Girl Crush

I think I'm starting to develop a little bit of a girl crush.  On whom, you may ask??

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Isn't it obvious?

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Some might girl-crush on Angelina Jolie or Jessica Alba (or Keri Russell) - not me.  This doesn't necessarily mean I'll vote for her, or even support her.  Still, that sarcastic wit (who cares if she didn't write the speech?).  Those bangs (she shares my hairstyle!!).  Sigh.   

Do Nice Guys Finish Last?

So, as all my readers know, my mother periodically saves me articles from the "other" paper.  Here was one I found particularly of interest:

Apparently, in a previous column (this is what I've gathered from what I read), a man, "Greg", wrote in expressing his frustration that....wait for it....Nice Guys Finish Last!  Hrumph!  He apparently is a self-described "5" out of 10 with a great sense of humor, and, of course, is nice, yet he keeps striking out with the women he pursues.  It must mean, of course, that women just don't like nice guys.  (Insert blogger's eye roll here.)  

  

In this column, both women and men wrote in with advice in response.  There was a general consensus amongst women and a general consensus amongst men, but not between the groups.

Women claimed that this, indeed, in not true.  Greg's issue is that he is going after the wrong women.   He is a 5, perhaps he is going after 8s and 9s...maybe he'd have much better luck in the 4-6 range?  Maybe the problem isn't women, but rather, the kind of women he's attracted to.  Maybe if he's nice but average looking and he really wants to be in a relationship he should look for a nice but average looking girl?

The men had quite a different take - yep, women like nice men when they need someone to drive them somewhere, listen to them, or fix their sink.  Nice guys are great when a woman needs to complain about the jerk they are sleeping with.  However, when it comes to someone to date/sleep with, women want the hot bad boy.  A twice-divorced fifty-something man wrote something to the extent that when women say they want a nice guy, they really are saying 'we want a really really good-looking nice guy'.  

Obviously, I find these men's views of women and what we want to be rather ill-contrived and almost humorous.  However, I could see men finding a lot of flaws in the women's views on the subject - we don't date someone just because they are fair match-up on the looks scale nor is someone simply being equally appealing as ourselves a good argument to date that person.  

I raise a question to "Greg" - what exactly is he looking for in a girl?  We will all say that it's important that we are 'attracted' to our mate - how much this involves actual physical attractiveness varies from individual to individual.  If he expects to lean on his 'niceness' to generate attraction - is he attracted to niceness?   What exactly IS he attracted to?  (Or, what are these other guys attracted to if they are being used for favors by these women they pursue?  I wouldn't call that the work of 'nice girls'.)   These men who complain women don't like nice men - do they like nice women?

So, here is my advice to Greg all of the nice yet romantically frustrated people of the world:  if you are a person whose greatest, and rather noble, selling point is that you are nice - perhaps this isn't an opposites attract kind of deal.  Maybe you should look for someone who, first and foremost,  possesses the same quality.  I can't help believing that he's not quite doing this at the moment, and maybe if he does, it will generate considerably less frustration.  

Birthday Shoutout!

I just wanted to throw a quick shoutout to one of my friends and apparently, one this blog's regular readers - Happy Birthday Ellen!!!   The combination of good friends, good beverages, downtown Chicago, the bathrooms at the Hilton, the hot pink dress I coveted, Sluggers, 80s music including but not limited to "Like a Prayer", and the Wrigleyville area was nothing short of superb.  

P.S.  Ellen, I hope this merits a comment by you!!

Positive Thinking - A Follow Up

Ok, so the other day I posted about the power of positive thinking (see below). There were so many comments with interesting points that I felt I needed to dedicate another blog post to it.

One issue raised was that even if, say, The Secret and other positive thinking theories don't work, is there any harm in believing in them? Isn't it good just to have something to believe in, whether or not it's real? (Think of the statistic that says people with religious beliefs are happier than those without.)

Well, with The Secret specifically - I see two major problems. One - this author does a very thorough job in covering her @ss in that she says her proposed theory is 100% effective for 100% of the population 100% of the time (pretty amazing, isn't it?!?!). Wait, what, The Secret didn't work for you?! You must have somehow done something wrong!! Wait, all of a sudden something bad happened to you? You must have somehow brought it on yourself!!

Imagine all the angst, stress, trauma and guilt this can cause a person - especially someone going through a rough time in the first place!! I can't see this self-blame being good for one's self-esteem, psyche, or ability to keep pushing through.

If that alone isn't bad enough, I think the second fundamental problem is much worse. Generally speaking, when one has a dilemma, he or she will work to find a solution; however, once one finds a solution, he or she will usually stop looking for it. I think The Secret, along with many other self-help books on the subject of the power of positive thinking, have positioned positive thinking as the solution.

Although positive thinking can be nice, it is action, not thought, that moves mountains. I do have a feeling anonymous is going to reply that these books don't tell their readers to stop at positive thinking alone, I do think perhaps a good amount of readers have interpreted them that way. I think the positive thinking craze has produced a society of thinkers when what we really need is a society of doers.

That, and another gripe is the notion that no one has ever succeeded without thinking positive. Although I'm sure there are a lot of successful people who will claim their mentality largely contributed to their success, haven't there also been instances of people taking the long shot - maybe throwing up a Hail Mary or taking the half-court shot at the buzzer that he or she thought didn't have a prayer and somehow, someway, emerged victorious?

Ana suggested that positive thinking might not be the real medicine, but what is? That I don't know. But I do know that one should keep searching until he or she finds it. And, in my opinion, this positive thinking movement hasn't helped that cause.

Drinking Games on the Campaign Trail, Cont'd.

MAJOR UPDATE!

Obama's campaign - we are  sticking with "change"!!  

However, Palin's, err...I mean, McCain's, campaign - we are now on to "Maverick"!!!  

Coming to Terms....

So, I just got this month's Glamour (my favorite magazine) in the mail - the cover has Rachel Bilson, Diane Lane and Ali Larter (above, respectively) with the tagline "Love Your Looks; (these three women) Tell How".

Ok.  Do I think these are the three most beautiful women in Hollywood?  Probably not.  Are they judged by their looks and compared to their peers more often than your average person, especially in their careers?  Probably so.  

However.   In comparison with say, the general female population, I think these women definitely fall into at least the top 20% (probably more realistically top 10%) in the looks department.   I don't think your truly average or below average looking woman who is struggling to accept herself would find comfort in hearing these kind of women speak about how they came to terms with one earlobe being longer than the other.  

This is probably a lot like when stick thin women speak out about how they finally came to accept their bodies, so everyone else should too!!  Most women think 'yeah, I'd have no problem accepting YOUR body, either'.  

Maybe a truly average looking actress would have been a better choice for this spread.   Hmm, who even IS an actress who looks like an every day person?  Sarah Jessica Parker?  Heather Matazarro? (does anyone other than me even know who this is?)

However, I haven't read the article yet, so maybe I'm just judging a book by its cover.  Maybe there's something really insightful and astounding within.  I highly doubt it, but I will check back and see.  

John McCain Speaking at the RNC

Although I'm clearly very biased, I try to take in all views and information before making an informed decision. This is, of course, impossible, but I felt is was important to at least watch both the democratic and republican candidates speak at their respective conventions.


Now, I've argued before during the long primary that one's ability to give a good speech is NOT directly correlated to his or her ability to be a good president or even lead in general. Although it's not something to be held against someone, it's something perhaps more pertinent than 'great hair', but less pertinent than 'applicable experience'.


Anyhow, I wish right now I could report on John McCain's speech last night. I wish I could give a 'fair and balanced' review and critique. It wasn't that I watched something else, or that I wasn't home to see it. I had my TV tuned in to John McCain on stage with the microphone. I was glued to the set.

However, unfortunately, five minutes in, I fell asleep.

The Power of Positive Thinking?

Now, let me preface this post with the obvious (or at least, what is obvious to anyone who regularly reads my blog or knows me personally, or both):  I am a cynic. 

Let me speak for a moment on the matter of the idea of the power of positive thinking.  The concept has been around for a long time and has had a recent surge in popularity.  Think "The Little Engine that Could" (inset).  The book "The Secret".  Barack Obama and his message of "Hope".  

Now, you all know my feelings on "The Secret" and "Obama" - I'll have to reread the train book before making an informed comment on it.  I was perusing the amazon.com message boards and came across a comment that brought up that 'yes, the book (The Secret) is a total sham in terms of false promises and sleazy marketing techniques, however, is her message of positive thinking wrong?'

Hmm.  Is there anything wrong with it?  Probably not.  But  is there anything really right with it?  Is it as all-powerful as so many self-help gurus have claimed?  Has it consistently performed?  Does it deserve the credit it has received?

Let's look at a couple question on the matter:  Do the masters of positivity really have resumes of mountains they've moved?  More importantly, in instances of success and overcoming great adversity - was positive thinking really the factor that lead to success, or was it a correlation moreso than causation?  Is there any way to really even measure this, per se?  

As I said, I'm not knocking positivity, but maybe it's a placebo when we need real medicine.  

Your thoughts?  

Readers are Leaders!

For my mutliple librarian and librarian wannabe friends, but mostly for Ana and my parents:

Words to the wise
Internet Words of the Week (Ray Bradbury at http://www.kgbreport.com/):
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."

(Chicago Sun-Times, Quick Takes, Sunday August 31, 2008)

Lookalikes?

Is this mind over matter, or do these two young grandmothers (or soon to be, in Sarah Palin's case) look alike to you too? The top one is Lynne Spears, the bottom Sarah Palin. I report, you decide.

A Drinking Game for the Republican National Convention

"My friends."

Those are the right's buzzwords on the week of the Republican National Convention. Was it drawing on one's own experience of winning popularity on the playground in first grade or the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" that lead to this choice? Leave your thoughts here.

P.S. As of my writing this post, John McCain is yet to speak....

I am TOO Predictable

So my good friend and loyal blog reader Ana commented in a previous post that I must have some thoughts on John McCain picking a female running mate.  

I think this is an insult to women's intelligence everywhere.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to belittle Sarah Palin's qualifications and accomplishments - I am sure she rightly belonged on the short list.  However, I am also 100% positive the ultimate deciding factor that put her in the spot over Romney, Jindal, Pawlenty, etc., was anatomical.

It's not this alone - it's all of John McCain's camp's cheap attempts to swoop up Hillary's supporters.  Although some would say this is politics as usual, sometimes it's so blatant it becomes laughable.  A couple weeks ago, Carly Fiorina from the McCain camp made some comment about the how they (especially Mr. McCain) were offended by Hillary Clinton not being shown 'the amount of respect she deserved' during the primary campaign.  

The REPUBLICANS were concerned about making sure Hillary Clinton was shown enough respect?  These words would have frozen hell over five months ago.  If Hillary had pulled off a last minute miracle and was the nominee at the moment, would John McCain's camp be singing the same tune?  I think he'd be changing his stance on waterboarding, while recommending her to be the first experimental subject.  If the McCain campaign has so much respect for Hillary Clinton, why didn't he pick her for the vp then?  

Now, it's not that McCain's pandering - all politicians, including my girl herself, pander.  I've seen Barack Obama speak at a college campus once in person and multiple times on television - let me tell you, one would think the biggest crisis in our nation is the interest rate on student loans (No, I will NOT be nice to him). 

It's not that John McCain has made a very transparent, calculated political move.   It's that he thinks we, the people who have vaginas, will fall for it because we are all that easy to please and distract.  Nevermind the fact that he's made it clear he wants to take away our reproductive rights, that he's voted for health insurance companies to cover viagra but not birth control, or that he's voted against equal pay for equal work.  

John McCain is a real champion of feminism and women's rights!?!?  I think not.