Men get a bad rap, man...

There's a good chance I'm about to piss a lot of girls off with this.

Okay before I start, let's get something straight.  I love women.  No, I luuuuuuuuuuuuurve women.  I try my ass off everyday to be a lady-lover instead of being a nasty bitch.

"You don't have to hate men to love women."  
-Said someone before me at some point in time.

I spent all of my teen years allowing myself to be a doormat for dudes.  I had read my friend's Maxims and thought I had some "inside scoop" into how to be a "Cool Girl".  I wanted guys to think of me as this easy-going, chill, fun, hot, badass chick who they would all surely fall in love with at the same time and come chasing after me like in a Jennifer Love Hewitt movie.

Think about those adjectives I just listed.  Not one of them has anything to do with respect, or holding MYSELF in high esteem.  All I cared about was making it "easy" for boys.  Not BEING easy... but making it easy.  I never wanted a guy to complain about me taking too long in the bathroom, or shelling out too much for dinner, or having to put in the extra effort to open my car door... I wanted dating me, or even loving me, to be easy-peasy.
Because that's what the magazines said men wanted.
And the magazines are ALWAYS RIGHT.

This is clearly someone a 14 year old should be taking life advice from.

Now I know I can't be the only girl out there who is guilty of this behavior.  Who said things were "Okay" when they were really having a nuclear explosion bombing their heart.  Who put it out there to all the dudes that it was fine if they weren't their priority.  Who stuck around when they should have walked away.  Who didn't DEMAND RESPECT through respecting themselves.  

So how could I blame them?  How could I call these guys jerks and say they didn't care about me?  I was literally training these men to give as little of a shit about me as possible.  I was my own worst enemy!

I was just as guilty of emotional immaturity as they were.

But they were the ones villainized for their behavior.  Men tend to be.  Even look at the way men are portrayed in sitcoms: the doofy, clueless husband who can NEVER seem to remember his anniversary!

I'm really only with you for your looks, Jim.

As I've "matured" (aaaahahaha) I've learned my lessons and finally around October of last year I realized something... Men don't want the "easy to get" girl.  When in the history of time was a song written about falling in love with the girl that who was easy to get and did whatever a man wanted??

Well, maybe a few in Puritan times.  Probably a lot in Puritan times, actually.

But other than that, what I found was that the women that these men were falling in love with and committing to and bending over backwards for were the women who weren't taking any shit.  Who KNEW that they were worth the extra work.  Who called men out on their crap.  Who stood up for themselves and what they wanted.  Who turned down last minute, thrown together invitations from guys because they had plans with their girls.  Who stood by their men because their men stood by them.  Who didn't falter.  Who were strong ass, awesome dames.  And wonderful girlfriends.

....They were really the "COOL GIRLS"!  

THE MAGAZINES LIED TO ME!!!!!

This is your brain on "Cosmo".

GOOD men want you to respect yourself.  They really do.  I haven't observed a whole lot of successful relationships that were born out of a woman doing whatever a man told her to do and always being treated as second banana.  The relationships I've watched flourish in front of me were ones where there was a MUTUAL adoration between not only the two partners, but an adoration each had for themself.  

I wish I could go back in time and talk to 17 year old me... (okay, or go back in time to like 16 months ago...)  

I'd probably tell her:

• Any man who is after your heart and not just your lady bits will be okay with waiting.
• It's okay to demand more from someone.  
• If a man has a problem "making the trip" to your place, and you're always going over to his.  RUN.
• If you are a secret, you will always be a secret.
• A man who loves you will be chomping at the bit to show you off to his buddies.
• Say "no" when you need to say "no".  You're not helping anyone by lying.
• There's a huge difference between being "one of the guys" and a "guy's girl"
• You should never have to force someone into loving you.
• When the right guy comes along, it'll happen easily.  Because HE will want to make it easy just like you do.

Men are hunters.  They are competitive.  They are show offs.  Innately.  It's how God made 'em.  It's why we love 'em.  Why take away their thrill of the hunt?  Don't "play hard to get"... don't "play" anything.  Just be you.  And if what he's offering isn't enough for you... leave.  Simple.  Weed out the ones that don't look good in your garden (analogy points!)

Take a breath.  Stop downgrading yourself.  Smile, be friendly, live your life for YOU and watch the men fall down at your feet.... Then help them up, make them a Maker's Mark Manhattan and enjoy a lovely evening together.

Men are wonderful.  Men aren't the enemy.  Cosmo is.  And probably Denise Richards too, somehow.

Happy Relationship- Achieved.  

LEARN FROM ME,

Lindsay

My Attempt at Being A "MySpace Girl"

If you have big boobs, you know what a pain in the ass they can truly be.  However, you will spend a lifetime hearing from B-cupped women how lucky you are to have cleavage up to your chin, while you're thinking, "It'd be sweet to be able to wear tunic style shirts without looking like Mama Cass."

The grass is always greener on the other side, right?

Well, this thought process is exactly why when I was 19 years old I decided I had had enough of being the busty, blonde, sweet, girl-next-door and decided it was time to take a walk on the wild side.

It was time to become a MySpace Girl.

Yes, that's a naval piercing poking out between my AWESOME Hollister pants and HILARIOUS T-shirt about New Jersey!

"What's a MySpace Girl?"  

Oh you silly little person from the future who is reading this blog, let me tell you about these women of yester-year:

See, long before there was Instagram making it as easy as 123 to look like a professional photographer, we had a different breed of social media mavens; the Myspace Girls.  These girls took photos of themselves that would even make David LaChapelle say, "Let's be 'Friends'!"  

Here's a short list of things that made MySpace Girls so cool:

AMAZING makeup.  
These bitches could wing out their liquid liner in ways I didn't know was possible.  They'd wear faux eyelashes to the gas station.  They knew how to wear purple, green and blue eye shadow all at once and WERK IT OUT.

FABULOUS hair.  
Either cut pixie short, or rocked with loooooong extensions.  Bonus points for chunky blonde highlights in black hair.

BADASS tattoos.
Chest pieces of guns on 125 pound girls from the suburbs.  Enough said.

ROCKSTAR wardrobe.
Somehow they managed to pair huge acetate Chanel earrings with bandannas draped around their necks.  How??  How did they make this work??

They also all had cool names like Niki[Nadar] and deedee^DYNAmite

Tell me this girl isn't the awesomest.

Amazing.  Fabulous.  Badass.  Rockstars.  Why WOULDN'T you want to be just like them?  And on top of everything, it seemed like all the hot guys in bands ate out of their hands.  These girls fascinated and intimidated me all at the same time.

I really wanted one of these boys to love me.

So I went ahead and tried on a new persona.  I cut my hair pixie short and sampled a gamut of hair colors from BLEACHED blonde all the way to jet black, I wore faux eyelashes everyday (even in dance class.  WTF was I thinking?), I buckled my belt to the side on low-slung skinny jeans, I tried to self-gauge my ears (don't do this), and I even got my very own nape-of-the-neck tattoo.

Oh, hello!  I didn't see you there!  I was just hangin' in my room with a full face of makeup on at 11:00 pm.

I tried my damnedest to fit in with that crowd.
But it never worked.  I never got the attention I so badly wanted.  Or the hundreds of comments on my pictures on MySpace that the other girls had.  What was I doing wrong??   MAN was I annoyed... And more intimidated of these girls than ever.  If they could pull this off and I couldn't, that must mean they were better than me.  This "less-than" feeling I inflicted on myself transformed quickly into judgement.  I started looking at their pictures differently- making bitchy comments about them.  

"Why do you need to take so many pictures of yourself in the first place?  How VAIN are you??"

It took me a long time to realize that my venture into "the other side" wasn't as "green" as it looked from where I used to be.  With time, my hair went back to my natural dirty blonde, my Hot Topic jewelry was thrown away, the small amount of gauging in my ears closed up, and I stopped pretending I loved thrash-core metal so much.

Just in case you were ever wondering what my pores looked like in 2005.  Cause I know you were.

I still have the tattoo, though.  And I'm glad I do.  That tattoo is a reminder of the risk I took trying something new and scary.  That I made huge changes in my life to see if I'd like it better than what I had been comfortable with for years.  I'm so happy for those couple of years.  And I have a lot of amazing memories to look back on because of those changes!

I still stalk those rock star, bad ass girls on Instagram who are so damn good at taking gorgeous, tired-eyed, lips-open sexy photos of themselves.  However, I don't feel the jealousy or the judgment anymore, but more a strange level of respect for them... now knowing how TRULY DIFFICULT it is to succeed at taking those dang pictures and living that look.

And I still try!  I take pictures of myself every so often and post them to Instagram.  Let's be real here, it's fun and it gives you a little confidence boost with every *like* you receive.

But I know who I am now, and who I am is someone who will always be too shaky in the hands to wing out her eyeliner properly.  And someone who feels far more beautiful and confident wearing a Forever 21 sundress than a ripped up vintage sweatshirt.

Good for those girls.  They've honed a very fun skill.  And they're beautiful and creative.

I guess the point of all this is- if you really believe the grass is always greener on the other side, take a trip over there and see if you still feel the same way!  You'll still be welcome back onto your own grass if you change your mind.  It's a good thing to switch up your "given circumstances" and see where life leads you.  Maybe you'll make discoveries about yourself and other people that you wouldn't have made otherwise.  You'll see how the "other half" live.  You'll gain new perspective.  I highly recommend it.

Still, don't try to gauge your own ears.

@lindsaylieu

Me!

LEARN FROM ME,

Lindsay