Checking the Yahoo mail I couldn't resist clicking on
this trenchant (and by trenchant I mean completely banal, in an intelligence insulting kind of way) bit of dating "advice" from Evan Marc Katz who himself is (gasp!) still single. But whatever. He's a dood living in Dood Nationz so he knows best. Then I found that both
Amanda (and do note the irony of poetic proportions that is Google Ads) and
Jeff have already done both exemplary and snarktastic jobs of excoriating this piece of puffy cobaggery, so I don't have much to add, except to feel that if I were a man I would be totally insulted by this. Are any men who may be reading this insulted? Just curious. As a woman I'm just rolling my eyes because plenty of boyfriends have told me my most salient points (e.g. not wearing makeup, not acting like a doormat) are supposedly what turns teh menz right off.
I had been going to pick #9 as my favorite (" Cooking dinner for a man is like buying flowers for a woman, except it takes a lot more time, effort and thought for you to do it. Thanks. We appreciate it.") since the condescension is just-mwah! magnifique!!, but then I got to #11:
Just because we like looking at the women in Maxim doesn't mean we want to actually converse with the women in Maxim. Not for long, anyway.
Um...yeah. Thanks, Evs--I feel so much better! All along I just needed to lower my standards--because everyone knows that being single and happy on one's own terms is worlds worse than being in a relationship with a total douchehound who insults one's dignity. I'm going to go and get me one of those Nice Guys® right now!
4 comments:
not offended at all. i find him astute.
oh and why would men be offended, these are essentially "inside" tips for woman. love the spinal tap reference. but "single AND happy"???
who do you know that is that? most single people I know want to be happy with themselves and aren't, feel like the ideal relationship would fulfill their life, but once the get at a shot at it, they fuck it up, or if the go for it and think it's working but come to find out being in relationship does not equal happiness after all.
Yes, it is possible to be single AND happy--one of the first lessons I learned in my young life was that being in a relationship didn't mean/guarantee doodly-squat in or of itself. And that everything you need is already inside of you, not in someone else. Which was my point of the "let-me-tell-you-why-you're-still-single" meme and its arrangement that it couldn't POSSIBLY be by design but rather because I am too clueless/selfish/whatever to "hook" a man. If my choices are between spinsterhood and being with someone who ridicules me for caring about my appearance but then turns around and ridicules me for not caring enough about my appearance (re-read points #3 and 4 together) I choose spinsterhood. Male or female, who needs that kind of crap? Life is way, way too short.
i like your lesson, i like your point. but you missed mine.
you may be single, but you, like many of us, are longing for companionship. that doesn't mean that simply being in any relationship matters or equals happiness. but it does mean that there is no need to chose between being a spinster or a man's puppet (a false dichotomy) when what you really want is a partner, an equal, an co-adventurer. single and content maybe (bitter more likely), but single and "happy" - I've yet to meet that person.
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