Say a big CC welcome to our newest blogger Kaitlyn, or Femme Date All who is taking you all the way back to our new favorite decade…the 90s.  She is going to share all of the loves lessons that she has learned from all of our favorite TV shows and movies.  She is ALL THAT!  And a bag of chips.

My mom always said, “Kaity, he teases you cause he likes you!” And my response was most likely around the lines of “Shut up Mom!  No he doesn’t!”

That was probably because I didn’t want these boys to like me.  When I was 12, boys were people I tried to impress playing hacky-sack with at the bus stop; chewed gum and swore with.  I was a tomboy, I wasn’t a girly-girl, yet.  Why my mother thought that these pre-pubescent boys would find a flat-chested, 4’10″ girl with glasses attractive – I have no idea? Obviously, in hindsight she was just trying to make me feel better.  Bless her heart.

I can most likely relate my early years of flirting to be something similar to the first couple scenes of “10 Things I Hate About You.”  You know that Shakespeare reenactment starring a fresh-faced Julia Stiles and a dashing young Heath Ledger?  She plays the sassy, independent, tom-boy who finds herself charmed by a long-haired bad-boy. Not that I can relate entirely to this premise, but I can honestly say this was one of the first films that my mother’s wise words started to make sense.

I was starting to smarten up.

A charming man does not always have good intentions.  Heath has to land a date with Julia in order to secure a chance with her younger, more feminine sister.  All of this is all unbeknownst to Julia. (Note: I’m watching this at 13 years old and learning not to trust men. Well done, Touchstone Pictures. I’ll send you my therapist bills.)

I had started questioning myself.  Maybe these boys actually did like me? Maybe they are doing it to get to my sister? Wait. No, she’s six. Maybe these boys are just so insecure with themselves they are projecting their angst onto an innocent bystander?  I’m going with the latter. These are thoughts that go through any late-bloomer’s mind when they aren’t toting around a blonde-tipped, FUBU wearing, Justin Timberlake look-a-like boyfriend in the halls of the city’s largest middle school. Oh, the late nineties.

Like the cliché saying goes – “everything happens for a reason.”  Heath falls for this rebellious Julia, unintentionally. Those rude boys in middle school taught me to toughen up.  Those girly girls who made fun of me for my glasses – they probably didn’t have fabulous fathers to tell them they looked beautiful everyday. That movie told me to not fall for the first boy in college who got my number while drinking at a house party.

Don’t get me wrong, I will fall for a charming man in an instant.  But, “falling for” does not equal being awestruck when he turns out to be a cheating scum-bag. Maybe I don’t give away all of my heart in the first few months of relationship, because I want to make sure I have something to stitch back together when it’s been torn apart?  I’ve been the breaker and the broken in my years of dating and I know that all of these experiences have made me the witty, sassy, charmer I am today.

“10 Things” proved that you don’t have to change who you are for someone to fall in love with you. If two outcasts who ultimately hate each other in the beginning can find themselves so engulfed in love by the end, then why change for someone? Be that dorky, tomboy who would rather talk sports than New York’s Fashion Week.  There is someone out there impressed that you can turn a double play.

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@FemmeDateAll
Kaitlyn  of Femme Date All
Sassy and classy 20-something, living the single life by choice. Ok, not really. Where’s my drink?

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