Eyes Up!

Perhaps I had been living under a rock, since I don’t watch much TV, but I had never heard of Nigella Lawson until I saw a humorous post on Facebook comparing the results of her eating and cooking habits to those of Scottish nutritionist Gillian McKeith.

Intrigued, I decided to do a little more research on this woman who looked like she obviously enjoyed what she cooked, and had a body to die for. Indeed, I was especially intrigued…and heartened…by the many women who applauded her for showing that you can have a body larger than a toothpick and still be considered hot. (Well, duh…all of us guys knew that, it seems to be the women who are stuck on this thin kick.).

And then, as I was doing my reading, I found a post from one particularly bitter woman who complained that “the Queen of Gastroporn” can’t cook worth a darn, and that the only reason people watch her show is “because she has a nice rack.”

Well…OK now…I think that someone here has some issues.

But as I thought about it some more, a question kept nagging at me (and probably nags at a lot of other guys too). Why is it OK to admire a woman’s beautiful eyes or beautiful face, but not to admire her beautiful chest? I mean, after all, they’re all body parts, aren’t they? They’re all part of the whole package, right? So why is it OK for a guy to sit there transfixed by a woman’s incredibly deep blue eyes, but if he lowers his gaze 13 inches, she’s likely to think he’s a pig?

I needed to find out, so checked online, and then I asked someone who I thought would be an expert on this…my wife…after all, last I checked, she was a woman. She might be able to fill me in here on what I was missing.

The answers I got were all pretty much along the same line: staring at the eyes or face shows that you’re interested in her as a person, while staring at her chest shows that you only have one thing in mind. It’s invasive, and makes her feel uncomfortable and unsafe, as if you’re molesting her visually.

And yet, while I understood the words I was hearing, Mr Dense here, still didn’t quite grasp it. It still didn’t quite make sense to me. After all, if I’m staring at the face of a beautiful woman, I’m likely thinking the same thing that she’s worried about me thinking if I’m looking lower. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that if I’m talking to a woman with an incredibly engaging personality, I’m likely thinking the same thing. Hello…I’m a guy…we’re wired that way. If we’re attracted to you in any way…eyes, face, personality…chest, our minds are gonna go there. Actually, it’s more complicated than that, but that’s an issue for another post.

So why isn’t that invasive? Or did that just change now that you found out how our minds actually work?

I brought up my question to a bunch of people I work with, and one of the guys said that the problem is that there’s such a huge “no fly zone” with women’s bodies, that it makes it almost impossible to look anywhere but their eyes without being offensive. When he talks to me, he doesn’t have to always have his eyes locked my face; in fact, that would be rather awkward for both of us. Because we’re both guys, his eyes can drift to just about any other part of my body, and not mean a thing.

This got me wondering…would we actually be a bit more relaxed about things if huge portions of the female anatomy weren’t considered “no fly zones?” Would guys feel as compelled to try to “sneak a peek” if looking at a woman’s chest was considered no different than looking at her arm, or anything else that just happened to be there?

OK ladies, what do you think?