Summer is here, and short skirts, tank tops, and sundresses are back in fashion. For most heterosexual men, this is a thing to celebrate. Most women are a bit more undecided about their sentiments toward ‘sundress weather’. You see, as the temperatures and hemlines rise, so do cat calls, lewd looks and the occurrences of “let me talk to you for a minute.” As a woman, I’ve come to expect this, and have made a sort of peace with it. What I’ve struggled to do is perfect my method of polite rejection. I’ve written about this before, and I must say, my method has not much improved. Being approached by men can be flattering, but more often than not, it’s frustrating because women are left to figure out how to say “no”, and have that “no” be heard and respected.

The standard response is “I have a boyfriend.” It feels safe and foolproof, or at least it used to, until dudes got wise and started asking why they couldn’t befriend you. But aside from its effectiveness, or lack thereof, I stumbled across another reason why women should stop using their boyfriends, real or imaginary, as a means of rejecting men who approach them