Why would ANYONE want a Bentley?!

Last night I watched this week's episode of The Bachelorette and I have to admit I feel a little bit sick to my stomach.  If you're not watching the show, let me catch you up.  There's this woman who's dating 25 men all at once and sending 1 or 2 home each week.  The idea is, she'll whittle them down to the last one and, hopefully, find "the one" and get married.  Admittedly, the whole Bachelor/Bachelorette phenomenon is a bit far fetched and voyeuristic but I can't help myself.  The idea of romance is just so enticing I can't help but watch.  Well, this season one of the bachelors was a charming, handsome, fun-loving sociopath named Bentley.  When he was in the presence of the bachelorette, he was essentially the ideal man - sensitive, self deprecating just enough to make him attractive, funny, and, of course, gorgeous.  To the camera he was the most disgusting pig of a human being anyone could ever imagine.  As he claimed that his only goal was to win the game, he talked about her in the most horrible ways - "she's not my type", "that kiss was terrible," "I wish she were Emily" (another of the girls from last season's The Bachelor), "She's kind of an ugly duckling," and on and on.  While he's saying all of this behind her back, he is deliberately making her fall totally in love with him.  She was not a human being, she was simply a fun little challenge for him to achieve.

You all may be wondering what an episode of The Bachelorette has to do with weight loss, so I'll tell you...   One of the issues I've been dealing with in my adult life is my basic anger at, and distrust of men.  On a day to day basis, my distrust doesn't make much sense because I am continuously surrounded by upstanding, faithful, loving, wonderful men who treat their wives so well.  But I have also spent my adult life watching men treat other female friends so badly that I must have kept all of my feelings about that stored deep in my mind.  And if I'm being completely honest, I have to also admit that part of my distrust comes from feelings of rejection I've felt from men in general throughout my life.  I think I've interpreted the rejection as being a physical rejection - I'm fat so men want nothing to do with me.  In contrast, the friends who have been treated the worst have actually been the most beautiful women I have ever known (inside AND out).  Somewhere in my brain an idea has developed that straight men are superficial to a fault and only want physically beautiful women, not because they are in love with the human being but because they see women as something of a trophy to win.  Once they get that trophy, all the romance is over.  It has been suggested to me that I keep myself overweight to keep men away and to keep my heart safe. 

So, when I watched that "reality" show yesterday it just illustrated so completely all of my rational AND irrational reasons for anger that I just HAD to talk about it here today.  I know that for every horrible man with horrible ways of treating women there are 5 wonderful men who treat the women in their lives like queens.  I know that I have become accustomed to subconsciously focusing on the negative and not on the positive, so I have made a point of avoiding books, movies, TV shows and so on that have male characters like Bentley.  This one just snuck up on me, I guess.  I just wish that men could be less visual when it comes to their attractions the way women can often be.  How many times do we see gorgeous women dating or married to not-so-good-looking men?  How often do we see gorgeous men dating or married to not-so-good-looking women?  Pretty much never. 

The danger of writing thoughts like this in such a public forum is people might think I'm pathetic or feeling sorry for myself.  But the reality is, these are not things I think about a lot.  It's more like a residue that's taking up space in my head and kind of influencing my decisions without me even realizing it.  I do think it is a very real possibility that all the pounds I've put on over the last decade are just little barriers I've piled up to keep me safe from some sort of subliminally perceived danger.  Now that I'm aware of it, however, I can slowly but surely start chipping away at those barriers and allow myself to reenter the world as the new and improved ME!

Until then, I am happy in my fantasies about all the Bentley's of the world contracting some kind of sexually transmitted disease that makes them as physically repulsive as their rotten hearts & forces them to live alone with their thoughts for the rest of their lives.  (Hmmm, that's not very charitable, is it?  I might have to work on that!)

See you back here on the flip side!

Laura