When I first laid eyes on the woman who would become my wife, I was sure I had met her before. That’s because she is so unremarkable, so utterly mediocre in every way, that it’s easy to confuse her with any one of the women you went to high school with. But I knew on that day, when her dull eyes locked onto mine and the dim light of the bar revealed the lint clinging to her basic black T-shirt, that this was the extremely average woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
You see, my underwhelming wife isn’t a bikini model featured on Instagram and she’s not a Hollywood actress you’ll see on the cover of Vogue and she’s definitely not even really pretty enough to be an extra in a Lifetime movie, but that’s exactly why I married her: because she is so unexceptional that you cannot pick her out from a group photo.
Even now, having been happily married for years, I sometimes have an attack of acute face-blindness and completely forget who she is. Who is this person in my kitchen making me eggs at 7 a.m.? Who is this humdrum human, patiently listening to me describing Emily Ratajkowski’s latest Instagram? Once I even talked to her for 30 whole minutes — before realizing that I was speaking to a reflection of myself! In the mirror!
I know, it’s unfair of a guy to brag so much. But after I started to educate myself on issues such as feminism and how the media marginalizes unremarkable women in favor of really hot ones, I knew I had to have an average woman for myself. There’s nothing sexier to me than a woman I can’t find when we get separated in the grocery store, and — I know it’s brave of me — but I’ve learned to accept that about myself.
So to all the extremely average women out there: Know that one day you’ll find a guy who loves you even though you are not gorgeous or clever or alluring. Know that there is someone out there who will love you like I love my wife, what’s-her-name.
