Guest Author - Cassandra George Sturges
As women, most of us put a lot of time and effort into selecting the perfect dress, earrings, shoes and accessories when going out on a date. We hem and haw over whether or not we should wear our hair in a bun, pony-tail, or let it hang down. We practice walking in the cute, to-die-for, stilettos that hurt our feet; not all the time -–only when we walk. We make sure that our make-up is perfect, and that our panties and bra match even though there is a high likely hood that our date will never see them. The only thing that many women forget to bring on a date is high self-esteem and confidence in our own beauty.
We expect our date to give us self-confidence based on his approval of our physical appearance. We want him to appreciate the fact that we shaved under our arms, polished our fingernails and toenails, and arched our eyebrows. It’s almost as if, doing these tasks to beautify ourselves is a worthless waste of time if he (our date) doesn’t tell us how amazingly beautiful we are throughout the evening. I never saw myself or any other woman thinking or acting this way until I overheard two young men who appeared to be between the ages of 19-23 discuss what they did not like about a woman after a couple of dates.
While drinking my favorite mango peach tea in the book store, I overheard one guy say to the other, “She is smoking hot gorgeous. I mean, she is like one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life, but I see red flags that really concern me, but I want to see on the next few dates if this is going to change about her.” The other guy says, “Are they serious red flags…like does she have a boyfriend, kids—Man is she married?”
The first guy says to his friend, “She lacks confidence in herself. Everywhere we go, every head turns when she walks into the room, but she wants me to continuously reassure her of how beautiful she is. I have never met a girl with such low-self esteem. I want a girl who knows what she is bringing to the table besides her body. I want to get to know who she is under her lip gloss. She seems so insecure; she wrestled with her dress all night and nervously glimpsed at her reflection every time we passed a window. She should not have worn the dress if she didn’t have enough confidence in herself to know that she looked good in it.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from such young men, but I feel like I was given a free lesson about confidence and beauty from the universe. It doesn’t matter how beautiful other people think you are if you don’t feel beautiful inside. When a man asks a woman on a date, he already appreciates her outer beauty --but if he is gentleman, on the first few dates he is seeking to discover her inner beauty that carries the gems of her character, integrity and honesty that are hidden in her heart—underneath her lip gloss.
