Flirting

The other day one of my acquaintances, the wife of a soldier in My Husband's unit, wanted to know if the male trainers at our mutual gym are always asking how I am and offering me free samples of smoothies from the smoothie bar.  Apparently she has a hard time getting through her workout without being interrupted by men at the gym (both employees and fellow customers).

This has not happened to me.  Ever.  It's possibly because I hate going to the gym and I'm probably wearing my scowl-y face through my entire workout, but still.  Her comment kind of made me feel like there's something undesirable about me.  I'm always hearing these stories about women never getting asked out and then the get married and all of a sudden guys are all over them.  Not for me.

So I spent some time stewing over it, lamenting my un-flirt-worthy persona, when it hit me: friendly, handsome guys NEVER flirt with me.  They never have.  So why should now be any different than when I was 19?

Perhaps I should clarify that...there have been perfectly nice men that I've had some kind of relationship with (more than hooking up, less than going steady), but if I recall correctly I'm always the one who did the pursuing.  No guy has ever run into me "accidentally on purpose" at a bookstore or invited me for drinks to a bar with his friends.  I've been hit on, certainly.  In very crude and leering ways.  But those are not the kind of guys you bring home to your mother.

This led me to another realization: romantic comedies have FUCKED UP MY BRAIN.  It's not realistic to expect a 6-foot-tall Ivy League educated athlete with a killer smile and interesting career to ignore all the models throwing themselves at him and chat me up in a coffee shop (thank you very much, Patrick Wilson of Morning Glory) and then look disappointed yet resigned when he finds out I'm married.  And maybe pine for me just a little from afar.

In fact, I'd have to say the only handsome athlete with a strong character and a sense of humor to ever flirt with me is My Husband.

Does this make me sound ungrateful?  I don't mean to be ungrateful.  I know very well My Husband is way out of my league and with his looks and his steady paycheck he could have any woman he wants. 

I shudder at the thought (as should all women reading this sentence), but I've been raised to desire un-creepy male attention and having My Husband gone all the time leaves that severely lacking in my life.

So I guess I just have to have my little Gigi from He Just Not That Into You moment and convince myself swoonworthy men don't swoop into my life and then bow out of it gracefully just to boost my confidence. 

Life is not a Reese Witherspoon film, after all.

Body Issues

I am a woman: therefore, I used to be a girl and therefore I have body issues.  As I contemplate future parenting, I wonder if there is any way to prevent my daughter(s) from developing similar issues.  I've come to the conclusion there probably isn't, but hopefully I can secure their confidence levels so they can get over said issues quicker than I did.

Last post I told you about my weight and how I’ve dealt with it over the years.  My other body issues range from skin color to hair color to everything in between.

I grew up in a very urban area, a major city in Massachusetts.  The high school I attended is in a rough neighborhood and had a student body to match.  Our racial demographic was pretty balanced…about 30/30/30/10 (with the 30s being white, Hispanic and African-American and the 10 being Asian).  As I’ve said, the predominant ideal of beauty comprised of caramel-toned skin, dark hair, light eyes and the curves of a woman twice your age.  Having only one out of those four down, I wasn’t considered the “hottest” of girls for most of my teens.

Being referred to as “white” was a grave insult in school.  When I was a child my sympathetic friends described my race as “clear.”  I burned my skin to a crisp those summers as I tried to tan evenly.  I dyed my hair brown (it ended up a dirty blonde and hasn’t returned to the white-wine color of my childhood since).  I made a big deal out of my Italian heritage (maiden name: RAMITTIO), which was the closest I could get to a minority bloodline.

Then came university, and the group of whitest roommates I could imagine: Gretchen from Maine, Caroline from a Boston suburb, Megan from upstate New York and Lauren from Michigan. 

And me. 

All my years of attempting to assimilate into another world left me ill-prepared for my new Dave Matthews Band-listening, pastel polo shirt-wearing friends.  Everyone’s skin was still tanning bed bronze, though.

Luckily college is a time to find the true you, so I eventually surrounded myself with a group of girls of varied interests and races whom I still consider my closest friends.  You can’t get me out into the sun without SPF 60 (melanoma is not worth the fabulous surfer skin) and I’m embracing my natural blonde…the color of antique gold jewelry.

But now I’m entering the 20-something world of pre-pregnancy and post-pregnancy weight, stretch marks and a slowing metabolism.  A whole new crop of body issues is sure to surface with this new stage I my life.  Hopefully my knowledge that I survived the last crop with a shred of self-confidence intact will help me weather anything new that comes my way.


PS -- Still struggling?  Check out Eve Ensler's play The Good Body.  Totally changes your perspective.