Dating Differently Podcast
Dating Differently Podcast
Episode-04 | Defining Beauty Differently - Part 1: The Visuals
Ready to uncover the potent power of femininity and its profound effect on relationships? This insightful episode peels back the layers of complexity surrounding the subject, starting with a deep dive into the FIM score - a tool carefully designed to assist women in understanding what traits men find attractive. We dissect these traits into two categories; visual (looks, appearance, and femininity) and personal (temperament, intelligence, and cooperation). The exciting part? Appearance and femininity are entirely within your control and can be a game-changer in relationship dynamics.
Let's explore more about how men perceive femininity and the surprising fact that this perception can greatly vary depending on their region. Through the lens of a real-life example, we discuss a woman from the bustling city of New York and her brother's completely different, Southern perspective on femininity. We also cover how generational sensitivities can influence a man's perception of femininity and the surprising cues men look for to determine whether a woman is 'wifey material'. And yes, the language you use plays a significant role!
In the last part of our conversation, we take a journey through the fascinating world of relationship dynamics and personal growth. We delve into understanding the nuances of femininity in relationships and how it can vary across various regions. Using the FIM score as a guiding light, we discuss how women can develop their relationship approach and highlight the importance of age and context in the perception of femininity. Plus, the benefits of having a dating coach to help you pinpoint your relationship goals. Unravel the complexities of femininity and learn how to boost your FIM score to an impressive 60! This episode is a treasure trove of insights you don't want to miss.
All right, guys, this is a very exciting episode. I am thrilled that we are going to talk about the female equivalent of the clamp score. We've talked about the clamp score in detail and then we've glossed over it in previous episodes, referencing the stuff that we've talked about what makes up the clamp score. But those of you who don't remember Valden, will you remind us what the clamp score is?
Speaker 2:So the clamp score is a tool of communication I use with men to help them understand and conceptualize the things that are attractive to women, and that clamp score is an acronym for confidence, looks, appearance, money and personality.
Speaker 1:Great, and so we have the female equivalent, which we've talked about this and tried to come with an acronym that sounded just as nice as clamp score, but I think we're not going to be able to achieve that, so we're going to call it a FIM score and it has an F in it but no E and M. So we'll make that work for us for this scenario, but I think it will. Hopefully it'll do the same thing as we flesh it out. Debbie, do you want to hit us with what it is?
Speaker 3:For the FIM score. We have broken it down into six traits. There is looks, appearance and femininity, then temperament, intelligence and cooperation, and with those six traits we have grouped it into two buckets. So the first bucket is visual, so looks, appearance and femininity falls in that visual bucket. And then there is the personal bucket which has temperament, intelligence and cooperation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Much like women. This goes much deeper. It gets a little more complicated, ok, so let's break it down, starting with the first bucket of visual. We have looks, appearance and femininity. Looks and appearance. I'm imagining I'm going to go ahead and put words around Falden because you're going to help break this down for us. But looks and appearance will work the same way that does for men.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. The separation of them is just to help with the communication that we can't do anything about our looks. You're five feet tall. You're five feet tall If you're Caucasian or African-American. You can't do anything about that.
Speaker 1:If you are blonde, though, you can change to be burnout.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I mean by looks Like you were born a way, and your appearance. However, those are the things that we have a lot of control over. We have a lot of control over how we dress and how we choose to do our hair or color our hair. Or some might say, say we have control over how big or small we are, but that's the difference, that's the distinction between looks and appearance.
Speaker 3:OK.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, as we've had conversations about this before this moment with both the clamscore and the fimscore, it's a really help, mental model and framework to add another layer of analysis for yourself, and so we've been consistently talking about know yourself, do some analysis, to work on yourself, to figure out how you can improve. And I think that the fimscore at least how I view it and I hope that it comes across this way is another one of those tools that you can start to put parts of your personality or aspects of who you are into these individual traits, but more specifically into the buckets. I think the two buckets point that Debbie made is a really helpful piece to think about a visual and then the personal or interpersonal yeah, ok, so the next one is femininity yes, when it comes to femininity, what I've observed is a lot of women will say, OK, I understand that men want me to be feminine, but what does that mean?
Speaker 3:And the challenge is it's hard for a man to tell a woman how to be feminine exactly. He can look at a woman and know what he likes, but for him to say, OK, do these three things. It's not easy to communicate that.
Speaker 1:Not as easy as cry during a home or commercial Right.
Speaker 3:OK, or wear high heels, like there's a certain sort of femininity that just kind of oozes out of you when you have it. But it's hard to teach someone how to have it Right. So when women ask the question OK, how do I be more feminine? It's just be more feminine.
Speaker 3:So that's one point, the answer to the question is in the word yeah. I do see a lot of communities coming together of women wanting to be feminine. So women are trying to teach each other how to be feminine. So we'll identify a woman who men tend to revere. Oh OK, men like her. So do we try to walk like her, talk like her, move like her. So that one, I think, is a little more complicated than it should be, because we should naturally be feminine, but it's like we've been outside of that role for so long. It's how do we get back into?
Speaker 1:it. So, as I think through femininity, I'm trying to think of the women that I know in my life that I hold up as men. I want to be like that, and two people come to mind in two specific parts of my life. One is a friend of mine. She's 10 years older than I am and this was actually maybe 10 years ago, a little more and she invited me over to her house. She's so cool, so much cooler than I am Like, mind you, I'm like still a teenager and she's just so cool. So, setting the stage, she's awesome. And she invited me over to her apartment and I had to go to the bathroom and she was like, go use mine in my room. So I was like, cool, yeah, great, I love it, I want to see all your stuff. And I remember closing the door and she had a nightie on the back of her door and I said that is what it's like to be a woman. I was like from that point on, I have been a full believer and in nightgowns, See.
Speaker 1:so that's where I think we get caught up, maybe but that is, and I tell this story to her all the time it makes her blush. She's fantastic and I, like, worship the ground she walked on still do, actually, and I know her like personally, Like we are friends and her hair always smelled of a VEDA hair products and I needed to have a VEDA hair products. I even went to the same hair salon she did. Yeah, I was low key stalker.
Speaker 1:But it was all out of admiration and I think you're probably right that we get stuck on the pieces of it. Yes, her haircut, or where she goes to get her haircut, the products that she uses. I was sleeping in t-shirts and ratty shorts, or whatever. You're in college. No one has a sophisticated nighttime routine in college unless it's a romcom. And then there's also perfume. I think perfume is a huge piece, because another one of my friends that I've met in more recent years has a perfume for every occasion, even to go to the gym.
Speaker 1:So obviously, I was like I will be getting a perfume for the gym and it's just that feels super feminine to me To lean into being extra womanly.
Speaker 3:The leaning into it I think is important Because, for example, I used to think makeup was feminine and if I just put makeup on, I'm just automatically feminine. Oh, ok. And that's not. I have to lean into the makeup and understand why do I want to put blush hair in? So there's something that makes wanting to wear makeup and perfume and have your hair smell nice. Wanting to exude that is feminine, but not just layering it on. So if I put on an IT, it doesn't automatically make me feminine, but is having the desire to.
Speaker 1:Like the intent behind the act. Yes, ok, that's what I think. Ok, valin, do you want to weigh on this? Sure, yeah, go for it.
Speaker 2:What you said in the beginning I think is most appropriate. And then I think femininity is a way of being.
Speaker 2:It's not something that you do, it's something that you are Right and I think if I was having this conversation, the FIMS Corp conversation with a coaching client, I would encourage them to learn more about feminine Right, because it's one of those things that you can't really put a checklist on what femininity is. There are some things that are objectively feminine from a man's perspective. Like men think dresses are feminine, most men think long hair is feminine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:Most men think quiet, demure, cooperative type personalities that are friendly. We think that's feminine, and but then you also have, like I often talk about, a girl that I dated from New York City many years ago.
Speaker 1:A.
Speaker 2:Valadin dating story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love how they always fit in.
Speaker 2:And her brother would talk about the types of women that he won, because I had an issue with women who use profanity. But he, like I, love a spicy blah blah, blah blah. He went on with his conversation, but he'd come from a part of the country where the baseline of femininity is a little bit more aggressive than it would if you were in the South.
Speaker 1:So the definition of femininity and how people define it is very regionally specific.
Speaker 2:No, what I'm saying is let's keep the definition the same, but let's just appreciate the fact that it can be, relative to certain things, and that's the reason why we call these things tools for communications not necessarily rules, but from my perspective, if you were talking about Valadin specifically, I could give you my list of things that I think are feminine and it would probably be easier for me to communicate was not feminine than it is to communicate what is?
Speaker 2:feminine from my perspective. Because let me talk about this one thing only, because we talked about it this morning on the way over here and that's the profanity right. So I've coached a couple of women who have the F word in their regular vocabulary.
Speaker 1:Not in their anger vocabulary no.
Speaker 2:It's just in their regular vocabulary. I would ask them, why is that in their vocabulary? Because I don't want to. I'm not trying to reprimand you and say, hey, shake my finger, you shouldn't do that, but I'm trying to help them to get a better outcome. I personally think it's a masculine thing to do to have that type of language, and let me caveat this by saying, specifically for women who are age 40, something in old Right, because the other part of this conversation is for women who are younger the whole generational sensitivity thing plays an effect.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's, an interesting point, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because the reason why it even came up for me is because when I'm on TikTok and YouTube and all these places where I hear women like almost all of them have an F word coming out of their mouth and beautiful women, but they're all young. I won't say they're all young, beautiful women, they're not all young. But then I stopped and I think to myself about generational sensitivity and to me that's very offensive for a woman to use that type of link. So if I'm connecting with a woman and trying to make her mine and she has that type of language off the top, then I already know which box to put her in and it's not the wife box, right? And the problem is men will never say that, They'll never tell you that.
Speaker 2:But because I'm a coach, I'm gonna tell you that, right, Because I want you to have better outcomes and just to bring that home for you. For people in their 20s and 30s who grew up, who were born with everybody using the F word, they're desensitized to it, so it's not even as disrespectful in their world, it's not even offensive at all in their world. So for women that are 30 and younger and you want to throw the F bomb around. It's probably not gonna affect you the way because you're not after men who are 40, 50 years old who are gonna find that quite unattractive.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. I didn't think about the generational difference between the use of Cuss words or profanity, which also demographically you call it different things when you're in different parts of the world. Cuss word is definitely very southern.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Can a guy tell when a woman is just wearing femininity versus like really, ooh, excellent question.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Okay, now does he give her credit for trying, or is it like now? You're fake, you go in the other box.
Speaker 2:Not the white box. So that's a very good question. Also, the answer is I believe and you heard me say this early when we were on the way over here we had a conversation with my mother on the way over here and we were talking about some of these concepts, by the way, ooh, excellent, I know, but I explained that marriage-minded men meet women and very soon they put them in one box or another the potential wife box or the other box. The other box can mean a whole bunch of different things, but they make that decision pretty quick, right? Because a lot of times men already know what it is they're looking for and they also know what they don't want. It's not always the case, but nonetheless, I even think we do this subconsciously. Sometimes we say, hey, this is wifey material right here. So try to remember that. Last question.
Speaker 3:So the first question was can you tell when a woman is just wearing it versus being it and do?
Speaker 2:you get credit for it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you don't get credit for it. Here's the thing if a man detects that you are wearing femininity, he's not gonna like you any less. It's tough for me to say men in general, because I know so many men that are not aware of themselves, so let me make sure I'm talking about men that are aware of themselves. Men that are aware of themselves. Keep in mind we look long-term right. When we find a woman, we play things out.
Speaker 1:That's so nice to hear, because I feel like women get all of the heat for playing things so far in advance. Maybe we just talk about it more and there are way more rom-coms about it.
Speaker 2:But yeah, we get a lot of heat for playing things into the future and let me make a distinction between what you guys do and what we do. Okay, so I'm talking.
Speaker 1:Again, so that he remains there. You go, okay, go.
Speaker 2:Because I think men who are marriage-minded will look at a woman and play out what marriage would look like to this one.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay.
Speaker 2:But they're already marriage-minded and they're playing things out because he's trying to assess what his situation is gonna be like, if he's gonna be happy, if she's gonna go sideways on him, Like a whole bunch of things. It's different with every guy. The distinction between that and what women do they just kick in and start buying wedding dresses in? Their mind and things like that.
Speaker 1:Or they've already designed the wedding.
Speaker 3:The whole. Thing.
Speaker 1:It's all done. We have kids. Yeah, I have kids' names Notes on my phone.
Speaker 3:That's important. A guy will analyze it and say, okay, this is good or this is bad. But I think, women, we started trying to paint the good picture and move forward with it.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna even say not even the good picture. They're gonna paint a picture with a half, like you haven't even figured out what your paint supplies are yet. Like you don't even know anything about the guy. And we've talked about this several times about the 30-day time clock.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, and you don't even know what is his middle name. Does he have siblings? Like you don't have any of that information, and I think in that stage it's probably more of a attractive thing. Are you attracted to him enough to think about the next phase, because I think that's a piece too. Are you attracted enough? Can you see yourself kissing him? Those are all very good questions.
Speaker 3:So I do see a lot of marriage-minded women. Let me not say marriage-minded, it's more so that they're like, okay, I need to be married now, sure, so they're not so much deciding whether the guy has everything they need, it's how can I make him into what I need? So I might identify some features in him that are like, yeah, I don't really like that he does that, but he could be a good husband and good father. I can overlook that. And they talk themselves into making this guy their husband.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's never a good idea.
Speaker 3:Yeah, never a good idea, but I do notice that guys are like, if there is a sign that she may not be it like he's done.
Speaker 1:That goes to what you've said in the past about how men are the gatekeepers of relationships. Women are the gatekeepers of sex and, as you were answering the question about like playing femininity and like putting it on, it felt like playing dress up.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think women can pick that out and other women too. They can see cause I'm trying to think through. I like of my friends and the people that I associate with. Even if they don't have makeup on, they're still very feminine. Even if they don't have a dress on, they're still very feminine. Even when they're like lugging around a ton of heavy things, they're still very feminine. It's just who they are, yeah.
Speaker 2:And let me talk about the profanity, and forgive me for sticking to this, but the reason I want to talk about this because you'll hear women say when I find the right person, I will be feminine. When I find the right guy.
Speaker 2:I will respect him. And if I'm coaching a guy, I say to him, I say listen, you have to find a woman who is already feminine. If that's important to you, you have to find a woman who's already respectful, right, because if she's disrespectful over there, if you witness this with your eyes and she's disrespectful and verbally violent over there, and then she comes over to you and she's nice and pretty and feminine, trust me, my friend, in the context of marriage the extremes of your emotions will come out and that verbal violence that you witnessed over there will come home to you right.
Speaker 2:My wife has never, ever displayed any signs of verbal violence, and I knew that was important to me because I'm a sensitive person myself and I'm also a guy who demands respect. But I respect other people right. So I know that if you were the type of woman that I know will cross that line one day, that I should probably not even get involved. So don't marry a person like that. But the problem is if a woman puts it on, does she get credit for it? You can say yes or no. Guys will give you credit for it if they wanna be around you. If they put you in a box that says, hey, this is a nice recreational woman, they'll put you in that box. And if you put on some femininity, yeah, you get some credit for that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so does age play a part in this? Let's go back to my teen story of my friend that I thought was the height of femininity. She smelled great, she was beautiful, her hair bounced and she wore 90s to sleep in Like. At this point I'm still trying to figure out who I am. I would say that a good portion of high school I would have put myself in the tomboy bucket because I was athletic, I played a lot of sports and I didn't know how to do eyeliner. I did not know how to wear makeup until I went to college.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I felt awkward. If I tripped and fell, no one would come and help me get up. It was actually an ongoing joke that my mom and I had that if I sprained my ankle with someone who just said, get up, you're fine, whereas other girls, if they were to trip and fall, they would rush to their aid. And I still feel like that's true for me. If I were to fall, no one would help me get back up. But in that time we were trying to figure out who you are and what is feminine for you. Like, lily Patterns was never my version of feminine.
Speaker 1:That's not gonna be like. I like my dark, bold colors, but is there a grace period for trying to?
Speaker 3:figure out who you are. So that's where I was going, because if we're talking to a population of women that want to be feminine but they just don't know yet, and we give them some tips and they're learning from other women and they're trying different things to see if it works, I would hope that a guy would say okay, I appreciate the effort, We'll take you out of the recreation box and put you in a white box.
Speaker 2:Yo, that's a good point because I would like to make another distinction between the woman who wears the femininity because she understands it's important to men and basically from a manipulation standpoint. There's a difference between that woman and a woman who's learning genuinely, is trying to move towards femininity, like she understands that and she wants to be that, she's decided she wants to be that and she's moving in that direction. You get the distinction between.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you can tell very easily If we go back to our previous conversation on the sexual market value. They're still trying to figure out who they are at 21. I guess that's why it shows also how the ages of sexual market value for men and women overlap Somewhere. Yeah, 28, 29, 30 in that range, because ideally you figured out more about yourself on both sides.
Speaker 2:I don't know if that's the reason why they cross over. It's just that if you look at the graph, men do that.
Speaker 1:Oh, so simple, Mark. Great love that, love that for us.
Speaker 2:These are just tools for communicating.
Speaker 2:The whole femininity conversation is just to help women understand what's in the list things that they can do to have better outcomes right, Because that's what we're after that's where the clamp score came from is I want you to be able to have something that will let you look at yourself and, based on the person you're trying to sell yourself to, or that demographic of people you're trying to sell yourself to, what's valuable to them. You gotta understand that right, and these are the pieces that you can look at yourself and you can assess whether you have it or whether you don't, and where you can work on some things and where you can't, Because the idea at the end of the day is just what can we do to help people have better outcomes with regard to meeting their relationship goals?
Speaker 3:So this is where I think the gentleman of the world can help. When there's something that you like, talk about it. I was 30 plus when I learned that men wanted to be useful, or they like to feel useful. They want to be asked for help. All my years growing up I felt that it was bothersome to say, hey, can you help me with this thing? So I thought I was being nice or caring or feminine by not bothering you, giving you your peace, giving you your space. So I try to figure things out on my own. But I'm learning now that it's different. Like you want me to ask you to open the peanut butter jar.
Speaker 2:Man. That's a tough conversation to have, but the reason I say it's tough to have is because the surface that is true Men want to feel useful. That's just deeply ingrained into men. If there were 10 women sitting at this table and they all had husbands and boyfriends and you asked them if they asked their boyfriend to do something, if he'd be happy about it, a lot of them would say no, he wouldn't be happy about it.
Speaker 3:I would have said no too.
Speaker 1:I feel like there's a difference.
Speaker 2:The only point I'm making is that this is a bigger conversation because, if I was having a conversation with a woman about how men like to feel useful. I would give her several examples and I would walk her up to the understanding. A lot of this is in psychological research. If you want to connect with a person like I heard this reason you want to connect with a person that's gonna do something for you, like even if it's something like hold my jacket while I run to the restroom.
Speaker 1:Well, that does make me feel connected to someone.
Speaker 2:I'm trying very hard.
Speaker 1:I'm like I'm working through scenarios. Yeah, I shouldn't do that more often.
Speaker 3:I think it's an important conversation when we tie it to the FEM score, because we're helping women understand what they can focus on or what they can prioritize to become more attractive to men. So the gold digger conversation how do I put this? The traditional man, I would say, appreciates when a woman says, hey, can you pay for my nails or my hair? There are some men who they get a kick out of being able to help a woman feel like a woman. Seriously, it's a subset of men that look forward to taking care of a woman. That's why the whole sugar baby world exists. It's like they're men who just want to spend on a woman and take care of a woman.
Speaker 3:But then I think, when you go lower down on the totem pole, the economic, scale.
Speaker 2:That's what you mean when you say totem pole. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think that's where men start to talk about gold diggers, because one it could be their experience with women in the past that she came in, took his money and left, or it's just what they were taught.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're right, Because men who have a lot of money, they were wasted on women and they feel good. That one blue jasmine interview that we listened to a long time ago that was what's the word.
Speaker 3:I wanted you Shocking.
Speaker 2:It so illustrates how, when you take it down to economic scale, then a guy it's an insecurity thing, right that plays a lot into it, because I've got to ask myself can I keep up with what she demands from me financially? Right, for guys who don't have to worry about money, they don't ask themselves that question.
Speaker 1:I have a question going back to something you said a little while ago. When you think about femininity, you think of demure, you think of dresses, you think of makeup and long hair. I do not consider myself to be demure or meek at all. I don't even think anyone really described me as nice. Probably they would describe me as kind. Also, my mom says that she's great, by the way. Love her, but if you are lacking in that traditional thought of femininity, do you have to make it up in other places? Good question, like professional women? That's one of the things that, like I, was coming to my mind. Sorry I'm gonna cut you off, but professional women have and we've talked about this before just the pressures that women feel around workplace culture and the way that women are viewed in work and femininity is acceptable, like an acceptable level of femininity at work, yeah, so go sorry.
Speaker 2:What I hope people will get from this conversation is not us trying to tell them they need to go do something, but to use this information to help them navigate their relationship goals and what it is that they're trying to do to get better outcomes. So here's the example that I'll give you. You asked the question does that mean I need to work on it in other places? I would rather think about it this way If I'm a woman and I'm armed with this information to know that these are the things that men care about, these are the things that make him more attracted to me and I wanna be more attractive to him, then I will look at this list and decide on my own where I can improve myself.
Speaker 2:I might not be able to do anything about my femininity. Let's just say I can't do anything about it. I just don't know how and I can't. But there are other things on the list that maybe I can. And again, I'm thinking about this from the guy's perspective.
Speaker 1:Like in the looks and appearance category, the appearance Any of it Again.
Speaker 2:Let me put the guys out there because I know how to talk about them with regard to this conversation right there. But let's just say we're talking about confidence in looks, appearance, money and personality. If I don't have a whole lot of money, confidence will go a long way with women, totally. A long way with women, and if you don't have any confidence, money will go further than you would get.
Speaker 2:But it will, it just will. And looks and appearance is the same thing. So my point is if you don't have a whole lot of confidence and you have a hard time getting there, you can work on all of these things, any and all of those things, because the goal is to get the score up, not one specific piece, not just confidence, looks, appearance or money or personality. It's to raise the whole clamp.
Speaker 1:I feel like we could insert many scenes from Hitch right now into this conversation. Albert Brennan man dude.
Speaker 3:I think about it in terms of hitting 100% With the women. It's challenging because it's six things. So let's say the perfect score is 60. When I go down the list, I'm like, okay, looks are okay, parents is okay, let's skip the femininity one, let's skip the cooperation one. These other three are not that great. Now, if I want to get as close as 60 as I can, I'm gonna say, okay, which area can I work on to bring it up? I just keep doing that until I might land at 51, 55, somewhere there.
Speaker 2:And keep in mind everybody's got different buttons too right, because for women, confidence is more important to some women but for other women money might be more important than confidence.
Speaker 1:I don't care if you don't have confidence. Sure, sure, sure. So that's where the tailoring to type of person that you're interested in attracting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think for this conversation, our goal is just to get across to the women what's on the list, what we consider those things to be. We've covered 50 and Looks and appearance. Looks and appearance you decide. Will you get out there in the world and decide what you're gonna do to get better at femininity? There's some things I can help you with, but it's just based on, objectively, what I know about men. But even that doesn't play out the same way with every woman, and that's the reason.
Speaker 1:let me just make a plug here for a second about dating coach, because it was about that time we had gone a couple minutes without a plug about dating coaches?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because that's the reason why I still recommend that everybody who's serious about being in a successful relationship have a dating coach. Because a dating coach will help you navigate those things in those conversations and those questions and help you understand what you need to work on and in the context of what you need and what your goals are, because you can't have this conversation out in public. That's the reason why medical doctors don't Medical diagnosis in public. Maybe that's a bad analogy.
Speaker 3:Some women are who I am. He needs to take me for who I am.
Speaker 3:And there are other women who would say, okay, how can I be better for him? So if you want to just take the fem score, just to give yourself a score so you know where you are and know what you can attract, that's fine. But if you meet a guy and you came from these six things like he really appreciates these four, that's where I'm gonna focus for this particular guy. So you can do with the information whatever you want, but in terms of just understanding what catches a guy's eye is these six things.
Speaker 1:Do you think that a woman's femininity is connected to her self-confidence? Do you think the more comfortable a woman is with herself, the more feminine she is? No, really.
Speaker 3:Okay, flesh that out. I see a lot of masculinity in female confidence, mostly because it comes off as listen, I got this, I know what I'm doing, I don't need you. That's not a soft approach. It doesn't necessarily mean that you can't be confident, but it's not the first thing I see when I meet you.
Speaker 2:And my thought on that when you first asked is that there's no correlation between femininity and confidence, and I didn't even think about what you just said, Debbie, but it's the fourth wave feminism movement that has taught women that confidence is. I don't know. I don't even know how to explain.
Speaker 3:That wouldn't be angry.
Speaker 2:That's the way it feels, that's the way it feels, but I just don't see the correlation.
Speaker 3:I think there's another word for it Femininity and confidence. When I picture a confident woman in my mind I see loud, aggressive, sure. But when I picture a confident man, I see like just grace and strutting through and I got you, and so, oh, very interesting, it comes across a little different.
Speaker 1:Okay, if I change the question to be if a woman likes herself, because that doesn't necessarily mean confident, it means that she it's just secure, yeah, yeah, and she likes herself and she's like in a good place. Is she more feminine? No, yeah cuz, here's the thing cuz some of it is being, but also some of it is a.
Speaker 2:it's an active thing, it's not a passive Trait yeah, I know a lot of women who like themselves, but they aren't feminine at all.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's fair.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying there's no court. To me there's no correlation between the two. Okay, I was gonna say to you I know some confident women who are very feminine, yeah, and so I don't think there's a correlation between Masculinity and and the woman's confidence, like the boss babe.
Speaker 3:So the boss babe comes across as very strong, rigid. I don't see soft when I think boss babe, even though they do makeup and hair and wear heels and they may walk nice, it's like once, once they have that boss babe mentality. Some of the feminine it kind of drips off. But when I picture a woman just walking through and she's being graceful and her hair is bouncing and you get away for the perfume and she passes by definitely a hair commercial yeah yeah, there is an element of confidence there, but it's not.
Speaker 3:I just think it's a different word. I like the word security right, like I know who I am, I know what I'm going for in life, but I don't need to prove to an.
Speaker 1:Do you think the media has greatly impacted your view of a?
Speaker 3:Possibly, yeah, are my circle like. I think I am kind of a obstacle of confident women and it just comes across a lot as I don't need anything from anybody. I Can do this on my own, I'm in charge. It has a strength behind it that comes across as masculine, as opposed to just being secure in. I know who I am, I know what I want to enjoy life. I like myself.
Speaker 2:That, to me, says so I'll still say no correlation, and I will say this because I mentioned to you that I know Very feminine women that are very confident or very confident women that that I think are feminine and maybe we have different definitions of what confidence means. Right, that might be and like that, that persona that you're talking about, that's something that's been sold Sold to women in a way and you can call it confidence, but it's much more than that in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's so many layers to that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, maybe you can tell me which word to use in this scenario. We have a boss babe, right, she comes off as confidence at work, like she just knows what she's doing. She does all these fabulous presentations and she's really confident. But let's say now she, she finds a guy that she's interested in and she has to approach him. Right, she wants to position herself so she can be noticed. But now she's what do I say? What do I do? I don't want to come across as Is it that she's all of a sudden on a confident or like what? How do you define that experience?
Speaker 1:That's feels like she's just out of her element.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's you could be confident in working, not be confident in the basketball game.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very specific example, I know right which is why I say when it comes, when it comes to the security, like I can picture a secure, feminine woman, she she goes on stage and she does this fabulous presentation and she walks down. She sees a guy that she likes and she knows. Well, I just dropped my hand key and he comes over like there.
Speaker 1:Okay, that is just a magical hint.
Speaker 3:Like there is no way on earth still got to adjust to your element of Of.
Speaker 1:I feel good about this piece. I know what I'm doing here because I've practiced here. Mm-hmm, that makes sense. This part of my life is a little less practiced, because I've spent time practicing on this professional side.
Speaker 1:Yep you have to. There's a teeter-totter thing which Again goes back to like how this, these buckets and these traits within the bucket go toward. We try to improve all these pieces to increase this as a well-rounded human. Yeah, just, ultimately, where we want to go is being a well-rounded human.
Speaker 1:But whenever I think about the like media portrayal of feminine or like workplace and like that Dynamic that exists, I always think of this scene in working girl 1988, one of my all-time favorite movies and it has like Megan Griffith in it and Harrison Ford and one of his three romantic movies ever.
Speaker 1:And there's a scene where Megan Griffith or, yeah, she's going to a work cocktail hour and she wears this beautiful dress. It's like black off the shoulder tool, like tea length and it's got like sparkles in it and beautiful. And she is the only woman there in a dress every other woman is wearing like a pantsuit, like an oversize, like not a cool Oversize, but like a gross oversized 80s pantsuit. Yeah, and she's going there because she has a meeting the next day With this guy. She doesn't know what he looks like, but she's hoping that he'll be there. So, harrison Ford, the guy comes up to her at the bar where she's like sitting there like super pretty, and you know, I love that you decided to dress like a woman, not how a woman thinks a man would dress if he were a woman right or if she were a woman, and that's just.
Speaker 1:That scene is so perfect and it, like the fashion, is just like a hard contrast, like really accentuate the fact that she is so different than the woman that she's filling in. For if anybody's ever seen this movie, it's awesome and fantastic. I think everyone should watch it. But that scene is one of my all-time favorite scenes Because it's just. It summarizes so much of what we talk about With how women think a man is gonna approve of a woman, when really it's not at all the case. And that's where we have these scores and these categories right?
Speaker 3:Do you guys remember Elimate Clampett? Is that from Beverly Hills? I've heard of that.
Speaker 1:I Think she was not gonna be our thing.
Speaker 3:I was just watching it recently and in the earlier episodes and her dad, jeb, kept trying to get her to put on a dress. But she is farm girl, go fish and go hunting and and like the visual that I have now is they were trying to get her to wear femininity. Yes, because she would have on a dress and she's fighting the guys and she would hold a gun and Like that is just a clear picture of what may not necessarily be attractive to a guy, but she was really pretty and she looked really nice in a dress, so where would a guy fall with somebody like that?
Speaker 2:so man this answer for every man's album, please, and so this is a tough part, right, Because this is putting dirty laundry out there in the street for the men. But you've heard me say this before.
Speaker 1:Oh, I thought you're gonna give the lawyer answer of it depends. No, guys like pretty.
Speaker 2:Right, definitely, and it doesn't matter. Guys just like pretty, you gotta. If you are an exceptionally beautiful woman, you got to have stinking breath or something. I'm really disgusting to make a guy say, no, I don't want to be bothered with her. So the answer to your question where the guys fall on that, again, I'm Focusing on marriage-minded men. Right, and this is the dirty laundry piece of it men who absolutely want to be in relationships, men who absolutely want to get married, will still entertain a woman he doesn't want to marry and doesn't want to be in relationship. Okay, right, no, that's not all men, but the let's just put it out there as, generally speaking, a lot of men are that way and the problem with that this is just to answer your question when does a guy fall on that? If she's pretty and she offers opportunity and he can, he's got what it takes to get with her. She is open game, like guys will experience. There's many women as they can in their single days. This is, generally speaking, right, this is generally speaking.
Speaker 3:I thought your answer would be something along the lines of there's a hunting, farming guy out there who will appreciate those not so womanly features.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the truth also, because again, that goes to the Relativeness that I spoke to about before they're guys who spend all their time out in the woods and they don't want a girl walking around in a dress Because they want a girl who's okay laying down in the dirt with him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right Well it's like farmers only.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but, yeah, but he's got his own flavor of what feminine?
Speaker 3:I think that's where we learn. If you can decide the type of woman you want to be, yeah, just make sure you're pairing up with a guy that appreciates those things about you the way I would have a conversation with the woman is going back to our Beginning discussions.
Speaker 2:After you figure out who you are and what you are, and you figure out what kind of person you want, then you got to go understand what that, what it takes to get that person. Yeah, like you got to go do the things that that he finds valuable, not what you find valuable.
Speaker 3:But I would say my perspective has shifted in terms of the confidence thing. Now I'm on the same page with you, valin, in terms of them not being. There's no correlation between the two. I can see a confident woman that's also feminine and I can see a confident woman that's not feminine, and All variations of that, because I'm tell you, confident, fit women oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Like that's a thing.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay. Guys don't really use the word confidence, though, when they're talking about a woman that they're attracted to.
Speaker 2:No, we're way more simple than that. I mean, our list is short.
Speaker 3:But you can appreciate it when you have it, but it's not something that you're pursuing. Yeah you're okay with not being with a confident woman, with being with a woman that's not confident?
Speaker 2:Different guys. Let me give you an example.
Speaker 1:I think any woman can be confident when you start talking about like the love of a right, of the right person can Make you like those very fairy-tell-ish right now, but like the love of a good woman makes a man, like the love of a good man to a woman makes a woman, yes, and you can be not confident in like social settings, but you can be confident in your place in that relationship. And I think that confidence comes through with so many in so many other ways, like whether it's I Don't know like trying new recipes and being confident in the fact that, like you can do this, because if it's horrible You're just gonna order pizza right.
Speaker 1:Which is what my mom says all the time. If this is terrible, order pizza but she's a great cook. I feel any to to say that she's an excellent cook and and you can be confident to try things that you wouldn't have tried before, because you know that your Like the love of your partner is not based on your success in certain areas.
Speaker 1:It is rooted in who you are, because they know who you are, and it works both ways for men and women, and so I think that a seemingly worldly Confident woman can be very confident in ways that only her partner knows.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, I like that and I was thinking about Insecurity being the other side of confidence, I think men and women alike. I think we're turned off by insecure people totally, but not necessarily from a man's perspective, not necessarily turned off by a woman who's not confident, because that's not a factor for men, for women, but it is for women for men exactly, exactly, but and that's just what I think right now. I have to put some more thought to that when it comes to my relationship.
Speaker 3:If I need to call customer service, I am the most confident woman. Listen, yeah, I could almost be a Karen almost, but put me on stage, not so much.
Speaker 1:That's funny. I have a friend who is Is Fantastic at customer service calls. Like, literally, I'm like will you please make this call? Hold on, I'm gonna get some popcorn. This is excellent, it is. She is so good at it. So good at it. It's really important where, like, I will ask her to make my calls. Yeah, because I just don't want to. I can outsource that to someone who's better. I'll get this like empathy thing and like understanding for other people in their situations. She does not even a little bit like it is so good yeah so good See, I see the company and not the individual.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm nice to the individual. It also depends on, like, how much patience I have been used up for me, but that is an excellent trait. Hold on to that, I will. Yeah they'll make you friends.
Speaker 3:So then, in between, I have a manufactured confidence in social environments. I'm very secure on a customer service call. I am absolutely Insecure on stage. But if you take me to a networking event I can fake it and it will look really natural.
Speaker 2:But in on the inside I'm just like dying, yeah, but that's the introversion, because I'm in the same way.
Speaker 1:I have to really talk my energy up when I'm going to be amongst you have a hype song. I.
Speaker 2:Used to have a hype song.
Speaker 1:I don't what is it.
Speaker 2:I will not tell you what it is.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:All right, I used to have a hype song, but I understand that she and I both very much introverted, so I understand that and plus professionally, I that just had to be in front of people and had to display confidence and competence right.
Speaker 1:So confidence is One of those things. You can fake it till you make it worse. Femininity is a not them.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, I agree with that state. Yeah, but none of these hard.
Speaker 1:It is hard, it is very nuanced and it change. I think it changes in the different phases of your life. Like I'm trying to think through mine and I've we've talked a lot about femininity because I think it is just so nuanced. Yeah, it changes based on where I am in my career, what I want, how am I growing and changing? Even like we talk about appearance being a part of of femininity, like how has that changed since COVID? Like pre COVID wardrobe versus in COVID wardrobe? And now we're coming out and trying to figure out how do we dress again.
Speaker 1:Yeah and like all of that plays into it, where, like you, could just have matching lounge sets and that be considered feminine. What you wear also does play so much into how you feel and your feminine energy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you started off by saying femininity is so hard and you said oh, yeah, yeah, and I was thinking is it that hard to be masculine? Let me finish statement.
Speaker 3:I was about to make you.
Speaker 2:So you started off by saying Femininity is so hard. The first thing that crossed my mind is it is easy for some women and it's Hard for others. We could say that about most things probably. There's some women who just came out Feminine and they're around feminine women all the time, and I'm not saying one is good, one's bad. It's just that to say that femininity is hard, it's just maybe it's trying to become feminine as hard.
Speaker 1:Okay. Is there a difference between being feminine and feeling feminine?
Speaker 3:I do think there's a slight difference because, for example, like when I was putting on makeup, I would say, okay, this is femininity, but you, looking at me, would probably see that. So I felt it, but it wasn't really there.
Speaker 2:So Femininity is a big topic and is nuanced in so many different ways and is relative across the board, and it's a Lots and lots of disclaimers around this one yeah but the takeaway, again, the takeaway that I want people to have from this is understand what's on the list of things that are important to men and if there's One, you can prove and prove.
Speaker 3:Well, what I was saying early, that I would appreciate if the gentleman of the world would be more helpful in that area, because a lot of things I don't think they actually know.
Speaker 1:I think that's some of the thing that we've talked about Even coming up with this list for us to talk about, like how to talk about it, and I think women don't even know how to really talk about what they find interesting or what they like so certainly we can't expect men to.
Speaker 3:So I think women talk about what they like more than men do. We talk about flowers and chocolate and dates and all those things, but men are a little generic. I like peace. Peace means a lot to a guy, but when a woman hears peace it's like how do you bring that down?
Speaker 2:So that's a great example to say that men don't know how to articulate what it is that they want. Or actually I'd rather say it this way Men and women, in a lot of situations we don't know. We don't know what we like and what we want. And it's tough for me to say this because I want to make sure people get it.
Speaker 2:If I say to a guy, men don't care about how much money a woman makes, if I say that to a guy, depending on his economic standpoint, he's going to have a different answer to that.
Speaker 2:The guy who's got lots of resources in the bank, he absolutely has never thought about how much money his lady makes. The guy who's struggling financially, he absolutely is going to say that he cares about how much money she makes. But that's a circumstantial decision, not an inherent internal like and belief. I don't know if I'm getting across what I'm trying to say, but see, but he doesn't know that he's not thinking about the fact that I know I don't really care about her money, but I do care about her money because he doesn't have the wherewithal to say that to himself. And I'm just using that one as an example. But across the board I'm trying to say, and both on the woman side and on the men side, unless you go and you start studying the psychology of men and women, you start studying the biological of men and women, like most people just don't do that.
Speaker 3:So I don't think it's that deep. So we can make a general statement Women like flowers and chocolate. Right, I don't necessarily care about flowers and chocolate, but if I was teaching a man how to be attractive to women, I would say buy her flowers and chocolate until she tells you not to. It's the same thing I would expect from men. Could say guys don't like to have deep conversations when he just gets home from work. Guys don't like when you interrupt his sports game. Like be specific, so that a woman can visualize what it is that a guy likes. When you say be cooperative, it's like what do we do with that?
Speaker 1:Oh, we're getting into the second tier, oh the second bucket.
Speaker 2:I guess we should get into the second bucket.
Speaker 3:But you get what I'm saying, though I get what you're saying. When a woman does something and you say, I like that, tell the world, don't just focus. Like when guys get together and they talk, they can say, oh man, the wife been bugging me all week. She not, she did.
Speaker 1:I also sometimes dudes do that to bond. That's not necessarily true. I feel like no guy's going to go roll up at poker night and be like can I just tell you how great my marriage is right now. Like we are like on fire and we are in sync. She's leaving me alone Now. When I get home from work, I'm getting to leave without being worried about it. How many minutes this is going to take away from my leave bank to be able to go places. Dudes aren't going to do that, Just like women don't really do that and talk about how great their marriages are, unless something really awesome happened, and it's usually. Every story is about how your husband brings home a full head of spinach instead of the spinach bag. It's always about miscommunication and I imagine it works on both sides. But that's what makes it fun and you laugh and you know a good girl's night. You know that they love their husbands.
Speaker 1:And they're just the things they say about their husbands. Don't color how you view them, because they're just people trying to like it's a mishap, it's like a who out there knows what men like, so men.
Speaker 2:The reason? The answer is get a dating coach. Get a dating coach. You are proving the point that I'm trying to make, because men don't. Even if men know what they like, they're not going to tell women.
Speaker 2:Right, there's not because we listen to what I'm saying, listen to what I'm saying Not that I'm saying we don't want women to know, we don't want to tell them. It's just that men don't. Men are not thinking about that stuff Like we. Just they just don't. And I'm talking about the average population of men out there, for guys that are walking around trying to be red pill guys and coaches and all of that kind of stuff. That's the stuff that they think about all the time and they're in, they're part of the discussion. We're not talking about that demographic. We're talking about the general man is walking down the street out there. He only thing he knows is I'm supposed to be a little woman Like women. Good, let me get one and they really don't know. Like they aren't thinking about. And women are pretty much the same way. Women are more, more interested in relationships, so they have a tendency. There's a whole lot more resources out there to get them to the point that they want to be Right, so they think more about stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So again, just because there's more resources out there doesn't mean that it's good Agreed Absolutely. A lot of it is garbage. Yeah, I am a sucker for a Cosmo quiz. Who will not take a Cosmo quiz to figure out what their ideal wedding colors are Like they're? That's not helping me. That's not improving my life. That is not making me a better person, but yes, I am going to click on it.
Speaker 3:So what I'm seeing is we can offer to the audience hairs in general terms, what is attractive to men and hairs in general terms was attractive to women. Now, when you want to dive deeper, that's when you have to go one on one. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, there's a lot of things you can do on your own. If you feel like femininity is one of the places where you lack, go Google femininity and start doing some research, read a book, listen to do something Right. We're just trying to put the list out there and try to help shine some light on what it is. Yeah, but that's what one on one coaching is for is to hone in on your specific issue, hone in on your goals and hone in on a plan that help you to get better outcomes.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we've talked about the first bucket that has three traits Femininity, looks and appearance. This next bucket of next three traits would be temperament, intelligence and cooperative or cooperation.