’s get a little bit more specific about my taste in women. Everybody has a “type”—a set of certain traits they seek out and gravitate toward in potential mates, and others they avoid. While I am no different, I think some of the criteria I use to determine who falls under what category can be a bit more cold-hearted and pedantic than most. I’d like to use this section to detail exactly which qualities either turn me on or turn me off and then list those that I deem to be instant deal-breakers. I will then conclude by providing specific examples of famous women I feel most embody the epitome of beauty in order to even further illustrate my preferences. I realize explicitly putting my inclinations and aversions under a microscope like this will likely make me come off as an especially trifling, lookist twat, but I just call it like I see it.

 

 

What I Gravitate Toward

 

• Confident, Outgoing, and Flirtatious—

Like Danielle in The Girl Next Door (2004), the film I used to shape many of the romantic ideals I adopted as an adolescent, I like ‘em as confident, outgoing, bubbly, assertive, and overbearing as possible. In other words, I think I may be what they call a “bottom” or a “sub.” I have long dreamt one day a girl like this might find me and sweep me off my feet, and while now I know that’s not very likely, I reserve the right to dream about it.

 

• Christian—

I am a Christian. When it comes to explaining the origins of the world and humanity, I honestly don’t think it’s that much greater a leap in logic to believe we were created by an all-powerful being than it is to believe we all evolved over time from little microbes after a big bang, and to me, it just makes more sense. While I may not be very strong in my faith, or even know which denomination I identify with (other than I’m not Catholic), I do at least know that I am some type of Christian, and I think having that much figured out is much more of a head start in this world than most people have. Even at my age.

 

Although I have been rather eager to dig deeper into the fundamentals of Christianity and sort out the specifics of what I believe for some time now, I am also painfully aware of the merciless damage that can be done by the church itself to anyone seeking answers. Because of that, my faith has remained in this sort of limbo for decades, where I know I am a Christian, but I’m too scared to go to any seemingly reputable source to learn more for fear they will once again dismantle my entire life and leave me for dead. All of that said, if a girl shares a similar set of beliefs about all of this, it is definitely a turn-on because we would start our relationship of the same mind about something vital to it.

 

For many years, I saw my ideal girlfriend as an extremely devout Christian who could fall in love with me and then take me under her wing and teach me all I needed to know about God, life, spirituality, and the Gospels. Lately, however, I’ve been having a bit of a different fantasy where I meet a girl instead who also strives to be strong in her faith again but has strayed as far away from her flock and shepherd as I have and has become just as much of a black sheep. Then, we meet, fall in love, and work together on finding our way back to our faith inch by inch until we have become as strong in our faith as we are in our love for each other.

 

• Slim/Small/Short—

Small, slim, short, petite, and smol girls have always had a hold on me like no other. I don’t know why this is, but I’ve had Dachshunds throughout every stage of my life, and sometimes I muse about whether or not my enormous love for all those wee little wiener schnitzels over the years has had any influence on my taste in women.

 

• Younger (20-30)—

It’s exactly how I put it in the beginning of The Piper Parable, Part I—when I imagine my ultimate dream girl, she is younger than me because, I think statistically speaking, younger women are more likely to have fewer sexual partners. I’m no fool; I know almost no girls save themselves for marriage anymore, but I like to think I can at least hope to find a girl who is more like the Virgin Mary than she is like Bonnie Blue. I’m ashamed to admit this, but another reason for my taste in younger women is that they have more of their life ahead of them. I know I’m so old, and it’s messed up, but I can’t help but think about how I could be with them for a larger part of their life, and it just further solidifies this inclination I have for younger women. In high school I actually preferred older girls, because they were more mature, more confident, and I liked being their little buddies. But I’m afraid the time for being with older women has passed (probably.)

 

• Gamer—

Although the internet has proven time and time again that there really are women out there who actually play video games, I still find it hard to believe. As prevalent as they may seem, I still have yet to meet one myself. Because of this, it feels too far-fetched to hold out any hope of finding a lover who plays games, but it is what I dream of. To spend a whole day together with a woman, playing games or watching each other play games while the other provides commentary… That’s one of the best ways I can imagine spending time, to tell you the truth.

 

• Red Hair—

While the hair of the women I’m attracted to has never exactly been especially limited, red is my favorite. It has been ever since I saw The Fifth Element (1997) as a kid. I used to watch that film frequently growing up, and while I always found Milla Jovovich’s bright orange locks alluring in her portrayal of Leeloo, it was the film itself that took their appeal to a new level. The hard-hitting scene where she delicately weeps after watching a montage of footage recounting the morbid monstrosity that is all of human history moved me deeply as a child, and it was what gave this film legendary status in my mind. It’s the scene that first showed me movies can have the power to be so, so much more than just movies, and it was just one of its many scenes throughout that permanently solidified my profound affection for red hair.

 

 

• Fellow Unsullied—

In this day and age I may not have much faith in finding a mate who is also a virgin, but if my betrothed happened to be one, what it would mean to me would be indescribable. It would surpass whatever joy awaits in heaven. It would make me unable to have sex with her on our wedding night because I’d be crying so many beautiful, sweet tears of joy. But again, only a fool would hope for such a thing.

 

 

What I Avoid

Although these are things that I don’t typically find attractive, there are exceptions to every rule. Truth be told, I have actually fallen for individual girls with these qualities on numerous occasions. Never say “never!”

 

• Older—

As I’ve said, I think that, in most cases, being older goes hand-in-hand with a higher body count. And while I’m not stupid enough to hope for a virgin, I do hope to find someone who hasn’t let everyone in town have a taste. I also don’t like the idea of getting with someone who has as few years left as I do.

 

• Bigger or Not Conventionally Attractive—

Obviously, the exact opposites of the qualities I gravitate toward will, in turn, be what I avoid.

 

• Lethargic/Painfully Shy—

Irony is a cruel mistress. If you’re anywhere near as much of a big, wet blanket as I am socially, I’m afraid together we wouldn’t amount to much. Simply put, I prefer ‘em outgoing and forward, primarily because then I don’t have to initiate anything.

 

• Extremely Long and/or Fake Fingernails—

Vile? Yes. Unsanitary? Yes. Reprehensible? Sometimes. Irredeemable? Not quite! Heck, I’d be disqualifying 90% of all women if I avoided every girl with long or fake nails! There was a point in my life when I considered this to be grounds for vehement rejection, but I’ve long since matured and become more reasonable with age. I learned not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.

 

• Doesn’t Like Pets or Animals—

I think dogs are just about the best things in this world, and cats are a very close second. My cats and dogs are my biggest loves and the lights of my life. I simply wouldn’t be able to live without some sort of pet, and for anyone who doesn’t get that, there is going to be a problem. Love for pets and animals is a requirement, but I’m listing it under things I avoid because just as someone can be forgiven for their misdeeds, they can also have a chance to right their animal-hating ways and start their life anew as a pet lover. For those standing in the middle ground, who don’t know how they feel about pets because they were gravely unfortunate enough to never have had cats or dogs in their lives… I shudder at the thought, but I would love to be the one to open their eyes to one of the greatest parts of life.

 

• Gross—

Perhaps it’s just my OCD, but I simply cannot stand girls that don’t wash their hands after they go to the bathroom, use their phone on the toilet, don’t cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze, pronounce their burps, or eat with their mouths open.

 

• Obsessed With Astrology or Tarot—

I don’t know. I just think it’s weird and dumb and pointless in a sketchy, occult sort of way.

 

 

Deal-Breakers

I know I said never to say ‘never’ in the intro of the last section, but there are, in fact, some cases in which saying “never” is the only option. There are things that turn you off, and then there are things that you flat-out can’t stand to the point it’s so nauseating you don’t want to touch the people that do them with a 33-foot pole. These are the traits I loathe with that level of passion.

 

• The President/ICE Supporter—

I generally try to avoid discussing overtly political topics on this blog, at least for now, in order to appeal to the highest common denominator of readers. However, I also believe that some issues once pigeonholed as strictly “political” have become so egregiously, cataclysmically relevant for every man, woman, and child on this planet that they have permeated the cultural zeitgeist and therefore become appropriate to address in discussions beyond just those bureaucratic in nature.

That said, I have deemed it appropriate to include the fact that I despise the current president (at the time this post was published) and ICE with such a passion it hurts, to the point I refuse to even desecrate my blog by mentioning his actual name. I know it would be pretty disadvantageous to my ability to get through day-to-day life if I hated anyone in league with them or sympathetic to their cause with that same level of vigor, but I think it’s fair to at least rule out ever dating one of them. In fact, if Milla Jovovich herself overtly supported him and his regime’s evildoings and then one day showed up at my apartment saying she was ready to teach me how to tongue kiss like it was her job, I’d shoo her away without hesitation.

I can abide Democrats, I can abide Republicans in general, and I can abide independents, but one thing I simply cannot and will not abide is supporters of the president and/or ICE—especially those claiming to be Christian at the same time. I largely consider myself a centrist Democrat on most issues, but I think that has little to do with my distaste for the man; I think anyone with a beating heart should be able to recognize him for the devil he is.

 

• Has Human Kid(s)—

I’m hardly mature and responsible enough to take care of my own life, let alone a child’s at the same time. I will go into depth about whether or not I would want to raise a kid with a woman in a later post in this serial, but when it comes to women who already have kids, I’m simply too selfish for it.

 

• Hardcore Atheist, Wiccan, or Devil Worshipper—

Although I do consider myself a Christian, I would be open to being in a relationship with a woman from another religion or denomination with a similar enough structure of beliefs, like Catholicism, Judaism, or Islam, and just seeing where it took us. A woman with no religion at all would be fine as well, as would one from almost any religion, so long as she lacked strong conviction in it. But some things I simply cannot sanction are hardcore atheists, Wiccans, or devil worshippers. I say “hardcore” because one can always change if they’re not too far gone, but if you consider yourself a hardcore atheist, Wiccan, or devil worshipper, you’re probably too far gone, at least in my eyes. These are all really “what-if” scenarios, however, as I’m not particularly keen on the idea of taking on a lover with the hell-bent intent of changing something fundamental about who they are.

 

• Hunter—

People who kill animals for sport—it makes me sick to my stomach. Those hypocrites who kill them and then go home to love and cuddle their dogs or cats make me even sicker. My dogs and cats are my entire world, and while I may not get as sentimental about the death of other animals like deer, bears, ducks, geese, and boars, I think on some level they all share enough common traits and DNA to make killing them for sport no different than killing a beloved pet. I’ve always thought that animals are objectively better than humans in many ways, and to kill anything other than pests like bugs and spiders for mere sport is a special kind of evil. I am not perfect either, and I feel this same type of vitriol toward myself for eating meat whenever I stop and think about it. Pigs, cows, and chickens are no less sacred, and while it’s no excuse, if I had stronger willpower or enjoyed the taste of vegetables and green things better, I would definitely be a vegan or vegetarian.

 

• Not an Animal Lover—

Again, I plan on having some quantity of both cats and dogs in my life until the day I die, and if a woman doesn’t love them or can’t learn to love them as I do, she is simply not for me.

 

• Has an OnlyFans Account—

In the average dating scene, I think this is something I don’t have to worry about for the most part, but I wanted to include it because I’ve been hit on so many times online by OF floozies I’ve met through Tinder.

 

• Voluntary Cosmetic Plastic Surgery Undergoers—

This may be considered a hotter take than some of the others, but I could never be with a girl who has gotten breast implants, a BBL, Botox, fillers, or anything of the sort. Some might say this is an especially shallow thing to condemn a woman for, but I might say it’s shallow for them to get it done in the first place. I think it goes without saying that this does not apply to breast cancer survivors, burn victims, or anyone else who didn’t really have a choice in the matter.

 

 

The GOATs

In a post discussing my disgusting proclivity to judge my compatibility with a woman based on nothing more than physical appearance, I thought it might be pertinent to offer a handful of clear-cut examples of this by providing a list of some actual women I consider to be among the prettiest of all time. By doing this, I hope to even further demonstrate for you my degrading and one-dimensional nature. These exquisite baddies all have a surface-level semblance I find to be among the finest I’ve ever had the privilege of beholding, although they are just a handful out of the hundreds upon hundreds whom I feel embody the same ideal.

 

I will not be taking into account anything about these women other than their physical appearance in this exercise in outing my most derogatory standards, and I will only list women who are still alive and who are not just models. Please let me introduce you to the cream of the crop, along with their ages, so you know I’m not a pedo:

 

 

 

 

Honorable mentions include Maya Hawke, Inde Navarrette, Hayley Williams, Jenna Ortega, Aurora, Lorena Abreu, Abbey Lee Kershaw, and Triss Marigold.

 

Make of this list what you will.

 

 

High-key Hypocrite

I like ‘em young, thin, pretty, and juicy, which is bad enough, but when you factor in the fact that I am old, fat, ugly, and dry as a bone, it just doesn’t add up. How could I ask my lover to be what I myself am nowhere close to? I hate it so much. And I hate how alone I’ve been my entire life, but when you take my demands into account, now that adds up. I deserve this lonesome life I lead, but it hurts just the same. Nothing will change it. All I can do is write about it.

 

 

The Hypothetical Harbinger

So there it is, my entire debased process of how I determine whether or not a woman is someone I’ll consider being with, deconstructed and dissected before your very eyes so that you may see me for the small and barbarous man I truly am. But as much as I hope one day I’ll find the “perfect” girl that lives up to this rigid standard for women I’ve so callously deemed my “type,” I hope just as dearly that I might find a fat and ugly woman who is my perfect match in all ways but physical and who will find a way to infiltrate my cold heart. Once inside my heart, she will proceed to eviscerate my hollow, demeaning views from the inside out by making me understand in the deepest part of my soul that looks don’t mean jack and that a soul mate is a soul mate is a soul mate is a soul mate no matter what form they take. Of course, I must resort to just pitifully hoping for this hypothetical harbinger to manifest herself in my life and show me the truth, as I have failed to make myself see it time and time again.

 

 

It’s Not Too Late; It’s Never Too Late

I think we can all agree that judging others based on their appearance is as deplorable as it is erroneous. I also think we can come to a consensus that, over the years, my deliberate disregard for the potential of any woman’s inner beauty unless she had outer beauty to match is a fundamental reason I haven’t been in a relationship in 35 years. However, it can’t all be doom and gloom, and at the same time there have been a few subtle signs that could be seen as evidence that I am neither too far gone nor a total piece of shite. So before this self-witch hunt comes to a close, here are a couple silver linings I cling to that keep my hope alive that one day I could change my shallow, misogynistic ways and be a decent human being who is deserving of having a kind and loving girlfriend.

 

 

My Broader Gamut of Beauty

The first potential silver lining to my unmitigated puerility is that although I did describe my definition of beauty as “narrow” earlier, there is at least some evidence to suggest the notion it’s actually quite vast. Through my job at the department store, I get to interact with anywhere from dozens to hundreds of gorgeous women close to my age each and every week. It’s why I applied for the job, and it’s why I don’t look for another job.

 

I know my standard for beauty can’t be too limited, because out of the huge variety of women I see in the demographic that is roughly my age—every race, skin color, hairstyle, body type, height, and style—I feel attracted to a great many of them. In short, I just like women, period. Yes, I exclude obese ones, and yes, I avoid most that would not be considered conventionally attractive. But even after those are removed, I like to think the sheer volume and variety of women I feel attracted to among those who stop by a small Midwestern town department store are enough to suggest the possibility that I might not be quite as shallow as I fear.

 

Red may be my favorite hair color in women, but do you want to know what other hair color can also really get me going? Brown, black, blonde, brunette, auburn, pink, purple, blue, green, white, and grey. Really, how I feel about individual qualities like hair color goes on a case-by-case basis, and I leave a lot of room open for interpretation.

 

 

Merely Views

The second potential counterpoint in the argument that I’m not a lost cause is that as vile as it is for me to have these views about women, at the end of the day that is all they are and all they’ve ever been: views. Because they have never been tested or put into practice in any way, they are nothing more than figments of my mind that have never existed anywhere but inside my own head. Yes, this skewed perspective of mine has most definitely butchered nearly every chance I’ve ever had of getting into a relationship with a girl that might have one day led to my first girlfriend or to me ever being truly happy. But it’s not definitive proof that I’m altogether irredeemable.

 

These views are a toxic blight on my personality, no doubt, but due to my wholly nonexistent amount of any type of real-world experience whatsoever, the jury is still out on whether or not they’re my true nature. If you wanted to argue that having these views is my fatal flaw and that they make me irredeemable as a human, you could start by pointing out how, on many occasions, I’ve refrained from asking out a girl or hitting on her just because I didn’t think they were physically attractive. And you would be correct. However, you wouldn’t be saying much, because I’ve never hit on any girl or asked one out, period.

 

The other side of that coin is that I’ve never been given the opportunity to reject an uncomely girl’s advances on me either. I’ve never had a girl pursue me, I’ve never had a girl try to seduce me, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a girl flirt with me. Golly, I don’t even know for sure if any girl has ever found me attractive. Until the day an obese or repugnant girl tries to make a move on me and reject her outright, I’m not one hundred percent convinced I actually would. It’s one thing to admit I don’t actively consider being with girls I consider ugly or fat, and it’s another thing entirely to be alone with one one night as she jumps on my jock, tells me she loves me, she wants to deflower me, and she wants to have my babies, and then straight-up refuse to even kiss or cuddle with her just because I’m not completely physically attracted to her.

 

Say one day I find myself in this beautiful, deep friendship with a girl who’s not the most attractive but is perfect in every other way. We are bona fide BFFs, but one day she says she wants to be more than friends. Would I really flat-out refuse her proposal because she’s not a ten across the board? Say one night I find myself alone with a kind, funny, and smart chubby girl who has a bit of a crush on me. Then, suddenly, the mood shifts. The stars come out, she grabs my hand, and starts to whisper sweet nothings into my ear. Before I know it, things are getting hot and heavy. Would my shallow views hold firm? Say one day I happen to meet the confident, overbearing girl of my dreams, forward and uninhibited, like I’ve been waiting for since the first time I saw The Girl Next Door (2004), but she also doesn’t have the best teeth. Would I tell her no thanks?

 

When push comes to shove, and I’m standing face-to-face with someone ready to give me everything I’ve ever wanted in life, everything I’ve been so starved to experience, and everything I’ve so desperately longed for as long as I can remember, would I really turn her down just because she’s not perfect? There is simply no way of knowing the answer to these questions unless they actually happen, so I try to give myself the benefit of the doubt.

 

 

Denial at its Finest

I like to think that, at least for now, my corrupt views on women remain nothing more than conjecture, assumption, theory, and hypothesis. I like to think that maybe I base which women I’m attracted to on surface-level factors because I’ve only ever had surface-level interactions with them. I like to think maybe my sensibilities have gone a bit asunder due to my sheer lack of companionship and fully clothed intimacy, but that they might one day be restored to something resembling those of a decent person. I like to think that maybe I’m not a total dirtbag. But then again… maybe these glimmers of hope I think I see are just wishful thinking. Maybe I am a dirtbag, through and through. Maybe I’ve never experienced these things because I don’t deserve to.

 

 

Confidence is Key!

At every stage of my life, I have been told time and time again that having confidence is one of the most important qualities a person can possess, and when it comes to trying to court or attract women, it might just be the most crucial. Parents, teachers, movies—everyone told me how vital it was to have unwavering confidence in everything I did. But, always one to go against the tide, I simply said to all of them, “Hogwash!” Instead, I have always chosen to see confidence as a negative quality.

 

As much as they tried to convince me it was something good, something girls would seek out, for whatever ill-advised reason, I chose to see confidence as no different from egotism and hubris. They told me you couldn’t get anywhere in life without confidence, but I decided I didn’t want to be anywhere confidence could get me anyway because it was something I equated to narcissistic arrogance and a swollen-headed ideology that only supercilious types embraced.

 

Because I wholeheartedly subscribed to this conspiracy theory demonizing confident people, I avoided having it at all costs. Instead, I chose to live my life in a way that I thought embodied the exact opposite of confidence. In a masterclass of unwavering self-deprecation and yellow-bellied cowardice, I have spent my life keeping my opinions to myself, doing my utmost to never boast or call attention to any of my achievements, being overly critical of myself in everything I do or try, and keeping my opinions of myself, and of anything I make or do, as demeaning and cynically meager as possible.

 

“Fat,” “ugly,” “creepy,” “piece of shit,” and every other spiteful put-down you can imagine—I play fast and loose with the insults I hurl at myself when I’m in the presence of beautiful women and talk down to myself constantly. I tell myself over and over that the girl I’m interacting with is better than me and that she thinks I’m creepy, I’m ugly, and all kinds of other horrible thoughts about me—despite knowing deep down that she is probably doing nothing of the sort. I know every girl I interact with likely feels anything but malice toward me, but I never stop telling myself otherwise as a sort of safeguard. Sometime during middle and high school, through much trial and error, I figured out that lying to myself like this was a practically foolproof way to avoid social ostracization, and I’ve been implementing it in most of my interactions with girls I’m attracted to ever since.

 

 

Berating myself with insults keeps me in check, reminds me where things stand between the girl and me, and in turn all but guarantees I never inadvertently become infected with that wretched poison known as confidence and overreach my station with her. Essentially, it’s a scorched-earth tactic that prevents any chance of catching any scorn, ridicule, or rejection from her by keeping me from doing something senseless, like giving her a compliment or asking her on a date. Like someone avoiding anaphylactic shock from their shellfish allergy by spending their entire life eating nothing but pickles, this system is a bit roundabout, but it gets the job done just the same. After years of employing this strategy, really, the only place I’m by and large free to say and do as I please with pretty women and don’t have to deal with this self-chastising monkey on my back is at my job at the department store, for reasons that I will disclose in a later post. I would guess there is likely an OCD element to this routine of heavy-handed self-loathing, but I’ve never given it much thought from that angle.

 

 

Retrospective

Obviously, I need thicker skin. Rejection is just a form of failure, and you can never succeed at anything in life without failing at it at least a few times first. It’s simply a part of life, not something that should be seen as so traumatic, and I’m only harming myself by treating it that way. I know all of this, but it just feels too late to make any change that matters. My school years are behind me, and because of that, I feel like I have lost all my best chances at finding someone. The negative views I have about confidence were a deceitful little seed that I, for whatever reason, planted deep into my developing psyche at a very young age, and has been there, crippling my social competence at every stage of my life.

 

Looking back at the life I’ve led, completely devoid of any form of female fellowship, there’s no doubt my stubborn persistence in thinking this way has been largely responsible for my inability to interact with attractive women in any capacity. If I’d just listened to every adult and PBS show who told me confidence was a good thing to have growing up, maybe it would have changed how I interacted with girls. Maybe things would have gone differently in my life, and I wouldn’t have ended up in the endless pit of desolation that I find myself in today. In hindsight, after going through most of middle school and all of high school and college with this mindset, it’s so disheartening and so infuriating that it takes my breath away to try to fathom how much I may have given up because of it.

 

 

My Fault: Odors

Now, more than 20 years after fully convincing myself that having any confidence at all was a self-absorbed, vain sort of business I wanted no part of, I have grown into a 35-year-old man completely devoid of backbone in any circumstance, which has presented some challenges over the years that have come a bit out of left field. One rather peculiar, unforeseen side effect of my lack of spine is that when anything embarrassing occurs or goes wrong while I’m in a public place surrounded by people, I automatically assume that I am somehow responsible.

 

Smells, for example—if I find myself in a crowded area when someone toots, a little kid or baby in my vicinity drops a righteous deuce in their pants, someone nearby has nasty body odor, or I start to pick up a rank odor of any sort—my immediate reaction is to hastily surmise that the revolting aroma is somehow coming from my own body. Once this perverse notion has grabbed hold of me, I can’t shake it, and it isn’t long before it has consumed me entirely. Trapped in its thrall, my senses heighten, and I start to become hyper-attentive to my body and all its inner workings as I run a mental diagnostic check on every orifice and bodily function in order to deduce which one has malfunctioned and started to raise a stink—a pattern of thinking that leads only to full-blown panic.

 

Of course, I haven’t the faintest bloody clue how to run a diagnostic check on my body holes short of taking my clothes off and looking, but in that anxiety-riddled moment of dread, I tell myself that even a doctor couldn’t get a better reading on my body if he were giving me a physical. Because I’m so dead-set on the idea that I’m the source of the stench, my reading never amounts to anything more than self-propaganda in the form of a frantic flurry of brash conclusions I draw that only cast further doubt on my innocence and further support the narrative that some part of me is leaking something foul.

 

“Now that I think of it, maybe I do feel a nasty sort of brown brew seeping into my skivvies.” “Oh God! I do feel some sort of substance rubbing between my buns!” “Actually, now that I think about it, I’m fairly certain I did forget to put on deodorant this morning.” “Oh man, my one shoe does seem heavier; I think I must have stepped on dog poo on my way here.” — There is no limit to the inexplicable ways I will deceive myself concerning what I can sense going on with my body or clothes in order to support my dubious suspicions of a stinky smell radiating from somewhere. Before I know it, my cheeks are flushed, I’m sweating profusely, and I go into full-on panic mode, wildly looking from face to face to face, waiting for someone to clock yours truly as the source of the rancid stank. My only options then are to either bolt to the bathroom and check myself or wait it out and pray someone traces the offending aroma’s origins back to anything other than me.

 

 

My Fault: Driving

This odd sort of self-sabotaging paranoia that makes me suspect I am somehow doing something to offend someone doesn’t limit itself to pungent odors but rather exists as an omnipresent, lingering dread any time I’m in public or under the watchful eye of strangers. Driving, for example—one day I was turning right at a red light after momentarily yielding when I happened to catch what appeared to be a judgmental scowl from another driver in the lane of cars to my left who was waiting to go straight on green. His eyes caught mine for a split second as I turned, and after swearing I could see clear disapproval all over his face, the deep-seated trepidation kicked in. I started to panic and began to question everything I thought I knew about the rules of driving as I looked in my rearview mirror halfway expecting him to give me the finger as well. Once again, I began rattling off lies to support my baseless suspicions, which I fully believed.

 

“The look that guy gave me back there was pretty nasty; I clearly did something wrong… but what did I do?… Well, the light was red, and I turned right after yielding, which I was able to do… I think? But based on that guy’s expression, maybe I wasn’t supposed to. Maybe there’s a rule or a caveat to the rule that I’m forgetting? I mean, it has been at least a decade since I took driving classes… Maybe I’m remembering it wrong… God, I’m so stupid.” — From all this overthinking and second-guessing, I conclude that I just screwed the guy over big time, and I start to feel terrible about it. Then, I start hoping to God he’s not going the same way I am because I’ll probably do something else to make him even madder, which he would have every right in the world to be.

 

Another prime example of something I can always count on being a catalyst for this type of lingering dread that sweeps me away in an undercurrent of delusion that surely I am somehow at fault is when someone I’m talking to or someone around me wipes one or both corners of their mouth. Whenever I see someone do this, I instantly leap to the conclusion that they must be making this gesture in my direction as a subtle hint to let me know that I myself have a bit of gross gunk gooping up in my jowls. Once I’ve received their message loud and clear, I will swiftly turn away from everyone and cower in a corner as I fastidiously wipe the corners of my mouth posthaste. Again, I am sure these quirks share some DNA with my OCD, perhaps a great deal, but that’s something I’ve just never pondered.

 

 

My Dame in Shining Armor Fantasy

So I want a girlfriend more than anything in the world, but I’m too much of a Nancy boy to ever actually ask one out or put the moves on one myself. You may be asking yourself, how, then, do I hope to ever date one? The answer to that conundrum couldn’t possibly be more fantastically cliché or brutally ironic, and it’s right where my shallowness begins to bleed into a second, equally damaging fallacy: that confidence is something ugly in me, but irresistible, even necessary, in women.

 

I have spent most of my days sitting on my buns, hoping one day an egregiously confident and forward woman will find me, seduce me, and do all the hard work of building a relationship with me so I don’t have to. She will teach me how to love, how to be loved, and then we will ride into the sunset and spend the rest of our lives together. That’s right: the type of woman I desire most is the exact same breed as the confident guys I so love to hate and demonize. I may shudder at the thought of ever having a shred of confidence myself, but in women it’s the precise quality I seek out above all others. It’s not enough that I find a woman who is physically appealing; I want one bold enough to compensate for all the confidence I lack at the same time.

 

This may sound like a very specific type of fantasy, and that’s because it is: It’s the exact type of relationship I saw portrayed on the silver screen by a handful of especially impactful films I watched as a young teen, when my mind was at its most malleable. These few films forever shaped what I hoped for and what I expected from a relationship with a woman, and in turn doomed my love life from the very start. (Clearly, no one can truly be blamed for the way I think other than me, myself, and I, but when I tell myself these movies are both the reason I think this way and the reason I’m still so painfully alone, it helps me sleep better at night.)

 

Just as Moulin Rouge! (2001) contributed to distorting my most impressionable preteen brain years earlier by telling me, “All you need is love!”, as I discussed at the beginning of The Piper Parable, Part I, films like The Girl Next Door (2004), Zach Braff’s magnum opus, Garden State (2004), and one of Jim Carrey’s best films, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) contributed to imbuing equally harmful delusions into my developing sensibilities concerning overtly cocksure girls and just how often I would come across them in the real world. Then, fresh out of high school a few years later, I saw She’s Out of My League (2010), and all bets were off after it finished the job the others had started of cementing the fairy tale that such domineering and exceedingly extroverted girls existed into my cerebral cortex, forever dementing my hopes and expectations.

While all of these films played a part in impregnating my mind with these malignant misconceptions and severely misguided fantasies about confident girls, The Girl Next Door did so more persuasively than any of the others. For this reason, I will be focusing my discussion on it alone in the following sections. First, I will offer a brief synopsis of the main characters, which I will follow with a concise description of the events that take place in the first 30 minutes of the film, as it was mostly just the first half-hour of the film that affected me so profoundly. After much deliberation I have ultimately opted to include these summaries, because they are crucial to understanding the point I’m trying to make. I will try to focus my descriptions on details that are strictly relevant to understanding how the film helped foster my misconceptions about dames and led me to reach the disadvantageous conclusions I did. At the same time I will try to avoid describing the minutiae of the film’s plot with too much detail for anyone who has not seen it, but might still want to one day. That being said, there will still be some minor spoilers for The Girl Next Door.

 

If you are already intimately familiar with this film or really don’t care to hear about it, I will be moving on from my summary and picking up where I left off here after the next two sections, in Flipping The Script.

 

 

The Setup

At its core, The Girl Next Door is a rom-com that flips the stereotypical fare of any other offering you’ll find in the same genre on its head by making it the girl who goes after the boy, at least initially. The guy, Matthew (played by the impeccable Emile Hirsch, who also happens to play the lead in Into the Wild (2007), an astonishing film that forever changed my outlook on life) starts the movie as a lonely virgin loser in his senior year of high school who is stuck in the day-to-day mundanity of his life of going to classes, hanging out with his other two loser friends, and living at home with his parents.

 

Matthew is terminally shy around pretty girls, and has all the confidence of Armin Arlert in the first season of Attack on Titan. It’s his last year before he will become an adult and have to start living in the real world, and he lives a life of regret after squandering his youth by playing it safe and never making any attempt to get anything he wants in life because he’s too scared of what might happen if he did. He spends much of his free time fantasizing about doing all the things he’s too much of a coward to actually do like talking to popular girls, ditching school and going to the beach like the cool kids do every day, and just generally going after his dreams instead of just sitting there wishing, wanting, and waiting for something to happen.

 

The titular girl next door, Danielle (played by the gorgeous Elisha Cuthbert, whom I’ve only ever seen in a couple other things besides this), is the beautiful blonde babe who moves into the house next to Matthew’s. She is a bubbly, egregiously overconfident twenty-something with a personality so domineering that she often nearly crosses the line between being confident and being rude or annoying, but never does. She appears at first to be a free-spirited, innocent young woman who is just trying to figure her life out, but has one BIG secret that the basis of the entire film is built around.

 

 

The Gist

One night Matthew happens to look outside his window to see Danielle in the house next door, standing nearly naked with her back to him as she changes her clothes. This accidental peek soon becomes unabashed rubbernecking when he freezes in place, simply dumbfounded by her radiant beauty and unable to take his eyes off of her voluptuous figure. After she inevitably turns around and catches his flagrant gaze, he drops to the floor beneath the window in shame. When he looks back up, he is mortified to find that she has promptly started heading next door to his house. When he watches her step onto his porch and ring the doorbell, his heart sinks and he assumes the worst. He rushes to the front door to see Danielle standing in the foyer talking to his parents, but he’s relieved to find that she is merely introducing herself cordially to her new neighbors. After his parents insist Matthew show her around town, she concurs, and the two take off together in her car.

 

He soon discovers he’s not getting away so scot-free after all, however, when she cuts the trip short almost immediately by pulling the car over to the side of a dark suburban street corner. She turns to him with a devilish grin and tells him that now that he’s seen her naked, she needs to see him naked so they can say they’re even. She then orders him to walk in front of the car and take all his clothes off. She doesn’t ask him; she doesn’t playfully suggest it; she straight-up demands he strip naked in front of her that very instant. As you might expect, Matthew is completely caught off guard by this demand and adamently refuses to comply. She continues to persist, and although he’s terrified at the very thought of complying with such an outrageous bidding from someone he’s just met, he’s intrigued by her flirtatious candor and sheer audacity at the same time. The more she insists, the more he comes around to the idea of doing it, until he finally steps out of the car and reluctantly starts to take off his clothes.

 

The scene cuts to Matthew standing in front of the car, bathed in the headlights’ glow and wearing nothing but his tighty-whities, but she tells him he has to take it all off. He bashfully pulls his undies down and takes them off before she promptly drives right past him, picking up all of his clothes from the ground as she passes. He runs after her, naked and afraid he’s about to be stranded nude in the suburbs, but before long she pulls back up next to him, revealing she just drove around the block. He climbs in, short of breath and completely exhilarated and she playfully tosses him his clothes. With an amorous laugh and intoxicating smile she tells him that they’re considered even now. Simultaneously in disbelief he actually did what he just did and feeling alive like he never before has, he can’t help but give a big, gleaming grin in return.

 

They stop at a diner for a bit to unpack everything that just happened before heading back to Matthew’s house, where it becomes clear he is positively enamored with this ravishing, curiously abrasive new girl next door, and she is starting to toy with the idea of liking him. She drops him off at his house, and although he seriously considers it, he is ultimately too afraid of the possibility of rejection to go in for a kiss on his way out—something he regrets deeply when recounting the night’s events with his friends in school the next day. Later that day Danielle shows up at Matthew’s school and convinces him to ditch for the rest of the day, something he’s always wanted to do but was always too scared, and hang out with her instead. They hang out, talk, and get to know each other all day as Danielle starts to grow fonder and fonder of the idea of being with this high school dweeb.

 

 

Later that night they pull into some random person’s driveway because Danielle sees a pool in the backyard. They hop the fence and she runs foolhardy to the pool. The whole time Matthew is trying to get her to stop, telling her she’s crazy, and they’re going to get into trouble, but she doesn’t hear a word of it. He swiftly changes his tune, however, when she takes off her clothes and gets into the pool. Swimming in a random person’s pool in their underwear, they both look at each other and start to giggle. Just as they’re about to kiss, the lights in the house turn on, and Matthew realizes they’re at his principal’s house. After a narrow escape Matthew takes Danielle to meet and hang out with his two friends, whose jaws drop to the floor when they see what kind of a girl Matthew’s been hanging around with.

 

Sounds like a cute match made in heaven, right? Tragically, it all falls apart a few scenes later when Matthew’s friend shows him a porno he found starring none other than the girl next door herself, Danielle. It’s revealed that she was an ex-porn star all along, and Matthew’s precious illusion of the perfect girl is shattered to pieces. That is where I’m going to end my play-by-play, as all my relevant points have been conveyed.

 

 

Flipping The Script

I think the reason this film hit me as hard as it did was because of just how much I related to high school senior Matthew and the perpetual state of chronic apprehension he finds himself trapped in at the beginning of the film. Like him, I wanted a girlfriend more than anything in the world, and like him, I’d never even tried to find one because of the lingering dread that came with the possibility of rejection and ridicule. And when my inevitable graduation was on the horizon and I knew I would soon be an adult and have to live in the real world, I too regretted spending my youth the unassertive and lethargic way I had. How much of what I got out of the film was actually portrayed in the film and how much I just perceived, I couldn’t say, but one thing is for sure: after putting myself square in Matthew’s shoes from the first scene, I gave this film the capacity to affect me like nothing else ever put to celluloid, and it did just that.

 

Clearly, I don’t want to do anything crazy like strip naked in the street in front of a girl or go swimming with one in some rando’s pool. But watching this film for the first time as a 16-year-old sophomore, I didn’t see the outrageous things Danielle demands of Matthew as the literal, outlandish acts they were but instead as hyperbolic, romanticized representations of everything else in Matthew’s life he had been so scared to do up to that point. Before he met Danielle, Matthew was shy, lonely, and afraid of going after what he wants most, but by forcing him to do these things, but she effectively freed him from his cage of inaction, broke him out of the shell he’d been stuck in for years, and showed him what he was really capable of. She turned him into the type of man he never thought he could be.

 

We’ve broken down the literal acts Danielle forces Matthew to do into the broader meaning of what they represented, but let’s break it down one step further by looking at the core theme at the center of the things he did. When you do that, you uncover the fundamental idea that exists within the subtext of these embarrassing acts, which suggests the fantasy that, if you are a man, you can rest assured there are girls out there who are so outgoing and domineering that they will find you, barge their way into your world, and help you become who you were always destined to be. Once you have reached your full potential with their assistance, they will then fall in love with you and spend the rest of their lives at your side. And all the while, you don’t have to do diddly.

 

She found him. She took charge of him. She did everything that it took to form a relationship that he was always too scared to pursue. She broke him out of his shell. She did everything for him, and she did it handily and without hesitation. To understand why this simple notion touched me the way it did, you must first look at the world from my viewpoint as a teenage boy growing up in the United States of America.

 

 

Gender Bias

Like most young men at 16, I had developed a thing for girls. But after seeing Moulin Rouge! (2001) at 12, with me it was less of an enduring curiosity about the fairer sex, and more of a hellbent, pulsating desire to make one of them my first girlfriend as soon as I possibly could. And although it’s true I feared rejection, that wasn’t the biggest problem I faced with my unrelenting, unceasing desire for a female companion. The biggest problem I was up against was the innate, underlying societal beliefs as old as time that forced me into the position to get rejected in the first place. I speak, of course, of gender norms and the gender bias that has plagued this country for millennia. I don’t know what the societal norms are in other countries, but in America we are raised to believe that guys are responsible for doing everything that needs doing in order to not just manifest a relationship with a member of the opposite sex out of thin air, but for doing just about everything else that needs to be done in that in that relationship as well. As far as the world I was raised in and live in now is concerned, the girls don’t have to do anything. They just need to sit there and wait for a relationship to plop onto their lap.

 

The guy needs to take charge, the guy needs to approach the girl, the guy needs to ask the girl out, the guy needs to reach out to hold the girl’s hand, the guy needs to lean in for the kiss, and the guy needs to initiate literally everything—that’s the way it is, that’s the way it always was, and that’s the way it’s always going to be. I knew this policy well before I saw The Girl Next Door, and I didn’t have any problem with it. It was unfair, it was unjust, and it was backward, but I didn’t have any problem with it because in order to have a problem with something, you must first be introduced to the concept that things could somehow be any different than they were. Before seeing this film, arguing against this established norm would be like trying to form a structured debate around why the sky should be purple and the grass should be blue. After seeing this film, however, I started to see this policy as the blatant oppression it was, and a can of worms was opened that would never again be contained.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I know that if you were to actually compare the two sexes and the biases they each face, women have it much worse than men. But this is not from the viewpoint of a woman.

 

 

The Takeaway

A girl goes after the guy: It was a simple, unassuming idea, but I took it and ran with it. I ran with it and went about as far as I possibly could with it by telling myself it was something that happened often and twisting it into something that said I didn’t have to put any effort in to get what I wanted so badly. I told myself this type of relationship, demonstrated so vividly in these films, wasn’t just a possibility but an inevitability—that if I just sat and waited, eventually an outgoing, overbearing girl like Danielle would find me and give me everything I ever wanted. Whether I was aware I was doing it or not, I used this deeply misguided fallacy as a bloody blueprint for how to live my life.

 

It’s a premise meant to make for a fun, far-fetched movie night, but I used it as a manifesto. I know it seems so silly, but I believed exactly what I wanted to believe, and I could not possibly overstate how much I let it influence my life. I used it to justify my indecisive behavior and establish my complete and total lack of assertiveness throughout the rest of my time in high school and all of college. To tell you the truth, sometimes when I’m alone in a crowd I still catch myself thinking maybe there’s a chance that, any minute, my dame in shining armor will come and sweep me off my feet.

 

 

All-in On The Misbelief of Maybe

Well, it’s 2026 now. I’ve lived the vast majority of my life under the ill-advised, ill-fated impression that confidence is evil and that these garish fantasies could one day happen to me, and they have decimated any chance I’ve ever had at living life on an even keel. They were the one-two punch that knocked loose any common sense I might have had and crippled me in every interaction I’ve ever had with a girl. Buying into this madness has been the biggest regret of my life. No, regret is too tame a word.

 

But it’s been almost 20 years, and I’m done believing all that guff about girls initiating anything. It’s so liberating not to believe in fairy tales anymore; the only problem is that it’s far too late. My formative years are over. There are no more schools with thousands of plausible lovers, and there is no more living in dorms that are bursting at the seams with infinite social possibilities. I’ve given the best years of my life to this foolishness, and I’m starting from scratch at 35. I don’t know which way is up. Where do I start? What do I do? How do I dig myself out of this hole?

 

Maybe, lonesome and terrified in equal measure, I could make a last-ditch effort at seizing everything I want in life by creating a blog as pitiful as it is pretentious. Maybe I could spend hundreds of dollars and even more hours pouring my heart and soul out onto the pages of that blog and turn it into something that represents my hope that I’ll find someone one day. Maybe, eventually, I could get thousands of readers from all over the world. Maybe, in time, one of my female readers would come to like me for more than just my writing. Maybe, once I’ve clinically detailed my every last flaw, secret, and perversion in my posts, the woman that liked me for more than just my writing would continue to like me, even in spite of it all. Maybe I could meet that woman in real life one day, and because she knew everything about me, there would be no ice to break and no awkwardness to wade through. Maybe I could mean every word I said in the previous post about why I write this blog but also be secretly halfway hoping something like this might happen… Wouldn’t that be a silly thing to do. ☘️

 

 

 

Next Time, on The Female Enigma Serial…

 

“Birds, Bees, and The Reason I Wait”

Let’s talk about S-E-X! At long last, I pull back the curtain on the reason why I want to wait until I’m married to have sex.