💡🐇 Naughty Thoughts

꩜✓ The Unpretty Girl

Hanna and Josie are good friends. They work together, and they have a lot in common despite coming from very different backgrounds.

Hanna sees herself as the office's plain girl. Everyone else is pretty or sexy, and she finds herself living vicariously through hearing about their relationships. She knows that guys would never be interested in her. She has tried diets and fitness plans, all kinds of fads, even signed up to online speed dating, and it never seems to work out. This comes to a head when she finally builds up the courage to ask Mark Ditto from accounting if he has a date for a big party that everyone in the area seems to be going to. She's been fantasising about this guy for more than a year, and when she finally scrapes up the courage, she stops because she notices an engagement ring. He met someone at the christmas party, and it just seemed perfect... they dated for 6 months, and have just got engaged.

Hanna can't stop thinking about how she wishes her life could go like that; how much she wishes guys were interested in her. She even asks Josie (psychology graduate) to hypnotise her and take away the disappointment, by making her not want a guy anymore. But Josie thinks she has a better objective view of her friend's love life. There have been plenty of guys (and girls) interested in Hanna, she just doesn't see them. She can't believe that anyone is attracted to her, but that's her self confidence. A few times last year, Mark came up and made some flimsy excuse to talk to Hanna, and she always pushed him away because she was nervous. She's rejecting men constantly, without even realising.

So they decide to experiment. Josie has read books on basic hypnosis as part of her degree, but she's never really done it before. But she thinks that giving her friend's confidence a boost couldn't hurt. She'd already been trying to get Hanna together with Jack Woon from the mail room, and she thinks that if she blanks him again he might take the hint that she's not interested despite Josie's reassurances. But making her friend go into a relationship still feels wrong. So she proposes – and Hanna agrees – that she will make Hanna respond enthusiastically when a guy seems to be into her, unless there's something wrong (like he's creepy, chauvinist, really unattractive, smells bed, etc)

It doesn't work out quite how she hopes. Josie meant to make it easier for Hanna to notice Jack's attention and give him a chance. But the suggestion as Hanna understood it wasn't so focused. Instead, Hanna interprets it as meaning that she can't say no. Unless the guy flirting with her is creepy/ugly/offensive in some way that actually repulses her, she finds that it never crosses her mind to say no. And, as it turns out, she'll agree to almost anything.

A weekend hiking trip in the mountains? She's never done it before, but why not? Trying out bondage? You only live once. A threesome with some guy and his girlfriend? She's just flattered to realise that someone finds her attractive.

It seems that the suggestion didn't have the safeties it should have had, either. If an attractive guy asks her on a date, she can't say no. Even once she's in a relationship or five. She doesn't think to mention that she already has someone unless they ask; and if someone is still interested, she can't stop herself. Every guy is irresistible; everything they want to try sounds like it might be fun. And when Josie realises something is wrong and tries to change those suggestions, she just can't find time. Because between five or six guys, Hanna doesn't have time to just hang out with a friend anymore. That would mean saying 'no', and she no longer knows how.