Love yourself, not your image

I live in a house where sports play on the TV most waking hours of the day. Naturally, when female significant others stop by to sit alongside their sports-watching boyfriends, they bring a distraction with them to dull the commentating of Bill Walton or Dave Neihaus.

The distractions are magazines, and they take women to a place that rivals the states of me and my friends in front of an NBA playoff game: half-conscious zombiism.

Why I mention this observation is simply to say women are exposed to the most advertising and commercial culture of the sexes. This advertising determines style, and it takes money, time and sometimes painful procedures to reach the image that maximizes visual appeal.

It is hard work; just take a look at a woman's bathroom. Products strewn everywhere, curling irons to burn hair until it flattens out -- and I wonder, why hide behind these rituals of beautification?

Sometimes I think women think we can see through the facade. Realistically, men can pick a gold-digger out of the crowd because she is usually trying the hardest.

Image and style are great when they are expressing self-identity, but fabrications set off a warning light on the dashboard of a savvy male's brain. That is why I know I can trust a woman after I have seen her in sweatpants.

This natural defensiveness was a reaction to the pressures some women use to turn men into a mold of what they want. Men must market themselves using beauty similar to the way women do, and attraction is a hard thing to create. Hence the soulless guys who know only Gap and Abercrombie for their stylistic identity.

My point is, striving for this ideal on the glossy pages of US, Vogue, Cosmopolitan or People is not worth the pain and suffering. Don't let style run your life -- and your credit -- into the ground.

"The magazines, they trick the women," comedian Dave Chappelle said on his first HBO comedy special. "They start picking at your self-esteem, and every page you turn you start to feel fatter and uglier and that your clothes aren't good enough. The magazines make you forget how beautiful you are."

It is simply not necessary in attracting a wholesome man that will treat you like more than a warm body to rub against while the new 50 Cent song blares on the dance floor. Trendy women are props; real women have talent.

Nothing is more attractive than playing a musical instrument, speaking a foreign language or the ability to shoot a basketball. Spend less time making-up and more time coming-up. Learn to stand out on merit not material.

I think men realize women are not pretty sideshows to be kept in the kitchen all day; we have finally gotten to this plain of enlightenment. We want intellectual equals, those who are opinionated and conversational at the same time.

To possess these qualities, it requires women to understand men, the way good men have always tried to decipher women -- it is essential if her happiness is the goal.

But women must do the same. Look up from the magazine, maybe even read the sports section and surprise your guy with a reference to LeBron James that he would never see coming. Also be aware that chasing a male beauty image that looks like it jumped off one of the magazine pages will require a painstaking attempt to constantly reinvent physical beauty according to current trends.

Focus that energy toward a man of substance and love yourself; then, beauty will be written all over your face.