In depth analysis into the male species at BYU

My beautiful and inspired friend Kristen Moore posted this on her blog and I loved it too much so I had to post it on my own. Its too true.
So, to all you old mill ward members and family that keep asking me why I'm not yet married, this is why. To all those who are wondering why I cant wait to move to NYC, FAR away from here. This is why. Enjoy. Thanks Kristen.

There are two main groups of males at BYU:

1. The 'Zoobie'- I thought everybody knew what a zoobie was, but apparently that is not the case. I will try to define it for you. A zoobie is the epitome of a BYU student. They love Provo. They love the Cougars, in fact, the may have been born in a cougar den. They wear BYU T-shirts. They wear denim shorts. They wear sneakers with white socks. They have probably been called Peter Priesthood many a time throughout their life. Are you getting the picture here? A zoobie is THEE perfect BYU student. Many of the BYU population fall into this category. Zoobies love to date other zoobies. That way they can buy their all-sports passes together and make sure they are at all the football games with their coordinating T-shirts. The zoobies will sometimes venture to non-zoobies, but it is rare and usually doesn't last.
(yes, yes you are. image from here)

2. The 'Tool' or 'D-bag' or 'Bro' or 'Provo All-Star'- When a man realizes that he is not a zoobie, he will often times try very hard to make this point clear. This usually means venturing clear to the other side of the spectrum, 'the tool box'. He wants no association to BYU or zoobies, and often times the church in general. He most likely lives at Alpine Village or Belmont. He drives a nice car. He wears flat-brimmed hats. He has multiple women in his flanks at all times. He was probably 90% naked on Halloween. These men like to date the female version of the tool, 'the maneater'. These are the guys that get a lot of attention because they are usually physically attractive. So over their years here at BYU they have developed quite an ego and think they can treat women like they treat the planet (they rarely recycle).
(an image commonly seen on a d-bags Facebook, image from here)

Many of you are probably thinking, wait, there has to be another option! And that is where a third group comes in...

3. The Stragglers- This is a tricky group because there is a lot of variation within it. You can have the straggler who is just really confused as to who he is. Maybe he was cool in high school but doesn't quite want to make the jump to Provo All-Star but doesn't want to be a Zoobie either. You can also have the straggler who is the BYU rebel, who has recently become known as 'Hipster'. This is hard though, because the 'hipster' can be perceived as a tool. But they usually have visible facial hair, Garden State is their favorite movie (it's rated R, in case you didn't know), and they probably hang out at Velour on the weekends. They really just don't want to be at BYU and they want to make sure YOU know that.
(sorry you probably can't hear me, you have headphones in. what prescription do you have in those glasses? none, because they're fake. image from here)

This is a problem though when it comes to dating.

Do we want a zoobie?
No.
Do we want a tool?
Definitely not.
Do we want a confused young man who has changed majors 14 times?
Not really.
Do we want a hipster?
Not unless we want a guy with skinnier jeans than our own.

So what do we want? We want the non-conformist. These are the guys that are just happy being themselves. They don't hate BYU, but they don't bleed blue either. They are interesting (as in they have interests, I know, shocking). They are not nerdy, yet their profile pic isn't over-saturated and highly contrasted. They are just in the middle. Sounds nice, right? But the question is, where are these non-conformists? The non-conformists have a hard time believing that they could be interested in a Provo girl in fear of discovering either a female zoobie or a maneater. So they choose to just not date much at all.

I will save the topic of dating at BYU for another post though. I thought we needed to establish these definitions first.

Wow, I'm glad I got that all off my chest.