Movie: Soul Surfer.

I recently saw the inspirational movie Soul Surfer, which is based on the real-life story of Bethany Hamilton, a Christian teenage surfer who lost her arm in a shark attack several years ago.  Unlike Fireproof, Soul Surfer had a multi-million dollar budget and major studio backing, and as a result offers viewers Hollywood production values and “name” actors who were able to bring the script to life.  The movie was shot in Hawaii and makes the island look gorgeous.  The surfing is also authentic – the real Bethany Hamilton did the surfing for her movie self – and is well-filmed.

Oftentimes when Christian stories go through the Hollywood machine, the Christian content gets watered down so as to draw a wider audience (i.e., not “offend” anyone).  That didn’t really happen in Soul Surfer.  We see the characters attending church and singing worship songs, Carrie Underwood shows up as the youth group leader to read scripture and go on missions trips, and Bethany’s dad is reading the Bible as he watches over her in the hospital.  I was surprised to see this degree of realism of a contemporary evangelical lifestyle in a major theatrical feature, but the movie manages the minor miracle of not being preachy or self-conscious about it.  The Hamilton family’s faith is presented as a normal part of their lives, not a Special Teachable Moment or Time Out For An Altar Call To The Heathens Unsaved We Tricked Into Seeing This Movie That’s Supposed To Be About Surfing  But Not Really HaHa.

Notable for readers of this blog is the portrayal of Bethany’s parents by Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt.  It’s not just that they were believable as parents and a married couple (they were), but they were believable as a married couple who loved each other and LIKED each other and still had a sexual spark between them.  It was a pleasure to see.  Too often in movies and TV, longtime married couples who get along are portrayed as kindly roommate-partners whose pinnacle of passion is a peck when the husband or wife comes home from work, or maybe an affectionate side hug.

Funnily enough, although Soul Surfer is primo youth group entertainment, I can see it being controversial in some circles because the girls wear string bikinis throughout much of the movie (although during the surf competitions, they wear colored surf shirts).  To someone familiar with beach/surf culture, this is ordinary and unremarkable, but I can already imagine the handwringing over whether to let hormonal teenage boys view the movie for fear of inciting lust.

(For parents – there is zero bad language, and even the shark attack is pretty benign.)

You might be Christian LJBFed if…

…you ask her out and she needs to pray about it before giving you an answer.

…she never talks to you at churchly singles mingles without a less attractive, more boring, more annoying female friend around.

…she only invites you to group activities.

…she is popular at church and you are not.

…she tells you you’re a “great guy.”

…she tells you that so many girls are looking for a godly guy like you.

…she puts you on the prayer team tree and you’re not the person she’s supposed to call.

…she praises the worship leader/hot missionary/Habitat for Humanity organizer’s “servant’s heart” too much.

…the pastor instructs everyone to reach across the aisle for prayer and you get to hold her hand only to find out it’s cold and limp and she doesn’t give a quick, churchly squeeze at “amen.”

…she calls you a brother in Christ.

Jim Chapman’s guy’s advice for girls.

Jim Chapman is a young, very adorable men’s grooming vlogger from England.  I started watching his sisters’ makeup tutorials and then subscribed to his channel when he started it.  Most of the time Jim reviews grooming products or does lifestyle bits, but today he posted a video discussing mistakes that girls have made with him in the past.  It reinforced the conventional wisdom of the manosphere (minus the bitterness, anger at women, Chicken Little admonitions against marriage, and so forth – but then he’s had a cute girlfriend for several years), so I thought it would be worth embedding here.  Plus, a cute British accent always makes advice taste a little sweeter. :)

(If you don’t have time to watch or can’t listen because you’re sneaking blog time on the job, his advice is (1) Don’t be too forward. (2) Don’t be too aloof. (3) Don’t be needy. (4) Don’t be a vomiting drunk.)

His churchly dating status: a table.

How the average churchly single girl sees her options.

“Can I get him?”: breaking it down.

Evaluation process of the average girl who hasn’t had a lot of dating success.

She freaked out when he did not read her mind.

Boundless put up an article today that further demonstrates why church dating is so difficult.  In “How Not to Freak a Girl Out,” Martha Krienke shares a letter from a reader wherein the reader describes that after knowing a guy for two weeks, he asked her out with Boundless-style intentionality, explaining that he saw her as “marriage material.”  Reader promptly FREAKED OUT and rejected the guy.  Then her hamster went into overdrive, culminating in the letter to Boundless.

I’ll admit that the guy made the mistake of destroying any mystery he may have possessed by laying all of his cards out on the table at the get-go.  He also, I assume, made the mistake of proceeding without enough (any?) IOIs from Reader.

But Reader’s letter to Boundless was so hamsterrific, my eyes boggled, and it speaks to Boundless’s disconnect with the realities of the SMP that Krienke didn’t rebuke Reader.  Reader writes:

I know that Boundless and many circles are beginning to promote guys becoming pursuers and moving purposefully toward marriage. But I’d like to promote that there needs to be more caress, creativity and sensitivity in this area. “Putting the ball in her court” too early may drive a godly lady to emotional turmoil. She may need time to marinate in his light affections and attention before having him express in words his intentions and affections.

The idea that Reader wanted to be wooed rather than told “I’m looking for a wife, and you seem like wife material” – I can understand that.  Especially after only knowing a guy for a couple of weeks and probably not having much one-on-one interaction with him, it probably came off a little like the guy was going shopping and she looked like a good deal.  But then all of Reader’s purple prose about marinating and “emotional turmoil” betrayed entitlement:  that she expected this guy to read her mind and know exactly how she wanted to be pursued.  She continues:

To be poetic, I describe my “feelings and affections” like a flower that grows. We gently, and in good amounts for the specific type of flower, give it water and sunlight. [In relationships], the water and sunlight are the “pursuit/flirting/feeling the water.”  The flower represents the “relationship.” And the growth of the flower represents the “feelings and affections.”  The blooming of the flower represents “commitment.”

I think that for this particular flower, there was too much sunlight and water too early. The flower was not ready to bloom yet. It had not grown enough in the right conditions to be ready to bloom.

Church guys, if you would like to be successful in acquiring a woman who seems like “wife material,” adhere to the above instructions…if she’s not already attracted to you.  What reader is ignoring is that if this guy had already been attractive to her, she wouldn’t be going on about watering, stems, and blooming, or needing to “marinate.”  She would have jumped at the opportunity to go on a date with this guy and would be reading Passion and Purity to try to keep her hormones in check.

The major problem with the Boundless approach to dating is that Boundless doesn’t believe in/hasn’t discovered the alpha/beta divide.  It assumes that all men are starting from the same place and therefore need only apply the same steps to get where they want to go.  But because some men are alphas and even more are betas, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work, and it only leads to results like the one chronicled by Reader.  Telling men to “man up,” “be intentional,” and “stop jerking girls around” is only useful for alphas.  Telling a beta to man up and be intentional leads to freak-outs and rejections.  By omitting the critical step of gauging female interest (and responding accordingly), Boundless dooms many men to dating failure.

Reader concludes:

I’m hoping that I might have a chance to start over. To get to know each other as brother and sister serving together. To get “pursuitive hints” without being faced with an expression of intentions. To get to grow in my own affections before being asked to commit.

[In my final refusal toward him,] I never actually meant that I didn’t want to be pursued. I guess I just wanted to be pursued in a lighter, slower and building sort of way.

I would say that Reader is in the “neutral” zone with the guy, otherwise she wouldn’t have expressed interest in “get[ting] to know each other as brother and sister serving together.”  Having rejected him, she wants the option of having him back so she won’t feel like she made a big mistake if he turns out to be a catch.  If he were truly repulsive to her, she wouldn’t have wanted to get to know him in any way.  That said, it’s pretty clear that he’s not super attractive to her – a woman invoking brother/sister comparisons, even if it’s brother/sister in Christ, is not a sign of burgeoning attraction.  Overall, Reader’s letter just seems to be a politely-worded complaint that she wasn’t pursued in the desired manner.

Still, Reader’s situation does shed light on the dating situation that most singles will face in the church, mainly because most people are not automatically attractive to vast numbers of the opposite sex.  Most church guys will still need to learn some game and learn to read IOIs.  Boundless keeps neglecting to mention (because it doesn’t distinguish between alphas and betas) that intentionality alone is not enough.  Most church girls will have to accept dates requested in a less than ideal manner, with guys who are not super attractive to them at the time of the asking.  Alas, Mr. Darcy doesn’t go to your church.  Neither does Megan Fox.  But on the upside, you’re probably not Chunk from The Goonies, so take comfort in that silver lining.

 

Weird Al puts it all in perspective…

Wedding reception dance floor gender ratios.

Around 8:30pm, there were about 10 women for every man on the dance floor.

Around 9:30pm, there were about 3 women for every man.

Around 11:00pm, there were about 0.1 women for every man.

Men don’t dance until they’re three sheets to the wind, at which point it doesn’t matter to them if women are involved or not.

Also, all the old people cleared out by 9:30, so the DJ stopped playing any music my parents recognized.  Explaining to my mother that the name of the song was “Yeah!” turned into a sort-of “Who’s on first?” experience.  Also, my dad was utterly perplexed at the song he thought was called “The Huffty Huff.”

Companionship vs. sexual attraction.

Hana recently made a provocative statement (at least, for this corner of the internetz) at her blog:

…close friendship, where two people share common interests, a compatible sense of humour, and similar intelligence, etc.   When a man and a woman are close friends in this way, the importance of sexual attraction seems to fade.  Sexual attraction is still present…Still, sexual attraction becomes less important when a man and a woman are truly close friends.

She then made an even more provocative statement:

As long as you’re somewhat attracted to him or her, why not marry your best friend?

This seems like a pretty far cry from Dalrock’s and Badger’s insistence that a woman feel “head over heels” for any potential spouse, but in my opinion, it seems like a good recipe for a stable, enduring marriage.  If women are able to grow in attraction to a mate and will feel more attracted and more attached to him once they have sex, and the woman at least meets a man’s minimum physical attractiveness requirements, and there is a preexisting emotional/intellectual bond and the two enjoy each other’s company, then that sounds like pretty solid grounds for marrying (assuming there are no red flags in other areas).  God willing, you’re both going to be old and achy a lot longer than you’re going to be young and hot, so it’s worth investing in someone who will still be fun when your collagen production has reached its nadir and you can’t see each other clearly up close without bifocals anyway (not that you would necessarily want to, due to the wrinkles).

Speaking anecdotally, I had a friend who fit this description.  We attended the same church and got along swimmingly.  It was very easy for us to have lengthy conversations, and our senses of humor meshed well.  We weren’t superclose friends, but I could tell that we were on the same wavelength.  After knowing him for a couple of years, I started to think that if he hadn’t been married with kids, he was someone I probably could have married.  I didn’t feel “head over heels” for him.  I didn’t even have a crush on him.  I wasn’t physically attracted to him (but whatever my minimum standard of physical attractiveness was, he met that, because I wasn’t repulsed by him).  He was just someone I got along with really, really well.

When you consider that when you marry someone, you’re signing up to wake up to that person’s face every day for the rest of your life, and when you come home there’s no escaping that person, getting along really well becomes a pretty important consideration.

A picture is worth a thousand words!

Why women are afraid to pump up men’s egos.

The privateman, in his most recent blog entry, wrote,

“It’s remarkable but I wonder how many women resist or completely reject such advice [to make a man feel good] because of feminist, ideological grounds (“it’s wrong to make a man feel good”)  or their own sense of fabulousness causes them to stick their heads in the sand.”

The answer is:  a lot.

The reason that women resist and reject advice to flatter men is basically an issue of power.  You wouldn’t know it from reading manosphere sites, but men, especially if white and educated, get the majority of perks in the world.  They get the best jobs.  They occupy the top of pretty much every occupational field, fields of women’s interests included (fashion, beauty, cooking, media).  They make the most money.  They’re more implicitly trusted in matters of business.  They get to have sex with tons of people and receive very little judgment for it.  They get to marry women young enough to be their daughters and have kids at age 70.  They get to be funny, outrageous, outspoken, and wild, and people just chuckle affectionately.  (Women who are funny, outrageous, outspoken, and wild, on the other hand,  just get called bitches, sluts, and bulldykes.)  They get to do most of the exciting and interesting things in this world, and they tend to think they know everything about everything.  And generally they don’t pay much of a social price for getting fat and dressing dumpy.

Meanwhile, women are expected to be quiet and have babies, always be up for sex, never gain any weight, and never have an opinion that contradicts a man’s.

Given these circumstances, it’s pretty easy to see why a modern woman balks at making a man feel good about himself.  In her mind, he already has the world’s oyster in his palm.  Giving him MORE sex, MORE compliments, and MORE deference is only going to inflate his ego even more than it already is and make him feel even more entitled to the things society has already given him.  And what, exactly, has this man done to earn any of these things other than be born with a penis?  Furthermore, if a woman flatters a man’s ego, he will just take her for granted and feel he has the ability to make unqualified demands as well as the right not to be of any help to the woman.  Women can’t see how treating a man well (i.e., like a ’50s homemaker) for no reason other than that he is a man can result in anything good for themselves.

Additionally, every woman either has a friend or knows somebody who got a boyfriend and then turned into a Stepford wife who has to get permission just to go to the mall, and while she’s there, her boyfriend will be constantly checking in on her and demanding to know all the details of what she’s doing.  And the friend will insist that he’s just doing this because he loves her.  No sane woman wants this to happen to her or be seen as weak and controllable, so that’s another reason that women tend to be resistant to giving men what they want.

Some of this attitude stems from hypergamy.  Women all want the best men for themselves, but women know that those men have options and in many cases have no compunction about straying.  A woman could treat such a man as a king, and she still runs the risk of his cheating.  So in a defensive measure, the woman will do what she thinks will earn her greater respect and shore up her power, which is to deny the man what he wants or thinks he is entitled to.  Then the man won’t feel quite so secure about walking all over her, because now he knows there is a price to pay.

Another reason is the American culture of meritocracy, where we take pride in earning things for ourselves and much American lore is centered around people who Did It Themselves, as opposed to getting something because of who your dad was.  This attitude extends to mating, as well.  It’s hard for women to be taught that everything they know about how the world works apparently doesn’t work in romantic male/female relationships, and it’s not like any major media is out there promoting this, anyway.  (It IS kind of ironic, though, that men who will rail against the evils of affirmative action will be happy to receive affirmative action praise from a woman.)

I can hear the cries rising up from the peanut gallery already, so let me be clear that YES, a lot of this modern female attitude is a response to alpha males and WAH WAH WAH MOST MEN ARE BETAS DOOMED TO LONELY SEXLESS LIVES WHILE ALPHAS HAVE ALL THE FUN WAHHHHH MARRIAGE 2.0 CAROUSEL NO GOOD WOMEN LEFT ON THE ENTIRE PLANET EXCEPT IN THAILAND WAHHHHHH.  But at the same time, women instinctively don’t want to dish out praise and coddling to men they don’t respect.  Sorry, Pushover Pete.**  And sorry, Slob Sam.  A lot of times women see men as overgrown children who seem barely able to take care of themselves.  They live in sties.  They think the Value Menu is cooking.  They would rather turn their underwear inside out than do laundry.  And women think to themselves, “I’m working a full-time job and still living respectably, but I’m supposed to tell this guy how wonderful he is and bring him his slippers?!?”  (Boundless:  “MAN UP!”)  It’s the “people like to help people who can help themselves” meritocratic thinking at work.

So what is the solution?  It’s not castigating women and screeching that everything is their fault.  (See:  Garden of Eden.)  Explanations of the differences between what motivates men and what motivates women are all fine and good, but you can’t undo generations of dogma raised to a level of canonical faith to go bye-bye with a few sarcastic zingers and alpha posturing.  Demonstrating praiseworthy characteristics is the best way to go, especially if done with confidence and good humor.  Greatness is irresistible, so show some greatness and the admiration will come forth naturally.  (If it doesn’t, you might be swimming in a poisoned pond.  Best to look for fresh water in that case.)

**My brother once told me that when a woman tells you you’re the best at something, you’re walking on air for a week.  I goggled at him like he’d just said that 2+2=5 and asked him, “But what if the woman is lying?”  He said that it didn’t matter.  But inside I was repulsed at the idea that a man would so gladly accept unearned praise and that a woman would stoop to giving it just to get her way.