Skip to main content

Absent Chemistry

Recently my friend K asked if it were possible to judge if there was chemistry or not based on one picture. I was quick to say yes - it has happened to me. Now K is a very attractive young woman who does some modeling on the side. Clearly for an "average-looking" man to tell her "awfully sorry but I am not feeling any chemistry at all" based on a picture from her portfolio is an affront. Had it been the other way around, K would have not called to ask me the question she did. I am certain she has summarily dismissed prospects based on a picture or two - as have many of us women.

The real question is therefore, should men be held to a different standard than women. Does it behoove them to declare they find a woman attractive even if they really don't - is it merely good manners like holding the door. Are they out of acceptable standards of behavior if they tell what they actually think. I suggested to K that she shrug it off and move on. It should not be so easy for a random man to come along and displace her confidence in her physical appearance.

There are enough guys fawning over K at any given time - and that alone should be enough to undo the damage one had done. As long as youth is on her side she can count on that. When it is gone she will need have enough self-worth built so she no longer needs validation and affirmation from men. She should be in a place where she can be amused at the remark and be able tell this man she appreciates his candor and wishes him luck.
Labels:

Comments

Amazon Widgets said…
Lot of guys would do that if they feel the girl is too good looking for them. The guys know from past experience that it would not work and would end up wasting time on a girl which they have no future with.
10:48 AM
April Braswell said…
Hi, I could not find your name, or I would gladly address you appropriately, ♥ Crossings. This got me to contemplating attraction and chemistry.

Don't you find that men are stimulated FIRST visually? So that single men are MOST responding to a single woman's oh-so important internet dating profile photograph?

And we women, we surely DO care about how a man looks. It's just look at different criteria first.

This made me think of the marvelous quote:

Men fall in love with the women they are attracted to.

And women are attracted to the men they love.

Neither is better.

rofl

It is just the way we are. Don't you find that to be the case?

April
4:47 PM
Heartcrossings said…
April - Men also complain that the woman in reality looks nothing like her picture. The dating profile picture being of such paramount importance, prompts women to post glamor shots. The ones who do not get winnowed out in short order :) Ironically, the later may fare better in an in person meeting because they do look like their picture.
10:33 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
5 comments
Read more

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more