Reflective Talk: Sex Appeal

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I'm quite surprised to find myself writing a post for my main blog while my final exams are coming next week. I know I've been postponing my next post here for a long, long time. But I've no choice. If the conditions don't meet, they don't meet, and I don't get to write a new post. Having said that, it means that now the conditions have actually met. I have the time (not much but sufficient), the place, and the mood to write this entry. The topic this time has already been drafted more than half a year ago, and now only am I actually completing it.

You may notice some slight changes with the format of this post. The word "General" in purple colour has been changed to "Main" and the section "Mysterious" has been removed since I no longer need it. The word "Comment..." that appears after "Next Entry's Possible Topic" has been italicized.
Bah... You don't need to know this actually. It's mainly for myself to see.

Off we go into the topic.

Sex appeal, the special something that can make guys faint (figuratively) and girls go crazy (figuratively). It's the special something that is much sought-after by many people. Besides money, sex appeal also makes the world goes round.

Notice that I said "sex appeal", not "sex". By "sex appeal" I mean sexual attraction, and by "sex" I mean "sexual intercourse" (or, depending on the context, "the sex of a person"). You must get this right before reading further. So, the above paragraph means people seek sexual attraction, whether they attract others or others attract them (they seek both). The above paragraph does not mean people seek sexual intercourse. Make sure you understand. Your understanding of the meaning of things in this post greatly affects the outcome of your reading. Let's proceed.

It was an interesting cause that made me thought of writing this topic. I was walking around in a shopping complex one day more than six months ago. (That was when I started drafting this topic.) I was walking, alone, to a book shop to find some good books to read. As I was going around the place, I was thinking about certain problems in life, and as I was busy thinking, something that I saw seemed to intrude into my chain of thoughts. I did follow the disruption and looked around, examining the appearance and the look of other people around me, and a question then naturally popped into my mind: Why does each person dress themselves in that particular way?

That question was all that was needed to initiate this topic.

By now you should already know where I'm going with this. Yes, think about it. Why, out of so many ways to dress oneself up, does everyone choose a certain way to exhibit their appearance? Why does the boy over there keeps a short haircut and wears a T-shirt and a long pants along with a pair of leather shoes? Why does the girl over there wears a flower hairpin, a short-sleeve shirt, a short skirt, and a pair of sports shoes?
Except in unusual situations, every person tries their best (with their available resources) to appear pleasant to members of the opposite sex. (Consider this entire post talks only in terms of heterosexuality.) This is undeniable. It's natural. We dress ourselves in whatever ways we think are good-looking and nice, and sometimes we do exactly that just to attract the attention of people of the opposite sex.

Why are we like this? It's never too difficult to think of an answer as it's so obvious: it is our nature to get together and reproduce. According to what I've read in some psychology textbook, males are generally more concerned with the sexual aspect of a relationship and females the emotional aspect. I don't remember where I learnt about this, but an evolutionist (if I'm using the right term) once explained that if we look at this in terms of evolution, males are so because they need to find females who are (sexually) healthy and youthful to ensure the survival of their next generations, while females are so because they need males who are loyal to them to protect them when they're weak, especially during pregnancy. This makes lots of sense, if we talk about evolution and the need to reproduce future generations.

Sex appeal exists both in our world and the animal world. In the animal world, sex appeal is about competition, attraction, fighting, and mating. In the human world, it's much more complex than that, given the social, cultural, and religious influences, and many other kinds of influences that affect how our sexual attraction works. We may not realize it, but our culture and social norms have a lot to do with how people of different sexes attract each other.

Observing people is what I naturally do in public. Not that I'm saying I'm observant, but just like researchers go into a village to observe how the villagers live, I go around wherever I like and observe people. All sorts of 5W1H questions (who, what, when, where, why, how) will spring out naturally during then. Now why am I telling you this? Because it has something to do with what I say next.
Every time when I observe other people, especially in public places like the streets, the shopping malls, and so on, I can see something very interesting: while all the men and women are clothed in ways they think are nice (and attractive), their little children are also dressed in ways that are good-looking. It's normal, you may say, but don't you see what's "not that normal"? For children aged 8 and younger, or somewhere around there, do you really think they know what it means to "look good" in our, the grown-ups', terms? Do you think they know why they have to look good? I don't think so. If they do not, where do the ideas of what to wear for those little children come from?

You got it right. Parents. Their parents are the people who teach their children what to wear. It is like this that our cultural and social norms are passed on to the next generation. When children learn from their parents how to dress themselves, they're being exposed to the cultural perception of how boys and girls, men and women should appear to others.
You can try it yourself. Go outside and see what the little boys and little girls wear. Boys aged 8 and younger do not really have any special ways to dress themselves for the purpose of "showing their charms" since their bodies are really still too immature, and a big part of their physical charms come from their bodies. However, little girls of that age wear somewhat differently. You'll notice that, though not all, some little girls wear tight shirts, tight pants, and short skirts to exhibit their cuteness (and attractiveness altogether). Who teach them to wear like this? Their mothers.

Believe it or not, mothers do socialize their little daughters in such a way that their daughters' physical attractiveness is shown, even when those little girls are just as little as 3 years of age. (This information comes from my own observation and some common sense. You can observe it yourself too. But don't quote me and use this in your assignment.) The mothers begin to instil into their daughters, at a very young age, the ways to clothe themselves that are considered attractive by the society, whether directly or indirectly. Regardless of whether they realize it or not, mothers teach their daughters the "tips" to become attractive and introduce to them the standard by which the society uses to judge their attractiveness.
Although this whole thing isn't that emphasized towards little boys, they (boys) are also taught the ways to be attractive by their fathers. Both boys and girls learn this sort of thing actively (their parents teach them) and passively (they learn by observing their parents).

This is what a textbook that I have says about this matter:
"While mothers do not want to see their daughters engage in destructive premarital sex, many mothers apply subtle pressure on their daughters to demonstrate their sexual attractiveness. She outfits her daughter with bras, guides her in selection of clothes, and instructs her in the subtleties of makeup. (O'Connell, A., O'Connell, V., & Kuntz, L.-A. (2005). Choice and change: The psychology of personal growth and interpersonal relationships (7th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.)"

Note though, that the above quote applies to adolescent girls and not little girls since the section from where I took this quote talks about adolescent girls. And, since this is from an American textbook, it may or may not apply to mothers and daughters in other parts of the world.

Anyway, once there was a female friend of mine who told me something I find somewhat funny. She said to me, "You're really special." I asked, "How so?" She replied, "女子全都电不到你！(All the girls couldn't attract your attention!)" The entire conversation was in Chinese actually, but the last sentence here cannot be translated into English due to the way words are used.
So, she said I couldn't be attracted by girls. I laughed. Yes, it's true that I've rejected all requests before. And mind you, I've even rejected my own attraction towards some girls. This is not because I'm totally immune to attraction. I'm also a human alright. It's just because of how I think.
Yes, how I think.

Our principles, or our personal code, and our way of thinking, can greatly affect how immune we are to attraction. Now I'm not saying that we should ignore any attraction that we may have towards anybody or any attempts of others to attract us. That would make us seem cold. It's certainly not the way in interpersonal relationships. I'm just saying that sometimes attraction occurs at the wrong time, or it occurs in a situation that goes against our principles, or it simply occurs when it's unwanted. I'm not sure if I had talked about this before in one of my previous entries, but after such a long time, even if I had, I might as well talk about it again.

So, if an attraction (whether you like someone or someone likes you) occurs when you want it, it's fine. Otherwise, it's not. What are you going to do when it's not? This is interesting, because people have their own ways to deal with this kind of problem. Since I've talked about myself just now, I'll continue a little bit more. For me, my system of monitoring and managing my issues of attraction is built upon a solid set of code, so solid that it also affects my requirements for a girlfriend. No matter how strongly a girl attracts me, or how strongly I'm attracted to a girl, everything has to go through my list of requirements for a strict check. There is no exception whatsoever.

People may think that I'm still susceptible to my emotions and feelings, that I won't be able to defeat my "true feelings", that I won't be able to fight with "the power of love" when the time comes. Well, I find this very funny. Maybe some people are not able to stand up to their emotions and feelings because they've always been living under the blanket of social norms. Their mindsets and values towards love are heavily influenced by the society, and it happens that these values and perception about love from the society promote a liking for romantic feelings.
You can see for yourself and determine whether what I said is true. Look at what our parents teach us about romantic love. Look at how advertisers brainwash us into believing certain ideas or concepts. Look at how books about love promote certain ways of thinking that are to be considered "normal".

Again, I'm not saying that sexual attraction is a bad thing, that following our romantic feelings and emotions is wrong. No. I'm merely trying to tell you why most of the people can be greatly influenced by their emotions, while some other people cannot, and think that the values and perception (about romantic love) being promoted by the society seem weird, wrong, or even disgusting.
I, myself, is a good example. I've said many times that my way of thinking is out of the norm. This is not a compliment for myself. I'm not praising myself, because it's nothing special to be praised about. In fact, this has caused some problems for me. Those who have heard me saying a few of my requirements for a girlfriend before will know how "out-of-the-norm" I am and how difficult it is for me to find one. The process of socializing is also not that easy for me, since what others consider "normal" is not normal to me, and what I consider "normal" is not normal to them.

There are other people who are like me in the world, and I happen to be one that was not that greatly influenced by social norms during childhood (something else influenced me in place of social norms), resulting in my "higher level of immunity" to romantic feelings (because social norms promote a liking for romantic feelings, and I was not affected much by the norms when growing up). So what does that mean? Does that mean people "in the norm" just can't help but to continue to be like that? No. People can change. We can change. Though it's not easy to change something that was built up during childhood, it's still possible.

However, you might ask, "Why in the first place do we have to change? What's wrong with being who I am now?" Of course there is absolutely nothing wrong. If you're comfortable with it, go on. If you're not, if you want to gain more control of yourself, then you have to change. But then how to change? Remember I said "our principles, or our personal code, and our way of thinking, can greatly affect how immune we are to attraction"? This is what I mean. You have to adopt a set of principles or a way of thinking, be they existing or self-created. When we want to make changes to ourselves, we begin in our minds. This is actually common sense, but somehow many people just forget it, and at the end of the day, they don't know how and where to start.

I think this post is approaching its end. If you've really read from the start until here, I hope there is at least something in this post that you can learn from. I, too, learnt something as I was writing this post.
While this entry is easy-going, the next one will exercise your mind a little bit. So see you next time.

A Few Words...
Realize that everyone is walking their very own path. No matter how close we are to people or how often we get together with people, everyone is in their own world. We came to this world all alone, and we will leave this world all alone.

Next Entry's Possible Topic:
Life (Part XIII - Sex, Beauty, and Love)
Comment...
Now that we've talked about sex appeal, let's explore deeper at a more... thought-provoking level.

I Can't Believe It

Really.

With such an obvious sentence right below the name of this blog located at the top and with a special section at the left column of this blog mentioning it, there are still people who don't know that I have 2 blogs. =_=

Yes. This is my main blog. I also have a sub-blog. The link is located at the 2 areas I mentioned in the above paragraph. Knowing the nature of this blog, I purposely created a second blog, and it has been a "success". So if what's here isn't your sort of stuff, there is a second blog to go. I'm not all that serious you know...?

Sometimes some of my friends, when talked about blogs, told me that they "don't know what I'm talking about"! I immediately asked them to describe my blog. They said my blog "has a green background with a waterfall at the top-left". Woah... Then only I realized there are still people who thought I only had one blog. I don't know how they got to know this blog without knowing the other one. Weird. I always tell people my sub-blog's URL first instead of this blog's.

One thing I find interesting is that lots of people, when they visit other people's blogs (not just mine), they tend to skip certain things in the blog and not look at them. I find this very strange, for I don't do this. If I visit a person's blog, I always look at everything the blog has to show.

Anyway, so... yea, if you're one of those who didn't know I have 2 blogs, now you know.

Need Reviewing

I must say this period of time in my life is not really "blogger-friendly". No matter what I planned to do there were (and are) always things getting in my way, ultimately and effectively delaying my blogging attempts.
No. This isn't an excuse. If blogging is more important than my studies, my exams, my family business (not literally "business"), my friends' business (though some sure are unimportant), and my "daily required dose of solitary existence", then I can have the time to do it.

But it's not.

Anyway, what I really want to say in this post is that... I realize how much I've changed throughout these years and how much better (or worse) I've become. I also realize how many years have passed since I began my blogging interest. But, I've yet to go and read my own past entries (those entries listed at the bottom of this blog) to determine how obsolete each of them has become.
And this is exactly what I want to do when I'm free.

So please note that if you read any of the older posts, halt, before you believe that whatever you read is what I'm thinking now, because it really might not be so.
After I've reviewed all of my older entries, I'll make another post about it.