How to Get A Man’s Attention

When I was a teenager, I hated not being noticed.

Not being noticed by guys is one of life’s greatest curses.

It makes you invisible. It makes you feel small. It makes you feel like you lost at the most important game of all: “Who Gets the Guy.”

In high school, “Who Gets the Guy” is the only game worth playing. It beats games like “Who Gets the Best Grades” and “Who Wins the Lead in the School Play” out of the water.

No one really cares who’s best at art or who’s best in class. But they DO care about who is walking hand in hand with the most popular guy in school.

The girl who catches the most male attention is a winner on every level. She’s beautiful, she’s desirable, and all of us want to be her.

So how do YOU become her?

How do you become the one who catches every man’s eye?

Is it by:

1. Getting a makeover?
2. Losing those extra pounds?
3. Spending a fortune on clothes?

No.

No.

And no. (Sorry.)

Because here’s what I didn’t understand in high school:

It’s not about what you look like.

I know—crazy, right?

The teenage me thought physically attractiveness was the ONLY reason guys looked at girls.

Like there was some hierarchy of looks, with all the male attention going to the top of the scale.

But gaining a man’s interest has to do with something else altogether.

I figured this out unexpectedly.

I’d gone through my entire life being invisible to men, until I spent a few years overseas.

I was a Peace Corps volunteer. If you know anything about the Peace Corps, you know that volunteers tend to look a bit feral. Hairy-legged. Ragged around the edges.

Not, in any way, hot. Unless by “hot” you mean sweaty.

After two years living in a village in the Andes, cutting my hair myself with no mirror and cheap scissors, with no access to decent moisturizer, makeup, or clothes that fit, I looked a bit odd. I stood out.

And the moment I came back to the States, I got tons of male attention.

I was still a bit shell-shocked, being back in a country where everyone spoke English and there was so much wealth on display. My eyes bugged. I looked at everything. I couldn’t stop staring.

And men smiled back.

Just walking through a mall won me warm gazes. Everyone noticed me. Men raised an eyebrow in that universal gaze of appreciation.

What had happened?

Why was I getting all this attention all of a sudden?

Then it hit me:

I was looking.

I was the one paying attention to men.

Inadvertently, of course. I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just that male bodies were in the way of everything else I was looking at.

I was making serious eye contact for the first time in my life, and I was getting noticed as a result.

That realization blew my understanding of human connection wide open.

If you look at someone, that person can’t help but look back at you.

Your gaze creates a connection. It tells people you are open and receptive to seeing who they really are.

Everyone likes being seen. No one likes feeling invisible.

And that’s why eye contact is so powerful.

You’re not keeping your gaze to the ground and hoping that someone will notice you.

You’re making the first move. You’re seeing them, so they have to see you.

And wouldn’t you know?

Men like female attention just as much as women like male attention.

They love it when a woman is brave enough to look. Because it gives them an opening.

An opening to look right back at her and wink.