GirlTip: learn to walk in dress shoes.

This is apropos of a situation I’ve been dealing with on an ongoing basis for quite a while.

Women, please learn to walk in dress shoes.

There is little that signifies an off-putting lack of femininity more than a woman’s clomping around in dress shoes, each step a thunderous thud that shakes the earth as her body bobs up and down, pitched forward at the waist to keep balance.  When a woman walks in heels (and, for that matter, in general), she should not bring to mind a hiker with an imaginary backpack trudging up a trail, or a floppy rag doll filled with sand.

Whether the heel is one or four inches, the back should be straight, the shoulders back, and the steps light.  The neck through the waist should be as one, sustained in the core, never breaking, like a pillar balanced over the hips.  Arms should swing naturally at the side.  Movement from Point A to Point B should resemble a smoothly flowing stream, not a piston chugging in a factory.

An awkward, galumphing walk can undo all of the good of:

• a pretty dress
• a manicure
• perfectly styled hair
• pristine makeup
• a good personality

Okay, maybe not all of the good, but it will severely weaken the effect of all of the above, assuming you have any of those to begin with.  (If you have none or few of the above, you will ensure with a poor walk that no men will approach you with any romantic interest, and you will also damage your standing in a career setting.  No one will send someone who walks like Sasquatch to charm the clients.)

If you have a bad walk, practice until you have a better one.  YouTube has a bunch of tutorials on how to walk in heels.  I would also suggest trying ballet, yoga, or pilates:  these will help you develop the kind of carriage that is more conducive to walking in heels.

Youth Group Guy

Anyone who has grown up in an evangelical setting is familiar with Youth Group Guy.  He’s the de facto social leader of the youth group by virtue of one or more of the following:  having the right parents, being willing to pray aloud in front of the entire youth group, being a part of the youth group’s praise band, being first in line to volunteer for outreach events, being eager to talk about his experiences on missions trips and how they Really Affected his relationship with God, being brave enough to confess to the youth group that he struggles with lust but somehow manages to treat all girls as if their looks don’t matter, promoting virginity via a True Love Waits or similar pledge, having A+ credentials in apologetics, always being the youth group’s number one supporter, being the youth pastor’s favorite and go-to guy for teen cred, and dressing better or at least more uniquely than all of the other guys in the youth group.  Sometimes he is considered “good-looking.”

Youth Group Guy typically has an extroverted, gregarious personality and loves to crack unfunny but safe, Christian-approved jokes.  Youth Group Guy lacks a sense of irony or sarcasm and has little use for subtext.  He tends to be proud that he is ignorant of popular culture and loves to denounce the evils of movies, television, and popular music.  He is convinced to his core that he is right and enjoys battling unbelievers on hot-button topics.

Youth Group Guy is usually deeply desired by a large percentage of girls in the youth group, who see him as the sexually pure spiritual leader of their future marriage.  He tends to treat all girls equally and doesn’t seem overly interested in girls, yet he always has a girlfriend, usually one of the choicest picks of the youth group (cute, nice, inoffensive, popular, wants to have lots of babies, sincerely loves Jesus).

Youth Group Guy’s future usually follows a track like this:  youth group superstar, goes to Bible college, majors in one of the liberal arts, acquires girlfriend who was homeschooled at least through eighth grade, graduates, gets married to college girlfriend, goes to the mission field or seminary, has a bunch of kids.

Sometimes I wish I could be attracted to Youth Group Guy.

You never know who you’re going to meet in the grocery store.

This post isn’t going to be a cute story about how I met the love of my life in the grocery store because we were standing next to each other in the checkout line, and I made an irresistibly witty comment about a tabloid magazine, and he laughed at the joke and agreed, and I realized he was exceptionally attractive and he noticed that although I was not the most striking woman he had ever laid eyes on, I definitely had the most beautiful Proverbs 31 ~heart~ he had encountered in the past decade, and he asked me to go to the Starbucks stand within the store, and then ten hours later we went home with ecstatic smiles on our faces, giddy that the Lord had seen fit to bring together two like-minded souls in answer to the prayers of myself and twenty of my closest small group girlfriends.  (Seriously, if this story were true, this blog would not exist.)

The unsexy reality is that the likelihood that you are going to meet your future spouse at the grocery store is pretty low.  If you did a survey of married couples, the percentage of those whose story began with meeting randomly at the grocery store would probably be in the very low single digits, if that.  Much like in the past, the majority of couples meet through family and friends.  Probably the next highest percentage meet through some shared activity such as work, church, school, or a hobby.  In comparison to the relative power of the aforementioned methods, which have the advantage of screening by those who know both your and his personality, character, and interests, trolling for a spouse in the produce section at Vons is far from the most efficient method.  You’re more likely to win free fries from the yearly Monopoly promo at McDonald’s.

I suppose it’s true that opportunity lurks at every corner and that luck — er, providence — favors the prepared, but I just can’t counsel women to feel guilty if they make a run to the grocery store looking less than their best.  (If looking less than your best, or at least looking not very good, i.e., like someone trampled over you, is your typical M.O., then we have an issue, but I’ll save that for another post.)