The Day I Shot Cupid

by Jennifer Love Hewitt

  If girls are putting it out there, guys are going to pick it up. They are not in a relationship with you and actively looking for something else. They are just doing what my boyfriend and I call “the register.” They are registering the opposite sex as a slight release of the old single guy and their right as “your guy” to still be able to look without it destroying you. It doesn’t mean they want to run off and start a life with every girl they look at (that’s in our heads). It’s strictly physical and not emotional. By the way, we as women should register, too! Ladies, try to accept guys for who they are and don’t take it personally. Guys, be more sensitive to your partner, and if you have to look, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WEAR SUNGLASSES!

  OKAY—

  the book has officially been hijacked by a MAN, who is funny, I trust, and has insight into the female mind. I hope you find what you read next as enlightening and inspiring as I did. True to women’s form, I had to jump in every now and then!

  BuTTinski, or Does My Butt Look Big?

  (men hope so…)

  “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” Boy, Sir Mix-a-lot was a genius. No truer words have ever been spoken. The rear end or the booty has been the subject of fascination for the male species since the Stone Age.

  I’m here to tell you, as a man, a guy, or whatever you want to call me, what we REALLY like. We like your BUTT, and we like it BIG. Hold on a second! JLH here! I have to jump in! Did a man just say he likes our butts? And big? Then what has the last ten years of self-torture been about? Why didn’t we know this before and where is the nearest Baskin-Robbins? Sorry, continue. It’s the last impression guys have of you when you’re walking away. It’s like the end credits of a movie. It’s what we envision as something we can grab and hold. Something that will keep us warm and protect us from tropical storms because we can hide under it. But somehow in the last thirty years someone thought the butt should be smaller, tiny, like an eight-year-old boy’s even. WHAT!@#$%%? (NEEDLE SCRATCH.)

  Ladies, ladies, ladies, let me tell you something. Stop trippin’ on yo’ butt. Let your man decide how big it should be for you. JLH again! Okay, he can decide how big, but I have to carry it in my pants. You want a bigger butt? Say the word. Whatever you want, sweetheart. Sorry, keep going. If you look at the history of film, from Olivia de Havilland in the beginning, all the way through the sixties, seventies (especially Russ Meyer films), Kelly LeBrock in the eighties and the nineties with J.Lo and Salma Hayek, etc., women have always had big, round, beautiful derrieres. You notice how I didn’t mention Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman in that sentence. Classy, beautiful women, nonetheless, but no junko in the trunko. (Although, I will say, as far as Englishwomen go, Kate Winslet does have a nice badonkadonk.)

  We men worship your heinie. First of all, more cushin’ for pushin’, more round to ground, and bootylicious, are all terms that apply to women that men love. Oh, you know who it is! If I could just eat a double-double right now and shake it naked, I would. This is hot! Women everywhere—pay attention. A man who knows other men, and is surrounded by a city of beautiful, thin women, wants you bootylicious. Come on, tell me this is not the best day ever! Shapely and curvy is what turns men on, not NOSITOL (no ass at all). It says that our women are sexy, strong, and yummy. When we see a woman with the kitchen sink as her backside, we just want to kiss you all over after we tackle you like a fullback on the thirty-yard line at Soldier Field.

  I feel that women somehow (maybe when aerobics started…damn you, JANE FONDA!!!) have lost touch with what men desire and are trying to go against the natural grain of BONERISM.

  Let me tell you something, MEN DON’T WANT OLIVE OYL! They want Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman. It goes back to our genetics, girls. Google it. I hate to see ladies always worried and saying, “Do these pants make my butt look big?” God, I hope so. Yep, you guessed it, JLH again. I just have to say—what?? God, I love this man! And where has this secret colony of butt-lovers been living? We don’t want to ask if our butts look big. But we thought anything over a size 0, which isn’t even a size anyway, was a no-no. Again, sorry for interrupting, tell us more! Men don’t want sticks. I’m serious, girls. We like juicy and firm, or juicy and jiggly. Have you ever heard a man say, “HEY LOOK AT THAT ASS! IT’S SO FLAT. COOL, LET ME GET SOME OF THAT!!!!”?

  NOOOOO. Stop reading magazines, ladies. It ain’t reality. Those are starved bitches who survive on Starbucks, cigarettes, and Valtrex, and most are fourteen years old. JLH is SO glad you just said that! As women, if we said this we would get slapped. And P.S., have you ever seen a super-skinny girl with a smile on her face? No, she’s too hungry. Being neurotic about your backside is not sexy to men. Sexy, to men, is owning your rump roast and daring your man to try and conquer it. Sexy, to men, is your attitude, and the attitude is in your eyes—when you look at us, and we see that stare you give and you’re confident in who you are. That’s what gets us going, because we think, “Dayyum, that chick knows what she wants. I hope she picks me.” Hell, voluptuous has become a curse word to a lot of women. THAT’S WHAT MEN WANT!!

  Here’s an example: Have you ever seen a woman who’s kinda big? She’s got big boobs, a big butt, and thick legs. She wears heels and pants a little too tight. I know girls look at her and say, “WHO does she think SHE is with all that extra luggage? She better put THAT away.” Well, ladies, let me tell you, men look at her and say, “Woooo! I wanna tackle that lion. I wanna tame that beast!” You know you’ve seen women like this, and you might be one. Those women should be adored because they are confident in their size, and men love confidence. Me again! I have to say this whole thing is shocking and great. I might actually be able to feel good about myself in a pair of skinny jeans eating a pint of ice cream. God bless you, Jamie Kennedy. If you own who you are, then men will wanna own it with you. Enjoy yourself, and men will enjoy you also.

  Which leads me to another thought—women can be so hard on other women. You’re a sisterhood. Have each other’s backs. Sorry to keep butting in—no pun intended—but you’re right, we are a sisterhood, except some girls didn’t get the memo and are mean, which makes us defensive and judgmental. But hey, I’m so happy about the big butt thing, I’ll look at being nicer to other girls. It’s true. Women judge each other so hard. They’ll look a woman up and down and say, “Look at her, she got her lips done, she got her cheeks done, she got her nose done. Hell! That’s not even her real head!”

  I personally think women get boob implants to compete with other women, and men get hair transplants to compete with other men. It’s not for the opposite sex. I mean, we’ll take fake boobs if you’ve got them, but we’d rather take what God gave you, small or big. As long as you’re cool with it, we’re cool with it, and if you want a little procedure because it will make you feel better about yourself, go for it. Grab that scalpel. We all do a little nip and tuck now and then (God knows these aren’t my real pecs). But it saddens me to see women be so hard on themselves about the body they think they have, as opposed to the body that men are dying to get all over. We love your big hips, your big butt (more to spoon with), your big boobs (more to keep us warm), and your little tummy pooch, that’s where we wanna crawl in and live. We know it’s safe there. JLH…See, girls, there are good ones out there! Just my two cents.

  Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep…. Wait for the boy who kisses your forehead, who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats, who holds your hand in front of his friends, who thinks you’re just as pretty without makeup on. One who is constantly reminding you of how much he cares and how lucky he is to have YOU…the one who turns to his friends and says, that’s her.

  —Unknown

  His and Her Thrones

  The bathroom. The friend that knows all your secrets, maybe too many. The sacred place where we get ready for the world. The magic passageway that we step
through for a big date. We go in a potential hottie and come out a showstopper. It’s where a guy goes from a boy to a man, with cologne and a crisp white button-down. It’s more than a bathroom, it’s your sanctuary. And then someone invented his and her sinks. What were they thinking? Hello reality, good-bye mystery. I’m all for domesticity and sharing space, but not that space. I didn’t always feel this way. I thought it would be the ultimate in romance, until I realized it’s not just men who need a little mystery.

  Let’s be honest, it’s not hot to see a man clip his nose hairs, rub his butt, clean out his ears, or worse, discover he doesn’t do any of those things! And men definitely don’t want to see us shave our underarms, pluck our eyebrows, lather on anticellulite cream, Nair our nifty mustache, and struggle with figure-smoothing shorts (P.S., I love those shorts!). We want to picture our guy in a hot shower with water dripping from his biceps, his white teeth sparkling in the mirror (like Edward from Twilight), barely containing his excitement to see us. Now, that is hot! And guys want to picture us in tiny black lace panties, high heels, with our hair half up, half down, and a little in our face, dancing to “Let’s Get It On,” putting perfume in all the right places and slipping slowly into our little black dress à la Audrey Hepburn. So I say sharing some things is good, just not everything. Let mystery be your secret weapon of romance. Let him have his fantasy of you and you in return cherish your alone time in the magic chamber that is the bathroom. Trust me, no man will be offended by these separate quarters. In fact, you might even be the woman of his dreams.

  WWW.ZIPIT.COM

  Have you ever had words fly out of your mouth like a bad meal? I suffer from this on a daily basis. I need someone to invent a mouth zipper. SPEAKING OF ZIPPERS, don’t you just despise the men and women with no moral values or self-control and with downright slutty behavior who can’t keep their zippers closed—oops, see what I’m talking about…no self-control! SPEAKING OF CONTROL, don’t you wish you could turn your back for five seconds without some pea-brain bimbo trying to make the love of your life an afternoon snack—oops…I did it again! Inventors, please listen to my plea: MOUTH ZIPPER. While I’m on this subject, here is a novel idea. Let people be in love. If you see two people happy, keep your mitts to yourself.

  Just know these destroyers of happiness will never penetrate the inner lining of the heart we occupy. I’ll tell you why these people are out there; it’s to show us who we can trust. There will always be sluts and man-whores, but there will also be good women and even better men who won’t stray from their hearts’ desire because something new has been added to the menu. It is our job to send those lost yet slutty souls our light and sympathy, because at the end of the day it must be so sad to love yourself so little that you’d be willing to become the joke, the cocktail-hour topic, or, worst of all, the reason someone else will find it difficult to love and trust again. Guess I couldn’t zip it on that one.

  Let’s Play “We”

  This, ladies, is a tricky one. The “we” is not just a game. Like, for instance, when we help move our men from “I” to “we.”

  HIM: “I’m going to dinner at 8 p.m.”

  US: “No, actually, we are going to dinner.”

  HIM: “I just came back from vacation in Mexico.”

  US: “No, actually, we just came back from vacation in Mexico.”

  I don’t believe for a minute that this is a mantactic, a reason not to commit. I think it’s complete unawareness of the joint relationship effort. They are used to traveling alone, whereas women tend to travel in groups. For instance we, from the time we are little, go to the bathroom together. They go it alone. They take their computers and go to Starbucks. We go with the girls for drinks. They go backpacking in Europe. We go for all-girls spa weekends. They like to play alone (you know what I mean). We prefer not to play alone (you also know what I mean). We can’t be hard on men about this one. We have to help them. When they say “I,” help them say “we.” If you and your guy are with other people and he says, “I ate at the best restaurant last night,” just simply follow it up with “Yeah, we had the best food!” It will eventually change his thinking.

  And men, relax, just because we want you to include us in the moment with the powerful “we” doesn’t mean marriage. Women don’t think “we” is the house, the dog, the joint bank account, the wedding, the babies, and the end (well, maybe some do, but we don’t claim those girls). For women, it’s just a small, considerate step toward really respecting us. It’s including us in your life and showing no fear in sharing your existence. It’s important for both sexes to keep their identities, but it’s also sometimes important to share. We were all taught that in, what, first grade, I think. Just try to be more aware, guys, and help them out, ladies. Trust me, “we” will all be happier.

  Breaking Up Is Easy to Do; Surviving It Is the Hard Part

  (Can’t Live With ’Em, Can’t Live Without ’Em, Can’t Shoot ’Em! Well, Maybe in Some States.)

  Falling in love is awfully simple, but falling out of love is simply awful.

  —Anonymous

  Put Your Big-Girl Pants On and Get Over It

  Breakups, good-byes, endings, however you see it, are hard. It feels like someone is driving over you with his car. You don’t know how you will ever get out of bed, eat again, or stop eating. You keep crying and telling the story, and beating yourself up for not seeing it sooner or doing it better. He goes from being the love of your life to your ex-boyfriend to a jerk to a piece of bleep to just a bleeping bleep. The radio stations only play love songs to torture you. Romantic comedies are on every channel. And only really happy couples eat at restaurants, go grocery shopping, and now, for some strange reason, stop and smile at you. You start to notice kittens because soon you will live alone with ninety cats and one fern. All the fruit you crave comes in bunches or pairs—even fruit hates you! The one time you do eat out, the guy and girl next to you get engaged and ask you to take their first photo (this actually happened to me the day after I had to end my engagement—cue the crocodile tears). Your eyes are so swollen shut from crying it’s impossible to see your future. Even old people and babies, who you can never get mad at, now seem like horrible people because babies have felt no pain and know not of your suffering, and old people don’t have to worry about finding someone new. And then one day, when everyone has let you live in misery for the needed amount of drama, it has to end. Like a cavalcade of angels with maxi-pad wings come your girlfriends. And these words change it all: “PUT YOUR BIG-GIRL PANTS ON AND GET OVER IT!”

  And you do. (a) You’ve eaten so much you have only big-girl pants, and (b) Being depressed is not productive. Even if you have to pretend to be happy for a while, your spirit will follow. Remember, it always gets worse before it gets better. And when it gets better, it gets great. I’ve just gone through it and I’ve come out on the other side. I have a new respect for myself. I have been able to look inside and figure out who I truly am. I know that I am the marriage type and can be in a committed relationship, even if he was not the right one. And I know now that I truly can survive anything. Sometimes it’s in the toughest moments that you learn the most about yourself, and the more you know yourself, the less you are willing to give away.

  It Was Vagazzaling

  So there I was, trying to heal from my trampled heart. Trying to think of anything I could do to get out of this funk. I learned to crochet finger puppets, because any guy I date next will have that as a requirement, right? I perfected my “I’m over him and movin’ on” voice. My ultimate discovery came when I realized that if you stare at the ceiling and start counting around 11:30 p.m., you will reach 1,486 by 4 a.m. I am so glad I learned that. A lot like algebra—not! And then somewhere between the late show and the early show, it hit me. The lightbulb I had been waiting for, THE BEST IDEA I’VE EVER HAD. I need a spray tan!!!!!!!!!!!

  God, I need to get a life. Spray tans seem very exciting after 1,500 conversations with your dog. It’s time to let
someone in my house, and bring with them a little color. That’s right, soon I would be a walking caramel macchiato. Angelique was the magic woman’s name. She would be the first person I talked to in weeks and the one to start the cocoa-colored makeover. When she arrived, I was so excited to start my transformation, and then color layer by color layer my confidence grew.

  She told me about this new beauty trend. It would not only change my outer appearance, but how I felt about myself on the inside. She said it would add a little sparkle to my life. I called it “VAGAZZALING.” She wanted to put Swarovski crystals on my hoo-ha. The lack of traffic on my hoo-ha highway at that moment and my fear of lying sober and naked while a woman puts crystals on my little lady made me hesitate. Then I wondered why. In my head I couldn’t have a “vagazzled” area without someone to see it, but I was wrong. I should do it for me. It should look like my favorite denim jacket from the eighties and be just for my viewing pleasure. So I lay down. It was very fast and not awkward at all. And what I saw when the mirror and I met was amazing. The once pale, sad girl who couldn’t figure out how to move on from her breakup had transformed into a bronzed sex goddess with the prettiest hoo-ha in my neighborhood.