cornutt
Forum Master
So here's that rant I promised a few days ago. My rant is: does anyone these days know what's attractive? Or more to the point, does anyone know the difference between attention and attraction? Let me tell you what got me going on this line of thinking: Last weekend, while I was at the apartment pool, a group of three young women and one young man came in. The man was evidently married to one of the women, and the other two were apparently friends or co-workers.
Let me describe for you one of these two women. She was at least 75 pounds overweight, possibly more. She had quite a few tattoos; some on her shoulders, some on her upper back, one large one that was half-visible on her lower back (the other half was hidden under her swimsuit bottom), a few on the upper parts of her breasts, a few on her thighs, etc. And pretty much every part of her face had piercings: her lips, her cheeks, her nose, her eyebrows, and even her chin. Now, I don't want to get into the apporpriateness of tattoos or piercings in general; we've had that debate. The point I want to make is it was all waaaay over the top. And speaking of tops, she barely had one on -- her swimsuit was so skimpy that it would make a supermodel blush. The top barely hid her nipples, and the bottom, well, we won't even go there.
As I lay in a lounge chair near the pool, I overheard their conversations (I could hardly no do so; they were in the pool right in front of me, and talking loudly). This woman's speech was coarse, ungrammatical, and filled with four-letter words. Ladylike she wasn't. And the thing is: from listening to the conversation, it became clear to me that this woman thought she was totally hot! She talked about how men look at her when she walks into a bar. Her friends apparently didn't have the nerve to tell her that she gets stares not because she's attractive, but because she's a freak. Or maybe I'm out of touch; maybe she really does have a lot of guys after her. Not this guy, though.
And that brings me to the rant. Does anyone know what it means to be attractive to the opposite (or preferred) sex? Is being attractive simply a matter of doing absolutely anything to get attention? For instance, dressing to be attractive seems to be out. What is in is dressing in anything that screams "LOOK AT ME! NOW!" What is it with all of these 12-year-old girls running around in ultra-low-rise jeans and thongs (you can tell because the strap comes up out of the pants in the back)? What is it with all of the 14-year-old guys who wear jams three sizes too big, halfway down their @$$? Is there anyone who thinks that actually looks good?
And it isn't just teenagers. We get male job applicants who come in to interview for engineering jobs dressed in torn jeans, gangsta rapper T-shirts, and old beat-up sneakers. We get female ones who come in dressed in tank tops, braless, and in warm-up pants that have "HOT STUFF" written across the butt. Now mind you, when I first got into the biz, it was still in the days when men were expected to wear a shirt and tie every day -- and having done that through a number of Alabama summers, I don't miss that a bit. But some of the stuff I see the interviewees show up in, I would never wear even on a Friday before a holiday. In fact, a lot of it I would never wear at all.
And I can't believe that these are things that the opposite sex finds attractive. So tell me, folks, is it really that bad these days, or am I totally out of touch? Does no one care what they look like anymore? If not, how in the world do couples ever form, if they don't do anything to make themselves attractive?
Let me describe for you one of these two women. She was at least 75 pounds overweight, possibly more. She had quite a few tattoos; some on her shoulders, some on her upper back, one large one that was half-visible on her lower back (the other half was hidden under her swimsuit bottom), a few on the upper parts of her breasts, a few on her thighs, etc. And pretty much every part of her face had piercings: her lips, her cheeks, her nose, her eyebrows, and even her chin. Now, I don't want to get into the apporpriateness of tattoos or piercings in general; we've had that debate. The point I want to make is it was all waaaay over the top. And speaking of tops, she barely had one on -- her swimsuit was so skimpy that it would make a supermodel blush. The top barely hid her nipples, and the bottom, well, we won't even go there.
As I lay in a lounge chair near the pool, I overheard their conversations (I could hardly no do so; they were in the pool right in front of me, and talking loudly). This woman's speech was coarse, ungrammatical, and filled with four-letter words. Ladylike she wasn't. And the thing is: from listening to the conversation, it became clear to me that this woman thought she was totally hot! She talked about how men look at her when she walks into a bar. Her friends apparently didn't have the nerve to tell her that she gets stares not because she's attractive, but because she's a freak. Or maybe I'm out of touch; maybe she really does have a lot of guys after her. Not this guy, though.
And that brings me to the rant. Does anyone know what it means to be attractive to the opposite (or preferred) sex? Is being attractive simply a matter of doing absolutely anything to get attention? For instance, dressing to be attractive seems to be out. What is in is dressing in anything that screams "LOOK AT ME! NOW!" What is it with all of these 12-year-old girls running around in ultra-low-rise jeans and thongs (you can tell because the strap comes up out of the pants in the back)? What is it with all of the 14-year-old guys who wear jams three sizes too big, halfway down their @$$? Is there anyone who thinks that actually looks good?
And it isn't just teenagers. We get male job applicants who come in to interview for engineering jobs dressed in torn jeans, gangsta rapper T-shirts, and old beat-up sneakers. We get female ones who come in dressed in tank tops, braless, and in warm-up pants that have "HOT STUFF" written across the butt. Now mind you, when I first got into the biz, it was still in the days when men were expected to wear a shirt and tie every day -- and having done that through a number of Alabama summers, I don't miss that a bit. But some of the stuff I see the interviewees show up in, I would never wear even on a Friday before a holiday. In fact, a lot of it I would never wear at all.
And I can't believe that these are things that the opposite sex finds attractive. So tell me, folks, is it really that bad these days, or am I totally out of touch? Does no one care what they look like anymore? If not, how in the world do couples ever form, if they don't do anything to make themselves attractive?
