Tuesday, November 16, 2004

The Not-So-Beautiful People, a Southern Belle, and Jon's personal hell

So I’m back from my day at headquarters among the beautiful people, though I have to say that the particular group I was with wasn’t really all that beautiful.
There were a couple of woman who were attractive, but weren’t really anything special. Worth a look or two, but not really worth writing home (or on my blog) about.
There was one particular woman there whom I found fairly attractive despite the fact that she was fairly large. The boundaries of what I consider “voluptuous” or “curvy” extend reasonably far, I think, but this girl was definitely at the extreme edge, possibly even slightly over on the other side.
Still, she was very pretty (albeit in a somewhat unconventional manner), and she did manage to concentrate a disproportionate amount of her body weight in the boob area, so that earned her some points.
I know; I sound horribly sexist, “fatist,” and superficial, but all I can say is this: deal with it. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not especially chauvinistic or sexist and that I have a considerable amount of depth of character.
And since I’ve been making a deliberate effort to control my own weight and am reasonably trim I don’t see it as unreasonable to be attracted primarily to women who are in similar shape.
And my whole point is that I did find her attractive despite the fact that she was a little larger than what I would normally find “acceptable.”
As for the superficiality, of course it’s superficial. I didn’t have the opportunity to actually interact with most of these women, so all I can comment on are their physical appearances. I mean, that’s pretty much what all of this is about.
In any case, apart from the semi-attractive women mentioned there was one knockout in the group.
This one was a real hottie, and definitely had my attention.
Unfortunately, she’s married and actually lives in Atlanta, having come up to Northern Virginia solely for the purpose of attending this training and a couple of others and will be heading back tomorrow morning.
I actually did interact with her, though, and, surprisingly, found her personality to be rather engaging.
I say “surprisingly” because she was very much the “Southern Belle” type, and that sort of personality usually tends to rub me the wrong way, no matter how attractive the woman is. In this case, though, I was definitely charmed.
However, she was part of a moment that was entirely hellish. She and I were partnered up in an exercise the instructor had us perform. We had to turn and face each other, and study each other intently for several seconds.
I’ve had nightmares like that in which I’ve had to stand and be scrutinized by a beautiful woman, so this was beyond unpleasant.
The experience was made worse by the fact that she picked up on how uncomfortable I was and opted to amuse herself by raising my discomfort level by leaning her face in even closer and staring at me even more intently.
I really wanted to run away.
What made it truly hellish was the fact that I had to openly scrutinize her as well, with her being entirely aware of the fact that I was doing so. I’m much more accustomed to stealing sidelong, surreptitious glances at women. It was difficult to keep from ogling her outright.
The point of the exercise was for us to turn our backs to each other after we finished studying each other and, in whatever fashion we could, change three things about our own appearance, then turn back around and see if our partner could spot the changes.
I spotted two of her changes: she had put on sunglasses and had pulled her hair behind her ears. She spotted only one of mine: I had pulled my sleeves down.
Her third change was unbuttoning her coat, but I didn’t notice that because I was trying not to look anywhere near the vicinity of her breasts.
The other two changes I made were switching the pocket my security badge was clipped to and moving my watch to my other wrist.
The changes were probably too subtle, but there wasn’t much else I could do, and I wanted to do what I could to draw the focus away from my face.
The class, by the way, was on effective business writing. The point of the “change” exercise actually came after it was over and the instructor pointed out how everyone was scrambling to change back to “normal.” She wanted to illustrate that change is difficult, and that in order for our writing to be improved as a result of taking this class we have to be willing to work at instituting the changes prescribed in it.
I thought it was a pretty lame way to illustrate her point, especially considering the mind-numbing hell she put me through in order to do it…
In any case, that was my day among the not-so-beautiful people. Not much else is new, and I suppose that I should get to back to work on “15,000 Years” seeing as how I’m past the halfway point for the month…

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