Hi Miss Attitude,
My name is Kevin and I’m 17 years old. I discovered your website when I was googling for advice and I thought you might have some good insight on an experience I had recently. It involved a girl I had just met at a dance. We talked for a good half hour and seemed to be hitting it off. She was very pretty, smart and nice. We even exchanged email addresses. I was so excited!
Then, things suddenly went downhill. I commented that she had a “really nice, hourglass figure”. I thought she would take it as a compliment but instead she became deeply offended. I went into damage control mode and tried to clarify my comments but I think I only made things worse when I used the term “healthy”. With a look of complete disgust, WHAP!, she slapped my face and departed.
As I was standing there alone rubbing my cheek, with my friends nearby laughing at me, I was wondering why she was so offended. She had a classic hourglass figure – very busty, narrow waist, shapely hips/legs. I guess she had interpreted “hourglass” as meaning big/overweight/full figured. Why can’t girls embrace their curves?
Btw, I do have her email address. Do you think I should her an apology note or should I interpret the slap in the face as another way of seeing she does not want to see me again?
–kevin
Dear Kevin,
Thanks for writing to me for advice. I honestly think it takes some courage for a teenage boy to ask what he said wrong to a girl and how to handle the apology. The challenge when paying a compliment to a girl, or a grown woman for that matter, is we are typically harder on ourselves than boys/men are.
Many women struggle with body image and think they are “fat” when they actually aren’t. Some of us, belonging in the curvier category, tend to focus on the fact that we don’t always like what we see in the mirror or focus on the negative rather than the positive.
And while I’m not one of those feminists who blames playing with Barbie with her unrealistic figure, I do admit seeing all the super-skinny stars/actresses/models can take a toll on your self esteem. But many of them, including Tyra Banks, have admitted to this little thing called airbrushing.
There used to be a time when the hourglass figure was sexy. Hello Marilyn Monroe!
And I say it still should be! Take a look at Vogue cover girl Tina Fey.
“I have an hourglass figure; I do have a waist, but I have full hips and I have decent shoulders,” Fey told Vogue.
Now not everyone girl or woman is ready to embrace their curves. And let’s face it, you can’t go around getting slapped everytime you like a girl, right?
So stick to sincere and safer compliments like you look pretty, you look very nice in that dress, you have a beautiful smile, etc. Stay far away from the body type image comments, and don’t ever fall for “does my butt look big in this?”
All joking aside, I think e-mailing her an apology is a great idea. You want to let her know you didn’t mean any disrespect, and as you said you think she is “very pretty, smart and nice.”
I can’t promise that will lead to another chance with this particular girl, but it’s the polite thing to do.
Stylishly yours,
Miss Attitude
Tags: advice, attitude, barbie, body image, dating, fat, hourglass figure, love, marilyn monroe, miss attitude, tina fey, vogue
Great advice. That’s a hard lesson but a good lesson to learn early on!
Ah, welcome to the world of women, young man, where a well intentioned comment just might get you slapped across the face
Instead of laughing at him, his friends would have been better served to take notes and learn from his example….next time, it could be one of them standing alone, rubbing his cheek. Isn’t that just the quintessential image of a guy who just struck out with a girl?!
Anyway, as a woman with a full hourglass figure (I look a bit like Nigella Lawson) I’m proud of my curves, and if I guy told me I had a “really nice hourglass figure” I would actually take it as a compliment, though it would also strike me as a bit too forward for someone I just met. But, that’s me at 40, not 17, where I was hypersensitive about my looks, and about teenage guys looking at me in a sexual way….so I would say that this young woman’s reaction was fairly typical. Just stay away from any comments about a girl’s physique and stick to stuff that can’t be misinterpreted – her sense of humor, her fashion sense, etc. We’re not that complicated, just a little neurotic when it comes to our bodies.
Ah, I came across this as I was looking for some advice for my 16 year old daughter who has a lovely hourglass figure but like many teenage girls is not yet comfortable in her own skin. I actually applaud the young woman’s reaction in this story and don’t think she was necessarily over-reacting. It really does appear that he was looking at her in a sexual way and in so doing disrespecting her for who she was as a person. It seems that he got precisely what he deserved — a crisp slap across the face — nice retro touch there. I wish I was that assertive when I was 17. On the other hand, at least he had the decency to write to you in order to better understand why she was so offended. Hopefully he learned his lesson and won’t make the same mistake in the future with other young women.
Thanks for reading. You make an interesting point, but I don’t think slapping or any kind of violence was necessary. Also, the young man and I exchanged several emails after in which he told me how he apologized and he didn’t mean to be disrespectful. The young woman accepted his apology and agreed to go out with him for coffee, and eventually the prom.
Either Kevin is making the same mistake over and over, or he is full of baloney. Almost the exact same letter was sent to me earlier this week from the 27-year-old version of “Kevin” and inspired the post I published yesterday. I have since heard from 4 other bloggers who have received and in some cases posted the same letter…
That makes me sad to read your post. I felt he was sincere & he and the young woman continued to email me several times. Seems like a lot of effort to go through to trick bloggers, if that is indeed the case.
Me, too, Miss Attitude. I thought his inquiry was sincere and took the time to respond to him thoughtfully, but one quick google search of “hourglass figure slapped” and you’ll see pages of sites on which this same letter has been posted. Not sure what he gets out of it or why, but it is very apparently the case.
Miss Attitude,
In full disclosure, I am a 27 year old who has only lived in Los Angeles (and thus, have mostly delt with Los Angeles women.) I applaud how honest and helpful you were with Kevin. I have also seen his other posts on different sites and don’t think the issue of him or his story being real (or not) matters; you were under the assumption he was truthful and therefore your advice is genuine and still applicable.
Women are complex; even with my experience and lessons learned from my “successes” and “mistakes” (in regards to flirting), I still had to google wether “you have an hourglass figure” was a compliment or not. I was under the assumption that it was and am glad I found your advice. In disagreement with your opinion on safe compliments, I think that the safest (and most affective) adjective men (of all ages) can use to describe a woman’s body is “skinny.”
I completely disagree with Karens above comment. Everyone appreciates compliments on their looks and good looking women expect those compliments. Calling a woman skinny is a unique compliment as opposed to the usual “hot” or “sexy” lines they normally receive. In my experience, teenage girls (when I was in high school) base their self-image on wether or not they are sexually desirable to teenage boys. Women eventually want a man to see and appreciate their “assets” that aren’t physical or sexual in nature, and yet will always want to be sexually desirable. How many of you women would be a lot happier and more confident in your body image if you had been called skinny a few more times during high school?
To any man reading this, my best advice is to be unique and do your best to stand apart from other men (usually by doing the opposite of what the other men are doing). If every guy in a room is admiring and hitting on a woman, she is going to be more intrigued and interested in the one guy that isn’t telling her how “hot” she is. People want what they can’t have and enjoy the “challenge of the chase.”
My advice to any woman reading this is: stop worrying over your body image! Stop freaking out about the 5 pounds you’ve put on because we probably won’t even notice it. Most of us men are not as detail orientated as you. Confidence is attractive and it affects everyones appearance to others and how we behave sexually. If I have sex with you then I am sexually attracted to you. I am not going to be turned off if we have sex with the lights on or I see an angle of you that you feel is unattractive but I will be if you are always complaining about your body. I will become MORE sexually attracted to you if you portray yourself (and act accordingly) that you are confident in your own body. Do a sexy dance and/or lap dance for your man and I can almost guarantee that he will be noticeably hornier and better during sex.
My second piece of advice to all women is something men are going to hate me for saying: if you want to have a long-term or serious relationship with a man, do NOT have sex with him on the first date. We can be confusing on certain things and this is one of them. I would be very happy if I had sex with a woman on the first date but I would be less interested in her the next day since the “challenge” and uncertainty of her being interested in me is gone. Am I correct in assuming that most women have sex with a man on the first date because it’s an easy and quick assurance that he’s interested? Show your interest in us without immediately giving everything away.
So again Miss Attitude, thank you for your honest and helpful advice and please feel free (and any other women) to tell me anything I said that you disagree with.