The Problem with JBY
Is the woman who applies make up everyday 'being herself"? How about the woman with implants, is she 'being herself"? What about the woman wearing high heels becasue it boosts her height 4 inches? Lets turn it the other way, what of the woman wearing a business suit that emphasizes her shoulders with pads in the jacket is she 'being herself"? If she colors her hair does this make her less genuine?
If being ourselves is an idealized state then I should reasonably be able to expect a like-minded fitness model to be attracted to me even if my greatest passion is to sit on my couch, eat a large pizza and wash it down with a 6 pack of Michelob while watching Monday Night Football, right? After all, I am just being myself.
The hardest distinction the uninitiated have with the JBY (just be yourself) dynamic is that personality is malable. You define what being yourself is at any given moment and it's relative to your personal conditions and environment. So where do you draw the line? When does a genuine change of character become legitimate rather than being 'shallow' or 'superficial'? Those are just catch terms that women (and too many chumps) have used with success over the centuries and men have internalized as being states of perception that women think are undesirable, yet they never accurately define. Rather, they stay intentionally ambiguous and relative to individual woman's interpretation, while their behaviors indicate their own motivations.
You are who you believe you are, and you are who she perceives you to be.
One of the hardest things for anyone, male or female, to hear is that they need to change their lifestyle because it implies that them just 'being themselves' is in some way at fault for their present conditions. It's analogous to telling someone they're not living their lives 'correctly' or that they're raising their kids 'wrong'. If I have a friend that is shooting heroin and I actively encourage him to stop and make an effort to help him 'clean up', society calls me a hero or a savior. When I encourage my friend to quit smoking before she gets cancer, I'm a concerned good-friend helping my friend with a health risk behavior. But when I tell a friend he needs to change his approach to women and this is a reason for his unhappiness and he needs to change himself, look better and feel better, then I'm a 'shallow' prick and insensitive to his 'problem'. Worse still is even attempting to offer constructive criticism, in as positive a light possible, that a person can improve themselves by changing their outlook and modifying their behavior.
Personality is not only malable, but it can change dramatically under specific conditions. An easy example of this is veterans with post traumatic stress disorder. These men were exposed to traumatic environments that fundamentally altered their personalities. While this is an extreme illustration it proves that becoming a 'different person' is a matter of conditions. If my conditions are such that I enjoy sitting at home eating a whole pizza, washing it down with a six pack of Budweiser and watching Anime on a Friday evening, can I realistically expect that hot fitness instructor at the gym to come on over and genuinely want to ƒuck my brains out? And why not? Afterall I'm only being myself and she should "love me for who I am", right? If this were my case, the conditions that define my personality are incongruous with attracting and/or maintaining a relationship with someone whose conditions are not my own. This is the mindset ELSTUD and other AFCs simply do not get.
We can alter our own personalities and have them altered by our conditions or any combination of the two, but to suggest that personality is static is a falsehood. The trap is to think that altering personality is in anyway disingenuous - there are certainly teriffic 'actors' and posers, and the like, that when we are confronted with them we sense (or even know) that they are pushing an envelope that they may not be entirely comfortable with, but there is merit to a 'fake it till you make it' doctrine. We only percieve it as being 'false', 'superficial' or as "trying to be something your not" when we have a concept or knowledge of a previous set of personality behaviors. If you met a ****y-funny guy at a club this weekend how are you to know whether he's the real deal or stretching the limits of his personality if you've never met him before?