Truth No. 2

Why must we be so afraid
and always so far apart?...(Dixie Chicks Day 5)

I don't know if it is the drivel I read or the pressures that have been apparent since a girl turns twelve, but I have to wonder why do we have to work so damn hard to make a man like us?  I'll grant you, I am not the fountain of experience here.  My dating experience is marginally greater than my experience with root canals, but everyday there seems to be some new article about how we women are somehow not going about the mating ritual properly.  I read one such article, something like "25 things men don't appreciate about our beauty routines".  Seriously?  They have none.  But as I went through all 25 reasons, the thought that popped into my head right after, holy cow, men complain a lot, was, why?  Why are we required to put on the mascara and control top tights?  Why is it we can watch a comedy where a man who is less than svelte can end up with the tiny twig of a leading lady?  Why is it we live in a world where old, even ugly men can marry supermodels but you never, ever see the reverse?

I am not on a healthy diet because I want a man to admire my new trim form.  I am on a healthy diet because that's all the food in the house.  Also, and this will certainly fall in the Too Much Information category, the healthy food is really helpful to my gallbladder.  After two and a half years spent trying to make it happy enough to warrant a slice of cheesecake every once in awhile, it seems I finally have.  Not that I can actually eat the cheesecake.  A. It would set back all my good eating and B. The $5 in my bank account until payday is really better served for emergency gas funds than artery clogging dessert.  Besides, if I think only Barcelona has worthwhile pain au chocolate, I seriously doubt I'll think the local grocer has cheesecake worth the risk.

And so in true Rambling form, I have to come back to the source of this morning's confusion.  Why?  Why, why, why?  Wouldn't it be better if we did all of these things because we wanted to?  Not because some guy somewhere wants to get laid?  Wow, I've deviated from the family friendly version today, my apologies, but point in hand, why can't we just be us?  If we want to eat a salad or a Big Mac, does that make us any different?  If we chose not to wear a scrap of makeup, are we wrong somehow?  And if a little more weight around the ribs was once the standard of beauty, think Botecelli's Venus, why is it now that we can't even wear a bathing suit in public without some nasty comment from a guy whose gut sticks out so far he can't see his feet?  I may work not to cave to popular image, but then is that a reason why my dates are fewer and further between than aforementioned dentist visits?  Or is because I'm just that particular?  Would I know a man to appreciate me, curves and all, if I ran into him on the street?  And if I did, and he asked me to coffee, does that mean I have to put on more than a few swipes of mascara?  Ah, Pandora's Box and a Catch 22 all rolled into one.  Are we afraid?  Of being lonely, or being loved?

BlytheLea L.E.