THE BEST BOYFRIENDS... PART 2

Day 65: These two, originally uploaded by Weapon of Choice.

Yesterday's post of fictional boyfriends has started a bit of a debate amongst us at Girls in the Hall. To be more precise, we have heard a couple of protests from boys who read our site. The question brought forth which I feel the need to address is that with Lloyd, Heathcliff, Edward, Holden, etc. to keep us company, how are real boys supposed to match up?

My initial response was to quip back, "How do you think us girls feel? Every day we are inundated with images of swimsuit models, Gossip Girls, and underweight movie stars."

I had never thought that the flip could be true. One guy friend of mine asked yesterday, "How daunting do you think it must have been to ask a girl out who had "I <3 Mr. Darcy" scrawled all over her shoe? If that's the bar, we have no shot!"

We all ended the discussion in agreement that, a lot of the time, both girls and guys put false expectations on each other. Will your boyfriend show up with a boom box and stand outside your window like Lloyd Dobler did in SAY ANYTHING? Will your crush find you in an English garden and confess his undying devotion to you like Mr. Darcy to Lizzy? Who knows... I like to think that there are bits of these characters that do exist in the real boys who we like/love/crush on/obsess over and sometimes let break our hearts.

The truth is that our pretend boyfriends can exist in the happy place of our daydreams, but the real deal is so much more than that. Taking a chance and liking a real guy can be messy. Really messy, sometimes. All I really know to say about this is that when I felt that my heart was breaking (usually false alarms, but a couple of times that was true), Holden Caulfield was there for me every time and I will always be grateful for that.