More Wilderness
Last night a couple of us went out to the Fiddler for a few drinks to celebrate the end of our first term. Early in the night, I got to talking with an English and a Scottish guy that were playing snooker near our table and somewhere along the line, the Scottish fellow got down on one knee and proposed marriage, to which all three of us had a good laugh and continued blabbering about football and life in Den Haag. When I sat down with my friends again, my classmate Mag looked at me and said "How do you do that? It's so intimidating. You know that song Charmless Man by Blur? Yeah, I always feel like I'm a Charmless Girl." I looked at her for a second with her sad brown eyes, beautiful smile, breasts from here to Tuesday, and trying to figure out whether or not I'd heard her correctly. When I realized I had, my heart just broke in two.
It kills me that someone so adorable, spontaneous, sincere, and always full of positive things to say could think anything of the sort. How does this happen? Why are women so weak that they allow others to decide how they see themselves? It's completely infuriating and no matter how hard I try I can't wrap my mind around why, for so many perfectly amazing girls, this always seems to be the case. Later on in the night, she asked me to read the SMS she was writing to Sebastian (the French guy in her Dutch class that she has a crush on) and make sure her English sounded alright. I responded by taking the phone from her, deleting the message, and asking her why, for fuck's sake, she wanted to send him an SMS when he's repeatedly demonstrated that he's not interested. She didn't know what to say. By then, the drinks had been flowing for a good few hours, but I sobered myself up quickly and began to explain to her why this wasn't a good idea. I tried my best, but attempting to condense knowledge that's taken me 22 years to obtain into just one conversation without sounding preachy was hard.
Unfortunately, I got the idea that everything I said to her was to no avail. She said she didn't understand the concept of not caring what other people think of her or making it her first priority to like herself before anyone else ever could. She told me she didn't believe that in the end, looks are not the ultimate deciding factor. I responded by telling her that when you're happy with the person that you are, everyone can see it and that's what creates true attraction. Everything before that is just biology. She gave me that same look that she had earlier in the night and said simply "Do you ever think that it might be possible for you to say this because you don't have any problem getting people to like you? It's just like rich people saying that money doesn't matter because they have it. You say that looks don't matter because not having them isn't a problem for you." She might as well have slapped me across the face. I was at a complete loss of words, which she saw immediately and continued "I don't mean that in a bad way, it's just that I can't believe that someone like you has ever had to think about things like this before."
The conversation continued for a few minutes, but after awhile I politely changed the subject and the whole thing was, for the moment, forgotten. But somehow I've started thinking about it again and wondering what it is could possibly say to her to make her understand how much of a gem she is and why she just shouldn't care about all that bullshit so much. I want to make her see that it couldn't matter less if some random guy can see what we do when we look at her but I just don't know how to. Women are so bloody stupid sometimes, so blinded by their own desire to feel accepted that they can't see how unimportant it all really is. If I have to hear one more girl whine about the opposite sex and all their own shortcomings, I'll scream. I refuse to believe that this is some kind of genetically acquired trait unique to women alone, because I know enough of them that don't suffer from this irrational inferiority complex. Must be social, as validation of the theory that a woman is not complete until she's found her other half can be found just about anywhere you look. It's all just so fucking ridiculous and frustrating. I hope Helen Fielding dies a slow and miserable death, taking her half-wit ideas and Bridget Jones propaganda with her.
It kills me that someone so adorable, spontaneous, sincere, and always full of positive things to say could think anything of the sort. How does this happen? Why are women so weak that they allow others to decide how they see themselves? It's completely infuriating and no matter how hard I try I can't wrap my mind around why, for so many perfectly amazing girls, this always seems to be the case. Later on in the night, she asked me to read the SMS she was writing to Sebastian (the French guy in her Dutch class that she has a crush on) and make sure her English sounded alright. I responded by taking the phone from her, deleting the message, and asking her why, for fuck's sake, she wanted to send him an SMS when he's repeatedly demonstrated that he's not interested. She didn't know what to say. By then, the drinks had been flowing for a good few hours, but I sobered myself up quickly and began to explain to her why this wasn't a good idea. I tried my best, but attempting to condense knowledge that's taken me 22 years to obtain into just one conversation without sounding preachy was hard.
Unfortunately, I got the idea that everything I said to her was to no avail. She said she didn't understand the concept of not caring what other people think of her or making it her first priority to like herself before anyone else ever could. She told me she didn't believe that in the end, looks are not the ultimate deciding factor. I responded by telling her that when you're happy with the person that you are, everyone can see it and that's what creates true attraction. Everything before that is just biology. She gave me that same look that she had earlier in the night and said simply "Do you ever think that it might be possible for you to say this because you don't have any problem getting people to like you? It's just like rich people saying that money doesn't matter because they have it. You say that looks don't matter because not having them isn't a problem for you." She might as well have slapped me across the face. I was at a complete loss of words, which she saw immediately and continued "I don't mean that in a bad way, it's just that I can't believe that someone like you has ever had to think about things like this before."
The conversation continued for a few minutes, but after awhile I politely changed the subject and the whole thing was, for the moment, forgotten. But somehow I've started thinking about it again and wondering what it is could possibly say to her to make her understand how much of a gem she is and why she just shouldn't care about all that bullshit so much. I want to make her see that it couldn't matter less if some random guy can see what we do when we look at her but I just don't know how to. Women are so bloody stupid sometimes, so blinded by their own desire to feel accepted that they can't see how unimportant it all really is. If I have to hear one more girl whine about the opposite sex and all their own shortcomings, I'll scream. I refuse to believe that this is some kind of genetically acquired trait unique to women alone, because I know enough of them that don't suffer from this irrational inferiority complex. Must be social, as validation of the theory that a woman is not complete until she's found her other half can be found just about anywhere you look. It's all just so fucking ridiculous and frustrating. I hope Helen Fielding dies a slow and miserable death, taking her half-wit ideas and Bridget Jones propaganda with her.