In most movies or books there is a clear-cut “nice guy” and “bad boy.” In real life you can’t just walk down the mall at Creighton and simply separate males into the

two categories.

I think this is because there isn’t really such a thing as a “nice guy.” I mean sure there are plenty of guys who are nice. There is a big difference between being a guy who is nice and being a “nice guy.”

“Well he’s a really nice guy!”

This is probably the scariest sentence a friend can tell you if they are trying to set you up on a date with someone. It’s not because girls crave bad boys or anything. It’s simply that if your best quality is that you are “nice,” there is a lot wrong with that.

If someone is going to tell me all about how they found the perfect man for me I want them to say things such as “He’s super tall, he has perfect teeth, I was crying laughing because he’s so funny and on top of it all he is really, really smart!”

I would hope that the fact that he is nice is just a given. I don’t think anyone would want to set their friends up with a jerk.

Think about it. When a girl calls her best friend from home to tell her all about the guy that she met at the baseball game, she is going to gush about him if she really likes him. Her best friend will listen politely and ask questions such as how funny he is on a scale of Nicolas Cage to Jason Sudeikis.

She’s not going to say, “Oh Miranda, that all sounds really great, but you failed to mention if he is nice.” Well of course he’s nice. If he had been unpleasant when they met, she probably wouldn’t be all that impressed with him. Had he squirted ketchup in her hair and told her he didn’t find her interesting, she wouldn’t be excitedly telling you about

this guy.

I know you all are probably sick of me referencing “Gilmore Girls” by now, but the show is a prime example of what typical nice guy is.

During the course of the show Rory had three serious boyfriends. Her first boyfriend Dean was a typical “nice guy,” but that’s about the only good thing one could say about his character. He wasn’t particularly smart and he had a ridiculous haircut. The only good thing about him was that he was nice.

That is why out of Rory’s three boyfriends, nobody liked Dean the best. Jess, her second boyfriend was intelligent, deep, sensitive and usually clad in an awesome leather jacket. Logan, my favorite, was a preppy, witty character who always beat everyone to the punch line. These two boys had many great adjectives to describe them and Dean was “nice.”

I know right now you are probably all outraged thinking to yourselves, “But April! Peeta from the Hunger Games is a nice guy!”

Well of course he is a guy who is nice, but he has more going on for him than just that. While Peeta is incredibly nice, he also is smart and quite brave. If you were going to describe Peeta in a single word, that word probably wouldn’t be “nice.”

There are always those guys on Facebook who make statuses about how girls don’t appreciate nice guys, chase men who treat them poorly, then come crying to them when things don’t work out.

Okay, maybe some girls do that, but the majority of the female population does not behave in such a manor.

If you feel the need to post something like that on a social media site, I promise you that girls are not avoiding you because you are “nice.” They are avoiding you because you whine publicly.

There is a stigma in our society that nice equals pushover. If you consider yourself to be a nice guy, take care to ensure that you aren’t making this reality. You can do nice things for people, and that is celebrated, but don’t allow yourself to be walked all over. You might have been raised in a household similar to mine. I was taught to always wait my turn.

This upbringing was fabulous and I love polite children, but it can cause problems down the road romantically.

If you are always waiting around for someone to ask you if you are ready to date, don’t be surprised if it never happens. If you like  someone, but don’t want to be too pushy, you still need to speak up.

Because those kids who always cut the line in elementary school and dove into the box of Gushers first after soccer games, grow up to be the people who have no problem swooping in and asking out the person who you’ve been sweet on for a while.

So no more mister nice guy. I don’t mean that you should go around punting campus squirrels or anything. You should always make it a goal to be nice, but also allow others to see the other excellent qualities that you have besides just your niceness.