Oh, You're Married? Well Didn't YOU Just Get More Attractive!

This past Saturday night I was down in the city having dinner with an old college friend (I like/hate that I'm old enough to say "old college friend") who married her long-term boyfriend back in October. She was telling me a story about how ever since their wedding, whenever they are out at a bar, girls won't stop hitting on her husband.

"Why is that, do you think?" She asked me.

I thought for a moment and then presented a question.

"Does he wear a wedding ring?"

My friend nodded and this led us into the hypocrisy of married men versus married women. Here is what we concluded:

Girls become more attracted to men who are obviously in a relationship. This is because what we ultimately want is a man who can commit. Therefore, if we see a guy with a wedding ring on or standing with a girl who is obviously his significant other, our hormones go wild and our biological clock starts spinning like mad. Here is someone who isn't out at a bar just to pick up chicks to go home and bang, it's someone who is out with his wife or girlfriend who he cares about and is (presumably) faithful to.

"But why don't guys approach me when they see me with my wedding ring on?" my friend then asked.

"Because," I said, "it shows that you're committed which, while this is what we want, is the exact opposite of what guys want."

Once again my friend nodded.

"Makes sense." she said.

So then we began dissecting the other side of the spectrum. If a guy sees a girl that he is attracted to, and as he approaches her he sees some sign of her obviously wanting a commitment, this will scare him off. The boner goes down and he turns to go search for some girl with her tits spilling out of her shirt and drunk eyes.

Think of it this way:

Girls- Do we not find celebrity men more attractive when we see them being affectionate and caring towards a woman?

And Guys- Do you not completely want to vomit when you see a female celebrity with a new baby in one arm and a breast pump in the other?

Boooobs Part 2: The Experiment

A month or two ago, my friend and I were at Target, once again spending way too much money. At one point we were in the bra section because I had recently realized that all of my undergarments were about as unsexy as they come. So as I was picking out a nice little lacy number, my friend points out a rack (pun totally intended) of bras next to us.

"Dude, have you seen these before? They increase you two cup sizes." she said, sifting through the different color options.

"So, wait, I would be a C?" I asked, unable to grasp that concept.

"Yeah, what size are you? I'll find it."

I told her my bra size and we picked one out with a borderline trampy purple and black leopard pattern. The padding in each cup was roughly as thick as a couch cushion.

We went back into the dressing rooms and crammed into one stall because we obviously needed each other's opinions on everything we had to try on, and could not be bothered with the concept of opening the door and stepping out in front of the communal mirror. When it was time to strap on my bra-on-steroids, I already had the idea in my mind that it was going to be a complete disaster and there was no way I would end up walking out of the store with that thing in a plastic bag.

Neverless, to amuse my friend, I slipped the bra on and scooped my boobs into the cups (you girls know exactly what I'm talking about with the boob-scooping...at least all you girls with slightly smaller chests). As I turned around to face the mirror, I started laughing at what was sure to be a completely ridiculous sight. However, once I faced my reflection, my laughter died down.

"Huh." I mumbled, turning to the side. My friend looked up and gave me a once over.

"Whoa."

What we saw in the mirror was plain old Alexis with a huge freakin' rack. Like, my cup runneth over. It was a spectacular sight.

"You have to get that." my friend said, nodding in approval.

"Yeah, but I would never wear it," I argued, continuing to turn from side to side, simultaneously creeped out and strangely attracted to myself. "Unless.."

"Unless.."

"Unless I wore it out one night, just to, you know, see if people's reactions were any different."

"DO IT."

So I did. I bought the bra with the idea in my head that I would wear it out to a bar one night and then write a blog about it the next day. You see how I'm always thinking of you guys, my lovely followers?

Despite this plan of mine, the bra remained in the Target bag, underneath my desk, for a full month. It was as if I was afraid to let it out of the bag, like it would come to life and attack me like some terrible 80's horror movie. What exactly was it about this bra that terrified me, you may ask? It was the possibility of the following scenario happening:

I wear the bra and go to the bar. Some guy sees my giant headlights from the other side of the room and approaches me, eyes on my retail store produced goods the entire time. We start talking and he asks me and my girls out on another date. I show up in my regular bra, and have to explain to him that I was doing a little experiment and in reality, he and I have the same size chest. He then tells me I'm crazy and peaces out.

Basically I was afraid of pretending to be someone that I'm physically not.

So I decided to scale it down a notch. During a day of errands with the same friend who I had gone to Target with the day of the big purchase, I wore the bra underneath a simple tank top. I looked down and for the first time ever, the first thing I saw were boobs. When I got into my friend's car, she looked at me and went "Good lord!". I felt extremely uncomfortable but I was going to ride this thing out. After all, it was just a bra. There are a bajillion girls out there with a giant rack, what made me any different on that particular day?

So I held my head high as we walked through the mall, not so secretly catching a glimpse of myself in each store window that we passed. I also made sure to be alert towards any potential attention that I received from the people we walked by. You know, see if guys noticed me more with a bigger chest.

Well, I can honestly say that not one guy looked at me. Now, the girls I passed on the other hand, they were very open to glance down at my boobs and sneer. And people wonder why I'm not a giant fan of chicks.

All was not lost on my bra though, fear not. Later that night, I went over to my special gentleman friend's house and he certainly noticed my enhanced ladies. As we sat watching a movie I would occasionally feel his hand reach over and poke one. As I was leaving that night, he walked me to my car, gave me a kiss, and as he was walking back towards his house, he turned and yelled out "Wear it again next week!"

So, I guess the bra had some degree of success.

All I know is, by the end of the day when I finally got home and into my own bed, my back was killing me.

A Literary Slow Dance

I know I said that I would write about dressing up like a ho-ho this week, but there's been a change of plans. Something about all of these recent break-ups of long-term celebrity marriages has got me thinking about the whole "happily ever after" concept, and the fact that I just watched one of the more dramatic episodes of Sex & the City (the one where Harry proposes to Charlotte and Carrie knocks the vase of carnations off her coffee table after Burger breaks up with her on a post-it) made me decide to write a somewhat serious entry.

Now, it's no secret that I would love nothing more than to be a redneck Carrie Bradshaw, basking in one of the Carolina's, writing my very own newspaper column on sex and relationships. I have also recently purchased a pair of shoes (from Target, of course), that I believe would make Carrie herself very proud. However, a big fear of mine is to find myself at 35 years old, with a long list of ex-relationships but no husband. And a bigger fear of mine is to settle into a comfortable, long-lasting marriage, only to realize after 25 years that I have committed to the wrong person.

I grew up surrounded by terrible marriages, so I have absolutely no clue what a healthy relationship is supposed to look like. I have an idea in my head of what I hope to someday achieve with a significant other, but in my own personal experiences of both my past relationships and the relationships around me, I just don't trust anyone anymore. Even if I meet someone who completely knocks my socks off, someone who is absolutely everything I ever wanted and more, how do I know that after a couple of years things won't completely fall apart? And do I have it in me to once again give myself completely to someone- mentally, emotionally, and physically- just for it to be thrown back in my face eventually?

I'm thinking no.

And this is a sad thought. It's really sad, actually. I know I'm still young and I have my whole life ahead of me and blah blah blah, but the fact of the matter is, I'm ready to find that person. And I think that a lot of my single friends would say they feel the same way. Especially with this sudden boom of college and high school friends getting married and having kids, it's really discouraging to show up at these celebrations either A) completely single, or B) fresh out of yet another relationship. I have come shockingly close to marriage twice in my life, and if this whole third-time's-a-charm thing isn't true, well, I'm screwed.

I was recently at the wedding of my old college roommate's, serving as a bridesmaid. Also in attendance was my first love and his new fiancee. Now, me and this former love, we broke up 4 years ago and while it was extremely, heart-breakingly traumatic for me at the time, I've obviously been over it for quite awhile now. In fact, it was great to see him and even more great to realize that I was genuinely happy for him and his fiancee (she's stuuuunning, he really hit the jackpot with this one). It wasn't until the very last song, when everyone was circled around the bride and groom as they danced, all of the guests linking arms and swaying in what was actually quite a beautiful moment, that I looked across the giant loop of people and saw that I was directly across from my ex, his fiancee nowhere to be seen. For a brief standstill in time, he and I locked eyes and the look we gave each other almost seemed to say, "This was supposed to be us."

Of course, it wasn't supposed to be us because if it was we would have already been married. A more honest depiction of reality was, "This COULD have been us." It's just strange to think about how there have been relationships in the past where you could have sworn with every fiber of your being that it would result in Forever.

In the span of time and experience between the end of my first love and the complete and utter destruction of my last love, I have built a thick, heavy, unbreakable walls of cynicism and distrust and just a general feeling of 'what's the point'. But then I would look at the few couples that I know that genuinely are happy, like all of my aunts and uncles or some of my friends' parents. I know that it's possible to have the happily ever after that every young girl dreams of, but there's still this impracticable desire of mine that I can someday find someone to be with that doesn't involve constant work and compromise and doubt. I would love to find someone who just fits. I know there's no such thing, but it's nice to think about.

One of my friends and I have been talking a lot recently about how all we want is a crush. Just to see someone and get those butterflies and the daydreams and good kind of what-ifs. It's extremely frustrating when you realize that you haven't felt that way in years and you are no closer to feeling it today.

Because the absolute worst feeling in existence is knowing that you have all the love in the world to give, and no one seems to want it.

So I guess we all just have to keep waiting. I don't want to believe the old adage of love comes when you least expect it, because I never want to give up on the idea of love. At any given moment, I want to be able to reach down into the most guarded and beautiful parts of my emotional insides and pull out my heart, hoping there is someone standing in front of me with their hands outreached, waiting to hold it forever.

Booo(.)(.)ooobs

The greatest news I ever heard was when guys started saying that they preferred a great booty over a great rack. "Thank god," I thought to myself, as I looked down and saw straight to my bellybutton.

Now, as a girl who is almost 25 years old and barely a 34A cup, I reached puberty in a time when everything was about the boob. I thought that the way to be cool was to have your tits pushed up so far they reached your ears, and I had convinced myself that when I was old enough I would get a boob job (of course, this would all be after I got my giant Russian nose cut down to a normal human size). However, I was only 12 years old at the time and after realizing that I was the only 7th grader who wasn't wearing a bra yet, I decided it would be a great and TOTALLY INCONSPICUOUS idea if I showed up one day wearing a padded bra that made me roughly a C-cup. So I did. All through junior high and high school I wore padded bras that made me look ridiculous because the rest of my body was built like an 8 year old boy, with the exception of, like my nose, my giant Russian ass and lovely size 10 feet that I had been forced to rock since I was 9 years old. Basically, if I stood sideways, I looked like a Picasso that Pablo himself looked at and was like, "What the hell?", before throwing it out.

When I got my first boyfriend the summer after 11th grade, my mom looked at me and said, "Alexis, if you keep wearing those padded bras, boys are going to be in for quite the shock if they ever try to stick their hand up there."

It was the only piece of advice that my mother has ever given me that has actually had a positive impact on my life.

The next day I stashed my padded bra in the back of my drawer and nervously clasped on one with nothing more than a cup thick enough to hide any slight nipplage. That night, a boy felt my boobs for the first time and there were no screams of shock or looks of confusion.

Success.

Now, it still took me awhile to fall in love with my little girls. A lot of my closest friends have large, fabulous, amazing boobs, and I always felt completely un-sexy when I was around them. But over the years I have realized that for me personally, my fun bags are freakin amazing. Seriously, I love my boobs. I love that I can lay on my stomach or cross my arms without them getting in the way. When I go bathing suit shopping, there is always a ton of bikini tops in my size because the majority of girls with my chest size are still shopping at Gap Kids. Don't get me wrong, on certain days I wish I could get some awesome cleavage or if I'm feeling bloated I sure could use bigger boobs to make my waist and stomach look smaller in comparison. But this is the body I was given and I'm cool with that. (I never did end up getting the boob and nose job).

Ok, so we've got the T down, let's move onto the A. Like I said before, when I heard that asses were catching up and possibly even surpassing boobs on the popularity scale, I was ecstatic. This is going to sound really weird, but I inherited my father's backside. My mother and I have absolutely nothing in common when it comes to physical traits; I am 100% built like the paternal side of my family. This has both its advantages and disadvantages because, like I said before, we basically go straight down with the exception of our nose, butts, and feet.

It used to be annoying when I realized that on the rare occasion that I wore a dress or a skirt, I always had to wear flat shoes or very short heels because my ass was so big that it would push out the back of the dress so much that it was about 4 inches shorter than the front. It wasn't a good look. But then, one magical night in June, a week after I graduated high school, I was spending some time with a guy that would soon become my second-ever boyfriend. We were going bowling and as I walked up to the lane, fully intending on accepting what was sure to be a gutter ball, I heard him say, "You have a great ass."

And that was the beginning of realizing that if I wasn't blessed with junk in the front, I could sure as hell work my junk in the trunk.

When I first started writing this entry, my intention was to explain the pros and cons of dressing slutty while out trolling for boys. But, (Butt! Haha?) I somehow ended up going on a long tangent about my own personal body issues, so I apologize if this was one of my more boring posts. I promise next week I'll write about the whole dressing-like-a-tramp thing. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to go out and grab a boob or a handful of ass today, whether it's your own or someone else's :)

T9 Gets Dirty

Back in college when I wrote my sex column, one of my articles was about Flirt Cheating. Flirt Cheating was a term that I put to the act of flirting with someone while you have a significant other. (Some friends actually had me add it to UrbanDictionary.com, so if you look it up you can get the whole definition). However, in this fancy little technological world that we live in, most of us end up hitting on each other via text.

Enter Sexting.

I'm sure you all know what sexting is, but part of my duty as a blogger is to explain any crazy terms I throw out there. So, sexting is when you suggestively text with someone, often telling them what acts you would do if/when you see each other.

So my question is, is sexting cheating?

My answer, which may completely sell me out not only as a girl but also as someone who has both cheated (back in my younger, incredibly stupid, self-conscious days) and been cheated on, is: Only if you get caught.

Let's lay out some situations featuring my two favorite fake characters from my old columnist days- Jack and Jill.

Situation #1: Jack and Jill have just started dating. It's been about a month and a half, so they're still in their honeymoon stage but are also nowhere near being in love yet and are still nervous around each other. If we're being honest, when you start a relationship with someone (unless you have known each other for years prior), the two of you are still essentially strangers to each other. So Jack is still picking up Jill for all of their dates and they're still asking questions about each other over dinner and while curled up on the couch watching a movie. This is an exciting time, but it's also a time where your head and heart aren't 100% in it. You might still think about your ex, or notice a good-looking guy or gal while you're out and about.

Jack has an ex-girlfriend named Mary. (And yes, she had a little lamb). They dated for 3 years and broke up about a year ago. This has given them enough time to get over any bad feelings towards each other and about 3 months ago they bumped into each other at Wawa and began talking again, just catching up as old friends. They continued to occasionally text each other and even met up for coffee a couple times just to shoot the shit. And sometimes, if they were out with their respective group of friends drinking, they would text each other a suggestive message because they knew every part of each other so well and it just came naturally. Now, Jack told Mary when he started dating Jill, and Mary herself was on the dating scene. In no way did Jack and Mary ever intend on rekindling their relationship, but still, sometimes late at night while lying in bed, Jack's phone would beep and there would be a text from Mary, laying out a hypothetically enticing scenario for him. Jack responds, and this steamy banter continues for a bit until Mary says she is tired and is going to sleep.

Jack never tells Jill about these sporadic texts because he knows that he never, ever plans on actually carrying out the contexts of his sex-texts with Mary. No ones feelings are hurt and Jack and Jill's relationship flourishes.

Situation #2: Jill has been seeing Jack for 6 months and she believes she is falling in love with him. They have a stable relationship and everything is hunky dory. Recently, an old college crush facebook messaged her, saying he saw something that reminded him of her and he hoped she was doing well. His name was Hansel, and Jill had been friends with his sister Gretel. They begin a short and harmless correspondence and one night Hansel texts Jill confessing that he had always wanted to ask her out but he knew she had a boyfriend and it was a shame he had lost his chance. Jill can't help but be flattered and also feels the old twang of attraction towards her former crush. However, she was firmly in her relationship with Jack and had no intention of compromising it. Plus, Hansel had moved to Texas after college to become a professional bull rider.

One night Jack was out of town visiting his aunt, and Jill found herself home alone and bored. So she texts Hansel and before she knows it, they are deep in one of those "if only" conversations. But, you know, all sexy-like. Much like Jack's past texts with Mary, the sexting between Jill and Hansel is not a daily thing. Also like Jack and Mary, Jill never tells her boyfriend about Hansel and the final result is no harm no foul.

Situation #3: Jack and Jill are celebrating their two year anniversary. They recently moved into an apartment above a pizza shop and have talked about marriage in the future. They are deeply in love but also have found themselves in a bit of a slump. This usually happens after a year of dating because you have become so comfortable with each other and have fallen into such a routine that things can become, quite frankly, boring. You're not having as much sex as you used to and you're no longer dressing up for each other or even closing the door when you go to the bathroom.

On nights where Jack and Jill go out with separate social groups, they sometimes find themselves sexting Mary and Hansel, just to feel a little bit of the excitement that was currently lacking in their own relationship. They delete these texts on the car ride home and happily climb into bed together at the end of the night, giving each other a kiss goodnight and saying 'I love you'.

Situations # 4 & 5: Jack is taking a shower on a Friday night in when his phone beeps. Jill sits up on the couch and reads the text. It's Mary and she is drunk and tingly. Jill hears the shower turn off and quickly closes Jack's phone, replacing it on the coffee table and he walks into the living room in his boxers. Jill says that someone texted him and admits that she read it. Obviously upset (but also knowing that she has done the same exact thing), she storms past him and goes to bed, telling him to sleep on the couch that night. The next morning she makes him promise that he will cut off all ties with Mary. She makes Jack tell her if anything physical has happened between Mary and him, and when he honestly tells her no, she decides to forgive him, but obviously keeps her eyes and ears out for any other suspicious behavior. Jack and Jill move past this bump in their relationship and continue on happily.

Or, Jack finds a text from Hansel in Jill's phone. She had forgotten to delete if from the night before. He is furious and feels that he can no longer trust her. He doesn't want any guy sexting his girlfriend, hell, he doesn't like it when a guy just texts his girlfriend. He tell her that she disgusts him and they break up.

Jill moves back in with her parents but not before keying Jack's car.

So while sexting may not be considered 100% moral while you're in a relationship, the fact of the matter is that people have needs and sometimes you need a little harmless electronic contact to truly appreciate the person you're with. I should also add that if this sexting ever does get literally physical or you realize that you have formed an emotional attachment with this person, do your significant other a favor and end things with them. Nothing in the world hurts more than being cheated on and nothing makes you feel more guilty than cheating. Well, at least it should make you feel guilty. And if it doesn't, well, you suck.

Also, I must end this with saying that if you are single, sext it up homie. SEXT IT UP.