Angles of the side hug.

I have been meaning to write about side hugs since practically the inception of this blog, but I never found quite the right angle to write from.  However, a recent side hug experience gave me (literally!) a good angle, so here goes.

First, let’s define the side hug.  If a regular hug is a full embrace, then the side hug is a half-embrace.  It involves one arm and one shoulder of each participant.  However, just as regular hugging has gradations of intimacy, I have found that the side hug does as well.

Second, side hugs are pertinent to discussion because they run quite rampant in Christian communities.  Average self-respecting (beta) church guys usually face the dilemma of not wanting to be seen as the pervy creeper (or borderline gay) who hugs all the girls in a big embrace, but also wanting to be seen as a friendly and encouraging guy (who also gets to touch women).  A regular hug is often too much, especially with jittery 20-something women.  This is where the side hug comes in:  a method for touching and conveying camaraderie and care, but not in a creepy way!

There are basically three different levels of side hugging.  Below I have listed the types and the associated romantic prognosis for each.

180-degree side hug:  In the 180-degree side hug, your shoulders and the hugger’s form a straight line.

Romantic prognosis:  Never going to happen.

Obtuse angle side hug:  The obtuse angle side hug shows a little more rapport between hugger and huggee.  This is the category into which a lot of church side hugs fall.

Romantic prognosis:  Getting warmer, but either the girl is putting on the brakes, or the guy is still too big of a beta.  Alternatively, the girl wants the guy, but she’s too chubby/frumpy/hasn’t otherwise passed the boner test…but he does think she’s a nice person.

Acute angle side hug:  The acute angle side hug is more or less just a second arm away from being an embrace.

Romantic prognosis:  Her hamster will go crazy wondering WHAT IT MEANS.  If you’re a guy who goes around giving acute angle side hugs to women, you probably have options.  Also, you could probably flip the acute angle side hug into a regular hug, and the woman would not object.  Works best if preceded by kino.

I hope this breakdown is beneficial to the readership.

ETA:  Have a good or bad side hug story?  Share it in the comments.  It’s almost Christmas, we can be a little social. :)

What women mean by makeup vs. what men mean by makeup.

I’ve been meaning to do a makeup post/series and have just been procrastinating on it, but since Heartiste just did a makeup post, I figured that was motivation enough.

I think it’s obvious to any woman that men who claim they like women with NO MAKEUP WHATSOEVER don’t really mean that.  Unless they’re a true blue granola worshiper or truly get turned on by armpit hair or whatever, most men want to see women wearing some makeup.  They just don’t want to notice it.  (Maybe that’s the man hamster at work; if he doesn’t notice it, then the woman is genuinely that beautiful, meaning he has great taste, aims high, can land hotties with no trouble…as opposed to the ego-crushing truth of “that girl is just average.”)

Basically, a normal woman looks like this with zero makeup:

She has blemishes, uneven skin tone, and dark circles under her eyes.

Now, if she wears makeup, she can look like this:

Her skin tone is evened out, her blemishes and dark under-eye circles are concealed, her brows are defined, and her lips and cheeks are a pretty pink.  Her eyes are defined with mascara and liner, along with some neutral eyeshadow.  This look is what women typically call “subtly enhancing your features.”

MOST MEN WILL NOT IDENTIFY THIS LOOK AS MADE-UP.  MOST MEN THINK THIS IS A “NATURAL” LOOK AND SOME WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO TELL THE GIRL WAS WEARING MAKEUP.  Even if the girl used foundation, concealer, highlighter, translucent powder, eyeliner, mascara, multiple eye shadow colors (possibly including a primer), false eyelashes, brow pencil/shadow, lip liner, and lipstick and/or lip gloss, many men would swear she looked completely natural.  (A skilled makeup artist can use all of these items and produce a fresh, natural look.)

The reason men think that this look is “natural” is because men typically identify THIS as “makeup”:

Then they swear up and down that they HAAAAATE makeup (perhaps it makes them unhaaaaaaapy?) and that NO WOMAN OF THEIRS shall ever be caught dead wearing makeup!11!1!!1!!!!11  Because only ugly, desperate sluts wear makeup or something.

QED.

 

How John Eldredge would have men live.

I was emailing back and forth with a friend, and she mentioned that she finally watched Legends of the Fall for the first time.  Back in the mid-’90s, this movie helped solidify Brad Pitt’s heartthrob status, as he basically spent the movie looking like Fabio’s younger, blonder, Calvin Klein model-ier brother while alternately brooding or wooing as necessary.

However, what I did not know is that John Eldredge, in his revered Christian book Wild at Heart, used Pitt’s character Tristan to represent the “Wild at Heart” man.

SAY WHAT????

Eldredge writes,

Then there is Tristan, the middle son.  He is wild at heart.  It is Tristan who embodies the West–he catches and rides the wild stallion, fights the grizzly with a knife, and wins the beautiful woman.  I have yet to meet a man who wants to be Alfred [Aidan Quinn, the practical beta brother] or Samuel [Henry Thomas, the wussy, other beta brother].  I’ve yet to meet a woman who wants to marry one.

Did Eldridge watch a different movie than the one that was actually made?  As my friend described it (de-capped for readability),

The guy who tries to kiss his younger brother Henry Thomas’s fiancee Julia Ormond, and then scalps a bunch of Germans because they kill Henry Thomas in WWI, and then comes back and steals Julia from his other brother Aiden Quinn, and then runs away for five years bc he is too ~WRACKED WITH GUILT~ to be happy with Julia, and then comes back and messes with her head after she marries Aiden Quinn after all, and then smolders until she throws herself at him again but he says “No Go Back To Aiden,” and then kills some people because they killed his Indian wife, and then has to go live in the mountains the rest of his life.

That is apparently how John Eldredge would have men live.

It kind of reads like beta longing.  Eldredge obviously can’t be Pitt, but darn it, he really would like to be, if he could just un-imagine all of the bad stuff………

My friend, arbiter of fairness, added,

 To be fair though, Aiden is kind of whiny in it. I mean, hello, obviously she should have just married him first before Brad even came back from the war, but he kinda pulled a Bolin when she and Brad started gettin’ it on.

But when Aiden and Julia got married….they were really cute. Until she killed herself bc she couldn’t be with Brad. Yes this is real.

Don’t even get me started on the women in this movie.

I asked,

Did he see a Mormon edit of the movie or something???

My friend replied,

I DON’T KNOW

BUT IT IS THE WORST

Henry Thomas, despite being a beta virgin, comes off smelling the best of all three. Of course he dies first.

So men, be Wild At Heart.  ‘Tis better to scalp a bunch of Germans, swipe your brother’s wife and play mind games with her, inspire her suicide from your rejection, and go retire in the mountains as a murderer than to die cuckolded or a beta virgin.  First.

I mean, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.  Especially Christian ones.

 

I’m sure she thinks he married her for her intelligence and good personality.

 

(My favorite comment:  “Next ask her whats heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of potatoes.”)

HT: my Facebook feed

Mistakes.

Missing your exit on the freeway.

Dialing the wrong number.

Forgetting to write down a debit in your checkbook.

Banging a guy you just met in a bar.

Video: why men and women can’t be friends.

Res ipsa loquitur, but these kids are probably too young to have any familiarity with When Harry Met Sally. Click play and watch the hamsters spin.

 

(BTW, does this mean that only un-fat, generally attractive girls use the library at Utah State?  Are there no fat girls at Utah State?  Or did the filmmakers use size-ism to make their point???  If so, the whole thing is discredited!  Discredited, I sayyyy!)

Stuff Christians like: Sign language.

If there’s one thing that Christians, especially evangelicals, LOVE, it’s other languages.  No one laps up African children’s choirs or a missionary on furlough opening his guest sermon in his missional language quite like Christians do.  Sometimes Christians even like to wear traditional clothing of other nations during Missions Week to show their solidarity with countries they went to once on a missions trip back in the ’90s.

However, there is one language that Christians love above nearly all others, probably because you don’t even have to be able to hear to enjoy it.  That language is SIGN LANGUAGE.

Despite the fact that I have never attended a service where a plural number of people was both hearing impaired and sign-language literate, Christians just LOVE LOVE LOVE singing with their hands.  “Jesus Loves Me”?  SIGNED.  “Awesome God”?  SIGNED.  Anything by Hillsong?  SIGNED.  And if you’ve grown up in church, chances are you performed at least one signed song with the kiddie choir.  Even my church got into the act not that long ago, with a small choir busting out the S.L. and the worship leader exhorting everyone to sing to God in “another language.”

I think the popularity of sign language stems from a couple of different places.  For conservative, non-charismatic Christians, this gives them the opportunity to raise their arms above their heads and not feel like a threatening Pentecostal.  Think of it as the White Christian’s Gospel Hands, or the White Christian’s Dancing From The Waist Up.  For more liberal Christians, sign language gives them the satisfaction of “reaching out” while placating lack-of-diversity guilt at the same time.  Basically, it’s all win from whatever angle you’re coming at it from.

So if you know signing, or even just one song that you learned at another church, don’t be shy.  Let your worship leader know.  Ten bucks says you’ll be doing a solo on Sunday morning in no time flat, or even teaching the choir to sign, and then just watch the hearts be blessed by your rare and special talent.

So SIGN ON, BRETHREN.  SIGN ON.

P.S.  It is not very easy to find videos of men signing while singing.

Just a guess!

 

~Realistic expectations~ part 2.

~Realistic expectations~

(Unbunch your britches, people.  I’m doing a female one, too.)