A Rebuttal

Sunny wrote a post recently about how a few of her work friends decided to give themselves makeovers, which resulted in a few jealous boyfriends and husbands thinking they were having affairs.

My response when Sunny told me this was "Well, you can't really blame them." Then Sunny looked at me like I'd grown an extra head and instantly went to the question "So, if I suddenly started getting more dressed up to go to work, would you assume I was having an affair?"

We had a discussion about how men's minds work differently to women's but after thinking about it, I'm not even sure that's true, so let me make my case for the men:

Here's essentially what happens. You and your group of friends get together and for whatever reason, decide to get in shape and start taking better care of yourselves. Maybe one of your friends went on a spectacular diet and inspired you, or maybe you all watched the same episode of Celebrity Fit Club or The Biggest Loser and decided that if those people could get in shape, so could you. Everyone wants to look better, so you and your friends form an impromptu 'support group'.

Here's the first point. You don't bother telling your significant other any of this. Why would you? It's just one of a million things that people do on a regular basis that they don't feel the need to tell your partner about. So you start taking better care of yourself, spending more time grooming and because you can see a difference as you lose weight and get a new hairstyle, you start feeling good about yourself.

Now think about what your husband is seeing with none of the prior knowledge that you have:

You've spent years getting up in the morning, just tying your hair into a pony tail, not bothering with makeup or perfume, throwing on some clothes and heading to work.

Suddenly, you're getting up in the morning, spending some real time styling your hair, putting on makeup, wearing perfume, buying new clothes and because you're feeling good about yourself, you have a whole new spring in your step and walk through the door with a huge smile on your face.

Your significant other has one question. Why? Why are you suddenly making yourself more attractive and why are you bouncing out the door in the morning when you used to jus barely drag yourself over the threshold. What exactly has changed?

Then we come to the biggest problem.

I have no idea why, (although I have some theories), but when your significant other asks why you're suddenly going to all this effort, you never tell him. You give answers like "I just feel like it". So, from your significant other's point of view, you're going to a lot more effort to make yourself as attractive as possible and being evasive about it when your boyfriend or husband asks why.

Maybe you're mad it took him so long to notice. Maybe the reason you're going to all that effort is because he hasn't commented on how beautiful you are in a while. Whatever the reason, you avoid the question.

Here's the thing, you put yourself 'in the right' because you're not really hiding anything and you're not doing anything wrong, and because you're in the right and your husband is being a jealous, untrusting asshole, you don't clear anything up or explain why you've given yourself a makeover. You keep being evasive and secretive which just adds more fuel to the fire.

For example, your husband might have got sprayed with perfume because he went to the mall for his lunch and the perfume counter lady had really bad aim. It might have been his boss' birthday at work and he got glitter stuck to his skin and clothes from the card he signed. The guy at the gas station might have only had singles for change when he topped off his tank with a fifty…but what are you going to think when he arrives home smelling of perfume, covered in glitter and has thirty bucks in singles in his wallet? What are you going to think when you ask him about it, and peeved because you 'don't trust him', he refuses to tell you anything?

Now here's the deal, if your husband or boyfriend asked why you were going to all that effort and you said "Me and the girls at work have all decided to get in shape and give ourselves makeovers for summer." Or "I was just feeling a little down and getting a little dressed up makes me feel good." That would be the start and end of the issue.

You see, no husband will ever get annoyed or upset at his wife or girlfriend making herself more attractive. What we don't like is the idea that you're making yourself attractive for someone else.

The other big stumbling block is that men tend not to change their appearance just to feel good about themselves. When a man starts putting a lot of effort into his appearance, he's trying to impress someone. Women are pretty much the only reason that men shave. If every female on the planet vanished tomorrow, we'd all look like ZZ Top within a few years.