Tuesday, 16 March 2010

• I Have Caligynephobia: Fear of Beautiful Women

  
  

  One of the explanations I can give on my philosophy of never dating the "model" girl really comes down to this: I believe I am caligynephobic. As the title would explain, while gynephobic is the fear of women, caligynephobia is the fear of beautiful women. Surely, to you, this might seem like a silly situation, but I wouldn't really be hasty. When I was young, I wasn't really a classic gentlemen kind of boy, but I didn't really like existing around hot-looking girls, or those that TV would say was hot. Heck, the girls I truly had a crush on were the nerds, mostly because they were easier not to turn my head from.

  Some of the symptoms I have is that if I even see them in real life, I either shake a little, be a little quiet, or get a little sarcastic and mean, in hopes that they would go away. This happened plenty of times when I used to spend days riding in a car with my brother and his girlfriends. Reasons like this are why when I was 12 years old, I couldn't sit through Buffy the Vampire Slayer, without changing the channel  everytime Michelle Trachtenburg came in to the picture. The truth was that I was not really okay with the idea of a girl being so irresistible to the eye that you couldn't stop thinking about her without being driven insane.

  This probably started when I was a young boy. I didn't talk to the girls, because some of them came of as pretty snarky and rude. Some of the teen shows I watched would portray the cute or pretty girls as either the antagonizing ones, the unattainable ones, the embarrassing types or the straight obnoxious types. Looking at girls who were physically pleasing to the eye for a majority of men like them for more than five seconds felt like slaying a titanic dragon or like pulling teeth (with not enough novocaine) for me. If by chance in real life, girls as hot came up to talk to me about anything, I'd get this feeling in my chest that I'd eventually pop, and if they didn't stop talking to me, I would have snapped.

  You can bet that I felt kind of confused, because I thought boys were supposed to like good-looking women. Not only that but hot girls are people. How can I be easily afraid of somebody I hardly know? But to be honest, it feels like torture sometimes. Back to the Buffy thing, the caligynephobia didn't have to stop at real life. Anytime a show would come on when, say, Ellen Muth, would appear on TV, I would find it difficult to keep on the show for more than three or less minutes before changing the channel.

  But my colors really showed in college. One year, a couple of girls were living in my dorm house. You know the types of beautiful women that eventually talk about their boyfriends or eventually speak about sex and generally come off like those popular girls on TV? The last thing I ever wanted these girls to do was approach me or talk to me. One day, while I was doing work, a pack of them came into the room, and all I could feel is a tight squeeze inside my chest and a sudden feeling of disdain. I almost had a hunger to grab one or two by the hair and send them to another room.

  As a result of this phobia, I don't date girls as beautiful as those on TV at all. If I do, they surely don't last long. In fact, just the opposite. I am more inclined to the slightly plain Janes or those with at least one bit of imperfection, if you know where I am getting at.

  There is no easy way to explain this, especially with the intent of not pissing off someone with a more conservative vision of beautiful or pretty. So if you can, read this without judgment.

  Do you know guys like this? Are men intimidated by beautiful women?

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