It's time for the classic, panicked bar phrase, "please pretend to be my boyfriend!" to stop.

Ladies, we've all done it. It's a night out, you're at the bar, and that creep lurking in the corner is staring straight at you: you've been pinpointed as his next one-night-stand target.

Unless you've chosen to let your freak flag fly on this this particular night, this is the almost guaranteed moment when we instinctively grab the nearest, completely platonic, man-friend and drunkenly slur the inevitable: "(Insert bro name here), you have to pretend to be my boyfriend!"

I like to call this phenomena, the "Blanket Boyfriend," because that is exactly what he is: the mediocre, drab security blanket us women have chosen to hide under. 

Blanket Boyfriends all have the classics in common: they're your "best guy friend," they always have your back and they're the nicest guys you know. So you may be thinking to yourself, "What's the big deal? They're doing me a service by protecting me from the child molester in the corner. What's wrong with that?".

This is what's wrong with the Blanket: we can't fathom just putting our independent big-girl panties on and saying no to this weirdo ourselves. What happened to the Victoria Beckham personas we had on when we left the apartment? The Blanket is actually harmful because he has become our crutch to lean on when we don't want to lean on ourselves in awkward situations.

While this may seem overly feminist and I may seem a little harsh, we all know this is true. It's a damn shame that we have created a persona around ourselves being the damsels in distress that needs a big, burly man to come to our rescue. All we need to say is, "No thank you, pervert. I find you actively unattractive and I believe I'll buy my own drink." There is nothing rude or dramatic about telling someone to walk the other way when out in a bar setting. 

Also, for the love of all things good in this world, stop using your gay best friend as a creep repellent, that's just rude. Forcing your GBF to find you sexually attractive for two seconds just to ward off the aggressive douche that's making you a tad queasy isn't very nice.

Ladies, the moral of this story is the next time that an overly persistent, can't-take-a-hint, creepy loser is looking for a post-bar booty-call, woman up and say no to him yourself. Keep the sass-hand strong, and demand your own respect!