It’s March. Daffodils are starting to spring up, the nights are getting lighter, and the gloom of January seems long gone. So long gone, in fact, that the hopeful list of self-improvement goals we set ourselves on the first of the month are likely to be nothing more to us now than a screwed up piece of scrap paper with the words ‘lose weight’ scrawled hopefully across the top, and a sense of failure that makes us reach for the biscuit tin in sorrow. Oh the irony.
But then comes Lent: a much-needed excuse to reboot our self-improvement challenges. But when talking to my friends about the 40-days-and-40-nights of restraint, I realised that the conversation was strikingly similar to the one we’d had about resolutions just two months ago. The girls, invariably, promise to resist chocolate, carbs, or anything else that could in some way affect their bikini bod. The boys, on the other hand, have a much more relaxed ‘what a load of crap’ attitude, declaring that they neither want to or need to give anything up and simultaneously wondering how long they have to wait to ask if this means they can finish that bar of Galaxy in the fridge.
But are boys really so perfect that they shouldn’t even consider making any changes? HAH! Maybe I should try and give up asking ridiculous questions this Lent. No, that is not the case at all. In fact, I can think of a lot of habits that I’m sure many girls would agree that men could do with dropping this Lent as quickly as they drop their pancakes the day before it all starts…
1. ‘Sagging’
Of all the insane trends I’ve encountered in my lifetime, (the double-denim of the B*Witched days, hair crimping, Crocs) this is without a doubt the worst! You might not know the name of it, but you’re sure to have encountered it; the mind-boggling trend that is ‘sagging,’ or the male practice of wearing trousers so low that there have been several cases where NASA mistakenly thought they’d found another moon to land on.
I may not be the leading authority on male fashion, but I’m sure that anyone with an IQ higher than that of a tin of tuna can see how very idiotic this trend is. Aesthetically it’s a monstrosity! As if showing me next week’s washing isn’t bad enough, the majority of the time I’m faced with what apparently should have been last week’s (if those mysterious yellow stains are anything to go by). As ugly as it is impractical, it’s also completely unnecessary since the invention of a revolutionary anti-gravity device…the belt. Maybe it’s meant to be attractive, like seeing your under-crackers (and in extreme cases, just the ‘crack’ part) will make me instantly want to see what else lies beneath the fabric. No thank you. If anything, it’s a repellent; if you can’t clean you Calvin’s then there’s little hope for anything else. Quite frankly, 40-years without this trend wouldn’t be long enough, but 40-days-and-40-nights will just have to do. Boys may think it’s fashion, but I’m in-Calvin-Kleined to disagree.
2. Uninvited Grinding
If fashion ‘statements’ are too ingrained into life to get rid of, then perhaps a bad habit could be easier for men to purge themselves of for the 40 days of restraint, a habit that I would be more than happy never to have to come across again. This is something which I’m sure you’ll have encountered on numerous nights out (especially if you’re a frequent Halo-goer on a Monday night). It generally happens after midnight, when the alcohol is in full flow and the dance floor is busy; you’re dancing with your friends, having a good time, minding your own business… and then you feel it. It starts with a nudge, which you brush off, putting it down to the crowded dance floor and the fact that you’re probably blocking someone’s path to the toilet. Then it comes again, harder this time, as if trying to get your attention, you try to dance away, but then you feel it, the arm around your waist, the uninvited bump against your booty; ladies, we’ve got ourselves a grinder.
Now a standard mating-ritual for the 21st Century man, I can’t help but confess that I find being grinded against by a random (usually sleazy looking, overly hair-gelled) stranger about as appealing as having my face chopped up and put in a pepper grinder, with the similar outcome of disgust and repellence. I certainly wouldn’t mind forty nights out without this treatment! I’m not a magic lamp, and rubbing your nether regions up against me is certainly not the way to get your wishes granted.
3. Numbers Up
Admittedly, I’m an old romantic. If I had it my way, every date would begin with the words “here’s your corsage, where shall we go dancing tonight m’lady?” and end with the handing over of a love letter (or at least a text) saying how utterly fabulous it is to know me. Unfortunately, I have had to come to accept that this is unlikely to ever happen. And it’s hardly surprising given the seeming inability of men to compliment ladies these days. I first encountered the habit at a party when a slightly cocky looking boy (wearing a too-tight shirt and at least a can of Lynx) approached me and began making some inane chit-chat that I think was his attempt at flirting. After politely saying I wasn’t interested, (by pretending to see someone I knew and making my apologies) he tried one last ditch attempt to win me over “Wow, that’s more than a dress, that’s an Audrey Hepburn movie”. I fell at his feet… oh wait, sorry, that’s a line (the perfect one to win me over actually) from Jerry McGuire, silly me, what this fella really said was “You’re at least an 8 yano?” and that just doesn’t really compare, does it? Aside from the clearly offensive issues of putting women in some kind of numerical order, the guy, in his clear attempt to get some Georgia-lovin’, didn’t even give me a ten! Come on! It’s this habit that really needs to be broken. I’m seriously considering buying every man I know a thesaurus this lent in hope that he’ll be able to ‘compliment’ women in a non-mathematical fashion. Quoting figures is no way to get your hands on my figure.
Though an admittedly hard task, I seriously think that us girls should use our powers of persuasion (or bribery) to make ourselves a Gent this Lent.
Image Sources:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/filepicker%2FdkXYmXO9TJyqn8OsN41s_grinding_in_the_club.jpg
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/30/fashion/30baggy600.1.jpg
http://www.cardiffsportsnutrition.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/NewYearsResolutions.jpeg
http://www.wolfescape.com/Humour/NonMedThumbs/WaitingForPerfectMan.gif