Da-Yum!

During a recent trip to Wal-Mart, I noticed a man coming out of that store as I was going. Also entering the store at that time was a young shapely woman. Actually, she appeared to be a well-endowed teenager. Upon seeing this woman, the man, who appeared to be in his fifties, exclaimed, “Da-Yum, you sure are fine!” He may have said some other things, but I was too far into the store to hear any of his other comments.

Why do I mention this? To me, his verbal reaction is wrong on so many levels. Permit me to list a few:

• His comment ignores her humanity. Maybe this young lady was having a bad day. Maybe her boyfriend just left her. Maybe she just found out she is pregnant when that is the last thing she wanted to be. It doesn’t matter what factors may be contributing to her bad day, but his comment did nothing to address the kind of day she was having at that time.

• His comment disregards her divinely ordained purpose. Whenever we focus solely on a person’s physical attributes, we fail to take into account how we can help that person achieve their spiritual calling.

• His comment reduces her to her sexual being. Let’s be honest here. He wasn’t commenting on her intellectual brilliance or her emotional stability. These were non-issues as far as he was concerned. No, his comments were about specific parts of her body that have to do with one’s sexual attractiveness

You may say that I am over-reacting and that on one level he was paying her a compliment. In my response, let me offer an alternative way of dealing with this situation. If he was so moved by her physical presence, he could have started off with something like this: “Excuse me, how are you today?” At that point, the woman will either ignore him and keep walking or she may respond to the question. Whichever action she takes, he then has a quick glance of the kind of day she may be having and also her level of friendliness. If she moves on, then he can keep his comment to himself and no one is worse off. If she stops or pauses, he can have an INTELLIGENT conversation with her. See my post “A Different Conversation” (http://mooskm.blogspot.com/2007/08/different-conversation.html). During this conversation, he can mention that she is an attractive person and he may want to add that he hopes she is as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. Having said that; he can move on and go home. He like the rest of us must accept the reality that not every attractive person we encounter is destined to be our sexual partner, our romantic love interest or our one night stand. So, most of our conversations and comments should reflect that reality.

I am a fan of observing the attractive features of people of the opposite sex. I do not see anything wrong with making mental notes of those traits that make someone attractive. But I don’t have to comment on those things to the person and if I cannot help myself, I need to keep the three above bullet statements in mind. It just seems to me that when God made all the beautiful people in the world; he surely must have expected a more respectful reaction than just “Da-Yum!”