This may go a bit deeper than I have before. A little discomfort isn’t always bad though. Have you ever met a person who was completely unbiased, unprejudiced, completely open to any person? Of course you haven’t. Me neither. And I’m not either.
Can you have a prejudice and not be a racist? You can reframe a prejudice and call it a preference. You can be biased for and biased against. I have read many a profile where the woman says flat out, I am not a racist, but I will not date outside race. I’ve met many white men who think Asian women are the bomb and black men who will not look twice at a black woman. These preferences may be borne of prejudicial lessons taught by our culture and society at large or closer to home. Are you (or l) bad for having these thoughts? For myself, I do not think we are bad, but we may be wrong.
I have spent my life being bombarded with images of what our culture (and 5th Avenue) considers the ideal woman. For over 50 years, I’ve flipped through the pages of magazines with page after page of beautiful models, who have had their near perfect images altered to appear even more flawless. Women are made to feel less than perfect and men are trained to seek a fantasy figure. For most of my life, the perfect woman was tall, lean and white, with full breasts and a round, but not too round, butt. Black women have rarely graced the cover of Vogue. We can identify the problem, but can we overcome it?
I cannot and I suspect many others cannot either. So again, does that make us bad? I don’t think so. I read a profile once in which the woman had just 3 qualifications for her potential match: he must bathe at least 4 times a week; must have teeth (not necessarily the ones he was born with); and he could not be married. How could I not be intrigued? So I wrote to her and told her I was leaps and bounds above that very low bar. I never heard back from her. Unrequited love.
#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov #middleageddating #lastfirstkiss
#daterequirements #firstdates
The Last First Kiss 