True Perfection

Warning, this piece is really, REALLY long. It's good, but make sure you have time to sit and read it before you dive into it.

Before I start, I have to give credit where credit is due. Most of the following piece is from the mind of my good friend Matt. I've compiled it here and added bits and pieces, but this was Matt's brainchild, and he deserves any and all credit for the compilation of this piece.

What do guys look for in a girl? Is it Double D's? Is it the apple shaped butt or the long, sexy legs? I may be in the minority, but I don't think so. Sure, guys talk about the smoking hot girls they see throughout the day; just as girls drool over the set of abs they saw on the quad. Girls seem to think that all we guys want are perfect looking Barbies: gimme a pair of tits and a sweet ass and I'll be happy. Luckily for most of us, attraction goes a bit deeper than this.

When a guy likes a girl, even if objectively she isn't a perfect 10, she is the most beautiful girl in the world to you. Many girls don't get that and it's frustrating. Yeah, we'd like to bang the sorostitutes in the ass ruffle skirts. However, there are tons of girls we like that don't compare to them in looks, yet if we were with one of those girls, we would be so happy and would say without hesitation that they were perfect looking, even if everyone else gave them like a 6 or a 7. They are perfect in our eyes, and that's all that would matter anyways right?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I'd be lying if I said it wasn’t about looks. To an extent, it is. There has to be some sort of physical attraction. But there are different facets of attractiveness, all of which can be just as attractive as the other. I like to think there are two main types of attractiveness: cute and hot. Guys, if you think about this, you know it’s true. There are some girls you would say are “cute” while others you would call “hot.” Hot would refer to the runway model or Eva Longoria’s of the world. They are what you think of when you think about the pinnacle of good looking women. However, they are not always the most attractive. Cute refers to those girls who have a certain quality about them. You can’t really put a finger on it, but you know it makes them attractive. They aren’t the hottest girls in the world, but they are just as attractive as anyone you’ve seen.

For example, you could be working out at the ARC, and you see two different girls. One is a Carmen Electra clone, and one is a little brunette girl with a runner’s body. You can look at both of them, and even though society says all guys would want the Carmen Electra one, that isn’t always true. In fact, most of the time, I would say the little brunette is just as attractive as Electra, and I wouldn’t be lying.

I think Matt put it best when talking about his former girlfriend: "I've put a lot of thought into [this], mainly because you knew how much I liked her. I thought she was gorgeous, but when people have gotten a little drunk or ambitious they have said they thought I could "do better." I didn't "settle" on a consolation prize. I got the freaking gold medal! In a straight physical sense (when you include personality and intelligence and everything it's not even close) I never wished she was Jessica Alba or anything. She was perfect the way she was."

I believe that someone is either attractive to you or not. What is considered attractive varies from person to person, but the fact remains, in terms of looks...a girl is either attractive to you or they are not. A girl can be hot and not attractive to you because she's not "your kind of girl." However, if they are attractive to you, you can take it from there. Sure, there are varying degrees of how "hot" or "cute" a girl is...but true beauty comes from getting to know someone and really connecting with them. Once you do that, all the other stuff is just fluff.

And that’s just it! True perfection comes from getting to know someone and connecting with them. It’s a sort of relative perfection. So, while we spend our time telling each other about these hot girls we see at the arc and at work, that doesn’t mean there are only 4 girls in the world we would be happy to be with.

And what is attractive to people is not solely based on looks. Give me eye candy, to look at and drool over, yes; but when you throw in all the aspects that make up a person, any girl has a fighting chance. What I guess I mean is that if you have a girl that scores 99% on looks and 10% on personality/compatibility, while another is 70% on looks and 40 % on personality/compatibility, the girl that is 70% on looks is still possibly going to be more beautiful to me. In my eyes she will be a 100%; and I would say without lying that she was the prettiest girl in the world and would not trade her for miss-99% if we even spotted miss-99%, another 40% personality.

I want to use an analogy to try and further illustrate our point here. Unfortunately, the use of analogies does not quite work here, but I’ll give it a try for the hell of it. I suppose you can make an argument with cars, since everyone understands cars. We all covet the corvette, the Aston Martin Vanquish, the exotics so to speak. Most of us are stuck driving the cars our parents gave us, but at some point we will get to drive the car we want. And for most of us, that will not be a corvette, it will be something that we adore for all of its features and usefulness and because it is ours, not our parents, not the guy next doors. We will be happy with what we got, even though we will tell our buds about the Ferrari that pulled up next to us on the way home from work. This analogy doesn’t quite work because it sounds like what we ended up with is not our first choice, or that the car makes up for not being as “pretty” in other things. That’s not the case, what we get is what we wanted. The math is not logical, but I contend that little Honda civic=Ferrari. Oh, but you just like that little civic because it has better mileage and you couldn’t afford the Ferrari. NO, NO, NO!!! Yes you gotta take in the whole picture, those intangible traits and characteristics, that gives you a connection that can blossom into something awesome. But they don’t substitute for looks, because the looks don’t need to be substituted for!

Yeah, we got our “types”, some of us like the big chested. Some of us like that athletic build. Some of us like purple hair and freckles. Some of us like “American girls” and some of us only like Denise Richards. But just because that is our type that we talk about, it does not mean that there aren’t multitudes of girls of all walks and likes that we could be interested in.

After all of this, where have we gotten? Well, first off, looks do matter, but not to the extent that everyone thinks they do. Guys aren’t all looking for clones of Eva Longoria. A guy can see two different girls: the head cheerleader and the captain of the cross country team, and think both of them are equally attractive…and not be lying! Also, while there has to be some sort of physical attraction to make any of this work, if there is no personality, or personal connection, to go with it, the looks are meaningless. Second, if two people like each other enough to start a relationship, chances are the person they are involved with will be a perfect 10 in their eyes. It isn’t about having the perfect body or an actress’ face. It is about what you connect with and who you are compatible with. And everyone is different.

Sometimes I think girls forget this. They all aspire to look like Cameron Diaz or Jessica Alba, and don’t realize that they don’t have to. They can be just as attractive as anyone else in the world without starving themselves and investing in silicon. They put so much time and effort into how they look that they don’t take the time to look at who they are and who they connect with. Once you find that someone, the looks don’t matter. All that time you spent “primping” (if you will) was meaningless. It didn’t matter that you spent 2 hours doing your hair; all that mattered was that the two of you like each other for who you guys are.

The point overall is that we do look for beauty, and we look for a lot of things in addition. But it’s a disservice to all girls to say that one doesn’t look as good as another, but makes up for it in something else. In some of our eyes, either girl can be the most beautiful in the world. And when we finally get to meet and know them and find out all that makes them unique, it is possible they are the best in the universe. Do not sell us short in that we only like blonde Barbie’s, we are a whole lot more thoughtful and open-minded than may appear on the surface.