Gay is Our Fake Boobs

I was sitting in a coffee shop, reading Conrad's Nostromo, and waiting for Gwen, the Cappie, to meet me there. I couldn't help overhearing two women sharing the newest US Weekly. They were looking at a story on Angelina Jolie.

"Oh," one of them said. "It looks like she's adding another Third World baby to her collection."

"Where's this one from?" The other said.

"Vietnam."

They looked at the article for a few seconds without saying anything, before the second one said:
"You know, I don't know why everyone thinks she's so attractive, because I just don't see it."

"No, I know what you mean. Like, one of her eye brows is a little bigger than the other."

"Oh, I know, and her chin is like 4 centimeters off."

"And she's got fake boobs. I read it online."

When they were finished, Angelina sounded more like Frankenstein then the amazingly beautiful woman I remember in Cyborg 2. They proceeded to do this to every woman they saw in the issue. They'd start with imaginary flaws and work their way up. Also, every chick had fake boobs, according to them. I don't need to be Dr. Phil to tell you that both of these women were far from attractive, and were compensating for feelings of inadequacy.

I wondered, though, what, if any, defense mechanism we guys have developed to deal the same feelings. It took me a minute, but then it hit me: we just call them all gay. Brad Pitt's hot? Yeah, but he's probably gay. Gay is our fake boobs. It's not that we're saying being gay is bad (well, the stupid of us might be, but I'm not), we're just saying that gay men don't like straight women.

But we can't get away from it. It's the American way to first be jealous, then to inflate someone's flaws until one feels that that person is at his or her level. What's great for us guys, is women can't use the gay card. If they called Angelina Jolie a lesbian, she'd be even hotter to us. I thought of myself and Mads talking about Brad Pitt's eye brows being two centimeters too far apart, and I shuddered.

Gwen came in. After we did our hellos, I asked her what she thought of Angelina Jolie.

"Oh, she's hot. Those lips, whoo! And her eyes, man! I totally forgot all about her bad British accent in Tomb Raider just by how hot she is. Hey, did you TiVo last week's episode of The Hills?"

"Of course. I didn't delete it yet."

"I'm so mad that you got me hooked on that show."