But beautiful

It's holiday time and I've been staying with a friend who's been married many, many years. He was telling me about life around the time when he met his wife. He told a close friend at the time, "I've finally found a woman with the right quality". When his friend asked what that special quality was, he said...

"She loves me."

We both laughed as he told me the story, but it got me thinking. We men like to think we're complicated and complex creatures, but really, we just want to be loved.

The package that love comes in is often a complete surprise to us.

Another friend of mine told me of his dreams for the type of girl he hoped to meet and marry. In reality, he was talking about a combination of Jessica Rabbit and a Valkyrie. If you knew him it would make sense. The woman he married is pretty well the opposite of both his 'preferred options'.

In spite of this, he loves her enormously. He also loves her body shape just as it is and was at pains to tell me so.

An anglo friend told me that he just wasn't attracted to Asian women and told himself point blank, he'd never marry one. Guess what? Yep, his wife is Singapore Chinese and he loves her to bits. To the point of it being a bit smoltzy and icky.

This is the truly weird thing about all the ongoing issues that 21st century women are having with body issues. Men, in a way, are just not bothered by them.

Don't hear me making light of the impact of supermodels, photoshop and the cultural sexualization of women. All of the above have heralded a pretty awful age for women to live in.

The thing is, most guys don't choose the apple of their eye based on the shape of their legs or the size of their waist.

Guys are bowled off their feet by women who are just amazing people.

As I thought more about this, I was also struck by another comic irony. That is the gaping chasm that is the difference between what men and women think is attractive.

Without going into specifics, the parts of her body my wife disliked the most were the ones I thought were the sexiest. I know this to be the case in a whole variety of relationships. You wish X was a completely different shape, your husband thinks it's hot.

Which got me thinking about that question that gets us into trouble, "does my bum look big in this?"

It's the wrong question.

Let me try and clarify. "Does my bum look big", is a 'quantitative' question. What you're asking your husband to do is to break out a tape measure and give you a raw figure.

"Yep. Darl, this dress makes it 4 inches bigger than the red skirt."

Umm, yeah. I didn't think that was what a girl wanted.

The other problem is, if I'm any judge of male appreciation for women, you've got our categories all confused. This may come as a surprise, but guys often like certain things accentuated.

He's thinking, "Yep, it looks big and I LIKE it!"

I've come to the conclusion that what you actually wanted to is ask is a 'qualitative' question. Ie. a question that will tell you whether your bum looks "good" in that bit of clothing. If you do that, you'll get a much more helpful answer I reckon. All this brought me to another realization...

Men really believe the girl they love is beautiful.

Seriously. They really believe you're beautiful. Their love looks over, beyond and through all the things that women believe to be serious impediments to being attractive and desirable. Weight, hair, shape, age, etc, etc.

So, do us guys a favour. When we say you're gorgeous, don't throw it back in our faces.

There are few things more discouraging and frustrating than telling your wife, "you're beautiful" to wear the response, "stop it, I'm not. You're just being ridiculous. My X is too fat and my Ys are two small".

Let him love you. Let him fawn over you. Coz at the end of the day every red blooded guy knows...

Women are amazing.