Shallow MCF

It's an unfortunate quality of humanity to rate and judge others by various meters. A lot of it comes from our own insecurity, wanting to know where we rank in the social food chain, and from the fact that everyone else does it as well. Shallow Hal was a surprisingly moving and thought-provoking comedy for all its silliness, yet I've come to expect that from Bobby and Peter Farrelly. I watched it last night, and again this morning, and was even moved to tears a bit during one particularly poignant scene with a little girl in the hospital. Jack Black might be the typical obnoxious slob he's played in movies like Orange County or Envy in real life but if he is, he's a damn good actor given the way he nailed the scene in question.

The movie's a few years old so I'm sure readers have at least seen trailers if not the film itself, enough to know the basic premise. Like most guys, Black's Hal “aims high” but is hypnotized to see the inner beauty in women. He falls in love with Gwyneth Paltrow's Rosemary, a kind and gorgeous woman who volunteers to help with sick kids, just one of her many ”humanidocious” traits. What Hal can't see is that Rosemary is in fact 300 pounds. The film does a surprisingly good job of portraying the way “ugly” and overweight people are viewed in society, and the pain and insecurity it causes them. The way Paltrow and other women who don't really look the way Jack sees them is perfect. In the special features, she said it was important to her not to have any distinction between her thin self and real self. She was who she was, regardless of her appearance, which was the movie's central message. She spoke of one sad day early in filming when she was fitted with the fat makeup and suit for the first time, and went down to a hotel bar where, rather than being stared at or mobbed, she was almost completely ignored by everyone, except a small puppy that let her pet it. Very sad. I can definitely relate to that feeling of being invisible and ignored. A girl can make fun of you or ignore you completely, but at least the first one is a form of attention. Black and his best friend(played by Jason Alexander) may be shallow and only approach perfectly gorgeous women in clubs, but those women reject them every time. The notion of “leagues” works both ways, and the movie hits that note as well.

In the film Hal gets some bad advice from his dad as a child. Possibly the worst advice my dad ever gave me was, “Look at the mother if you want to know what she's gonna be like when she gets older. I wish I had done that.” I'll never know if that would have affected my relationship if I'd married my ex, but I didn't think she was anything like her mother. I don't think her mother liked me but she may have just been in a bad mood all the time because she was separated from her husband and was wary of the guys her daughters went out with. She was also physically different from my ex, who was wafer-thin. She wasn't obese, but she wasn't wafer-thin. I don't think my dad was talking about physical appearance so much as change in demeanor though.

I'm about a “3” or a “4” but, like Hal, I set my sights on unattainable goals. I don't go for “10s” and rarely go for “9s”(though on her best days I could argue my ex was a “9”), but I'm usually looking at “6”-”8s” and lamenting “if only”. To that end I spend about an hour a day in gym after work every day, sometimes more if I'm not working late. Lately I've been working late to catch up after falling behind, and skipping some days when it was insanely cold outside as well as inside where the heat is turned off in the afternoon to cut costs. I get discouraged too since I seem to have reached a metabolic plateau. Even when I do watch what I eat as well as exercise, I don't seem to change by more than five pounds. Paltrow's character makes a comment that she too never loses weight even when she diets, an important point distinguishing those that are obese by lifestyle choices, and those doomed to that genetic fate.

A few days ago Curt wrote about what's good in a wife, and how the things he looked for changed as he matured. A follow-up post was a lesson in humility that showed we're all growing and learning, and anyone can surprise us and teach us something new as long as we're open to that possibility. Jerry teased me about one of my comments, asking if I'm looking for a girl like my mother. It was creepy enough when my mom used to say about my ex, “Oh, you like her because she's just like me. You should marry someone just like your mother.” Of course after my gf dumped me my mom subsequently (unfairly)referred to her as “that b****” or “North” for the direction she moved in when she was feeling above name-calling but below name-using. At any rate, the topic Curt's community is currently discussing as well as the movie I saw leads me to consider my own list, the things that have changed as well as the things that haven't, and perhaps should:

1) Blonde. My next-door neighbor that I was going to “marry” when I was five was thin and blonde. She wasn't very nice though. In elementary school, I had a crush on the first girl who was a real friend to me, also a blonde, but lost her when she went to a different school and I ignored her while watching cartoons. In middle school, I set my sights REALLY high. She was blonde. She could sing and play an instrument. She wasn't just in school plays; she was usually the lead actress. Once she wrote a perfectly platonic “I like you and I think you're nice” in my yearbook which went to my head, even as my “friends” played keep-away with my yearbook on the playground. Her boyfriend was even more talented, in band, choir and theater as well as near-perfect grades and the ability to play the violin. He was one of those “why can't you be more like” examples parents use to motivate their kids to get better grades or be involved in more activities, especially painful since my parents didn't know about my crush on his girl. Four years at an all-boys high school helped me get over my infatuation and made me appreciate girls in general. From college on, I've been attracted to all kinds of girls, and my ex was a raven-haired Italian.

As long as I get a girl that I find attractive I'll be happy. That might be shallow and something that needs to change, but I think as long as I think I'm “settling”, it isn't fair to the other person. I don't need some big-breasted bombshell; breasts have never been that important to me. My ex was insecure about hers and often talked about augmentation, and I discouraged her at every broach of the subject. She was perfect as God made her far as I was concerned. I do still need to feel some spark when I look in a girl's eyes though. A pretty face means nothing if she doesn't meet other qualities, but I'm still looking at faces unfortunately. Prettiness is relative too; what I find inherently attractive others might not agree with, and vice versa. Maybe time will give me the perspective people like Curt have.

2) Catholic. This hasn't changed. I might compromise for something “compatible”, but I've been learning the last few years that there are vast differences between different flavors of Christianity and there are insurmountable differences I may not be aware of. Still, I think its important for a couple to be united in the same faith, especially when it comes to raising children. I have a cousin who married a Jewish woman and subsequently raised four Jewish sons(hard to believe the oldest is out of college already--!). Typically, it's the mother that determines the faith of the child. If I ever do marry outside my faith I hope I'll love my wife enough to respect her beliefs, but I wonder if it won't be confusing to our kids when I go to church on Sunday. This is definitely an area I still wrestle with, made more difficult by the fact that a person's beliefs aren't visibly apparent.

3) Non-smoker. I don't think this one will ever change. Many times I've seen a very beautiful girl coming toward me and looked away the second I saw her light up. People could argue that since I'm cutting my life short by my eating habits I shouldn't care if my mate is killing herself with cigarettes. Die-hard smokers will even still argue the correlation between lung disease and smoking, despite all the evidence. I need to kiss the person I'm with too, and I wouldn't look forward to that if she tasted like smoke each time. I definitely couldn't bring her home; with her asthma, my mom could always tell even if I spent five minutes in the home of a friend whose parents smoked. I was frequently scolded for going inside. I think this is a reasonable trait, and I'm not sure that it's shallow.

4) Intelligent. I'm not talking about test scores or degrees, though I always felt very lucky that my ex had a master's while I only had a bachelor's. As smart as she was I held my own on enough other topics that we could at least converse. Communication and understanding are important in a relationship, so in this regard it isn't a bad quality to look for. Making a judgment based on a person's vocabulary and grammar is probably a shallow mistake though.

5) Geographic proximity. When I went to college, the only limitation my mom imposed on my future girlfriends was that they couldn't be “Geographically Unsuitable” or “G.U.” as she put it. I had to drive pretty far to a much more populated area for school, and she was nervous enough about me going that distance as bad a driver as I was(ok, AM). It was fortunate then that I struck out with the various Brooklyn or Queens girls I was interested in, since it would have been a tough call. Of course when I graduated and finally did meet someone, she lived even further away, only on Eastern Long Island. My mom was a little nervous but I was old enough to make my own decisions by then, and she was just glad that I'd finally found someone. She was REALLY nervous when that someone moved to Massachusetts and I was driving 3-4 hours to see her.

I've had friends and known people who've begun long-distance relationships, and subsequently only got closer. Those are great success stories. I worked with a guy at my first job who moved her because his fiancée got a job here, and she subsequently broke it off leaving him stranded far from his friends and family. That points out the risk involved. My relationship started geographically close(she had moved to my town briefly before moving back home), and got further and further away. Long-distance can work if that's the initial phase; you can only get closer. But there is a risk. My family is here. My friends are here. I know where hospitals and stores are here. I don't like to fly, and I'm only now starting to like driving again. I don't see myself leaving New York any time soon, but I may need to expand my 30-mile radius of meeting someone.

6) Finally, there are interests. I don't expect to meet a pretty non-smoking smart Catholic girl in my yard who likes Transformers. That's not shallow; it's unrealistic and nonexistent. Along the same lines as the intelligence requirements though, I think it is important to have common ground and things to talk about. And even if she doesn't share all my geeky interests, if I can find someone who can accept and forgive me for them, I'd be very lucky.