Curve Chronicles #3: Shoot Your Shot Confidently

“It is better to be adventurous than cautious because fortune is a woman who… allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more cautiously.” Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince 

The phrase shoot your shot is commonly associated with the act of being daring, more so in regards to asking out the opposite sex. An analogy for shooting a basketball, its usage is popular and its action growing even more so in an age where women being the aggressor so to speak is growing. Apps like Bumble require women to initiate the “first move”, a gesture that clearly would be a major paradigm shift for men in Machiavelli’s time. That being said, there’s still a societal expectation that men be aggressive in their pursuit of the interest of women, and for Jaylon, he soon learns that all things in life worth having required a level of risk that can not be mitigated. In short, Jaylon learns that often times the best and most exciting things for us can only come from us putting ourselves out there and for many young men, the thought of doing such a thing is frightening.

Truthfully, women experience a similar phobia, in a culture of hypersexualization that places pressure on them to look and act a certain way to curry favor.  For women of color, the pressure to look curvy and still maintain a certain proportional build has grown to an unrealistic measure as many women take drastic steps to try and conform to these standards. I, however, feel as if these same standards in a sense have allowed more women who don’t fit into the traditional body mass index scale to gain a level of confidence unafforded to them earlier. The changing standards of beauty and relationship dynamics allow women the freedom to shoot their shot or sit back and catch the rebound.

With that said, men still have a need to understand how to maneuver through the dating realm and in the end, to be brave and bold in their efforts to gain attention. Women don’t face the same pressure as men to be charming, bold, calm, poised, paid, and sexually experienced and voracious the way men do. Jaylon’s journey in the book Curve highlights one of the keys that men and women must have to be desirable and that is confidence. Confidence can only truly exist from competence and mastery, and for men and women in relationships, mastery and competence come from an understanding and application of the principles of courting. In short, men must learn how to be charming, but not scripted, successful, but not limited, and brave, but not cocky. Sounds challenging? That’s because it is. But “where the willingness is great, the difficulties can not be great.”