Bad Boys Are Way Overrated

Ah, the allure of the term bad boy. It inspired countless stories. And there is also the myth that girls love bad boys.

OK, so it is not exactly a myth. There are many girls who like bad boys. In fact, to my major disappointment, one of my best friends admitted to this fact.

But trust me- there are also many girls out there who think bad boys are way overrated. I should know, I am one of them.

If a guy is an asshole, it is a deal-breaker. He can be the richest and/or sexiest and/or smartest man I have ever met. So what? Nothing matters when the guy doesn’t have the personality it takes to be with me. And what I basically want is a laid-back, easy-going nice guy who doesn’t see picking fights as a hobby.

And by laid-back, I don’t mean lazy or irresponsible. I just mean someone who makes it easy for me to be around him.

I don’t know when people started seeing bad boys as sexy. And movies don’t really count. Seriously. If Timothy Olyphant is playing a badass, and I am finding him attractive, it is because I just like how the guy looks and acts. I am not turned on because he is a jackass. I am turned on because he is Timothy Oylphant.

Tİmothy Olyphant with Jennifer Garner in Catch & Release.

Nice is sexy. I am not saying I’ll fall for any guy who is nice. But come on. Dating is a lot more complicated than that. There has to be an attraction. But let me tell you this much, if I ever liked a guy up to now, it was because I thought he was nice. I was so put off after I learned that the nice boy thing was an act.

And look how Hollywood makes money out of bad boys. They put a misunderstood guy who the audience thinks to be a bad guy but the guy is intrinsically good and he proves it to the audience and the girl he ends up with. Remember Patrick Swayze’s Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing? Timothy Olyphant’s Fritz in Catch and Release?

So I like good guys, shoot me.  In fact, I have a feeling fewer girls would be single if bad boys were ALL THAT.

Some Essentially Recommended Movie Good Guys

Hugh Dancy’s Grigg in The Jane Austen Book Club

Hugh Dancy’s  Luke Brandon in Confessions of a Shopaholic  

OK, pretty much any Hugh Dancy character is a desirable nice guy, so moving on:

Matthew Macfadyen’s Mr. Darcy – Pride and Prejudice

Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy – Bridget Jones’ Diary, Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason

Lee Pace’s Michael – Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day    

Simon Baker’s Bryan – Something New

Daniel Day Lewis’ Hawkeye – The Last of the Mohicans

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My list goes on, but you get the idea. Let me know what you like: bad boys or good guys. But even if you like bad boys, can you honestly resist a good guy looking like Simon Baker? I am just saying…

Settling, The Last of the Mohicans and Looking for Who You Really Want

Image via: thematthewbryant.com

Epic/period movies are definitely harmful to any girl’s psychology. Sure, regular romantic comedies do their best to create flawed but loveable male characters that also happen to look really cute. But in (epic) period films, the hero is typically handsome, strong, thoughtful and emotional, romantic, heroic and to add insult to the injury, he is a great lover. The other night, my friend and I made the mistake of watching The Last of the Mohicans. Again. You can watch the trailer here.

The Last of the Mohicans is a great adventure/romance/war flick from 1992. Directed by Michael Mann, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe and rated 7.8 on IMDB, it is by no means a film for just girls. But it leaves the biggest (and worst) impact on girls. You can read the plot and review here, but my first paragraph pretty much explains why Daniel’s Day character is sets an impossible example.

The truth is, we don’t expect a guy to look as gorgeous as Daniel Day does in the film. But that character of his will turn us on anytime. 

Daniel Day-Lewis as Hawkeye.

So the next day, we found ourselves talking about relationships and why we are single. I complained that we are just both unlucky when it comes to attracting the guys we want to attract. But she said, usually everyone is. A majority of people fail to attract the people they truly want, so they settle for whatever they can get. That’s a depressing theory, but she might have a point.

I had mentioned in a previous post that there were 5 parameters that kept us single and those had nothing to do with high expectations.  But I always want mutual attraction. I don’t believe in game-playing. I believe in being open and nice to each other. Technically, I don’t want much. But I am not going to date a guy because I am afraid of being alone or because he likes me. If I don’t like him, I am not going to spend his time or mine.

But when many people settle or date for the sake of dating and not for their actual feelings, the same people expect you to settle as well. If you are single, they try to convince you that there’s something wrong with you. But the truth is, most of the time you are single because you are not afraid to ask for what you want. You do want to feel intensely attracted to someone. You want to feel extreme excitement. 

Yeah, I realize the modern guy won’t be a gorgeous adopted Mohican fighter. But hey, he doesn’t have to fight in actual battles. But he should be able to fight for you. He should be willing to make an effort to be with you and you should do the same. He has to be decent. He should respect the fact that he is not your only option but you choose to be with him- over anyone else.

So no, I am not settling. Because what bothers me is not being single. It is not being with someone I really want to be with. I have nothing against being single. If my option is to settle for less than what I want and/or deserve, I am not going to take it.

We are talking about personal and emotional compatibility, coming with mutual feelings. And I will keep searching for that. Even if I don’t find it, I’ll be proud of myself that I tried. How about you?

Book Review: What the hell is he thinking? by Zoe Strimpel

I had a great laugh while I was watching Mel Gibson’s What Women Want. It was a great comedy/romance about a chauvinistic, guys’ guy who starts to change after he unexpectedly begins to hear what every woman thinks. The movie had gotten a lot of things right, but then again it was written and directed by a woman, Nancy Meyers (also the writer& director of Something's Gotta Give, It's Complicated). I had then contemplated the opposite idea. I remember thinking it would be a great idea to hear what men think…But the truth is, as long as the ability comes with an off switch, it would feel more like a curse than a blessing.

Image via cinemablend.com

Still, it sucks not being able to figure what they think, doesn’t it? Especially if you like a guy who is giving you mixed signals or acting weird. It gets even more complicated when he turns out to be the exact opposite of what he claimed to be when he was first met you. You want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but the longer you stay in the relationship, the more you realize he was an asshole who had disguised himself as a nice guy.

As for the benefit of the doubt, there is no need to be naïve about it. I used to believe that every man was innocent until proven guilty. I was just being a nice girl and a romantic. But I realized that being a cynic does more good than harm and it is better to accept the opposite: Assume guilty until proven innocent. And there is an awesome book on relationships to help me prove my point: "He is just not that into you".

Don’t think that I am being particularly feminist or sexist- when I covered the book and the movie on the same article, I made sure I believed the books’ points made sense for both sexes. The most important to take from it is that if he/she is making you confused, making you second-guess them, you feel like there are mixed signals…well, he/she is not just that into you. It’s that simple, right?
But sometimes, you wonder why that person is like that. What the hell is crossing their minds? Why aren’t they that into you in the first place? Why are they acting like jerks?

The difference is, while “He is just not that into you” can be considered unisex in many aspects (if guys can be smart and take hints), What the Hell is He Thinking?: All the Questions You've Ever Asked About Men Answered is strictly for girls.

Image via amazon.

The author Zoe Strimpel is a British writer, born in 1982. She has been writing a dating column but she wasn’t less clueless than the majority of her friends and the rest of the female population when it came to the puzzling behavior of men. So she talked to many men, including strangers, friends, friends’ boyfriends, dating gurus…that cover a wide range of ages, physical appearance, jobs and personality.

And while it is a very fun, fast and true-to-heart read, it is not for the faint of heart as you will listen to true stories of men who only want to date skinny women but consider having sex with plump women “lovely” (they just wouldn’t date them), men who read Cosmopolitan so that they can get laid more often and fool more girls (-they don’t read these mags to make their women happy), men who get possessive over women they are not in love with, Casanova wannabes who try their initial games on you, men who give mixed signals, men who openly lust after other women while their girlfriends are present and much more depressing true stuff…

While I still believe that "He is just not that into you" the pretty much the only relationship book you’ll ever need to get to be with people you deserve, What the Hell is He Thinking?: All the Questions You've Ever Asked About Men Answered is the next best step, if you are trying to figure out what the hell was that behavior all about. And yes, many of the reasons and explanations are going to be too superficial or too brutally honest. But don’t forget, it is coming directly from the source and you did ask for it.

Do you really have a type when it comes to attraction, flirting and dating?

I don’t. I’d say that generally I am more drawn to guys who are taller than me and happen to have cute smiles, but that is pretty much all they have in common. Hell, they might not even have the height in common. 

I have been aware of this for a while but it dawned on me once again when a friend decided, based on my recent fascination with The Vampire Diaries’ Paul Wesley’s, looks that she has a clear idea of what my type is. Well, she was in a rush so I didn’t get a chance to show her Ian Somerholder, who plays Paul Wesley’s brother on the show. But apart from playing brother vampires and me finding both of them extremely attractive, they don’t really have anything in common. Oh, then there is also Matthew Davis, who is a guest-star on the same show. He is just gorgeous.

So this is Paul Wesley.

And this is Ian Somerhalder. Do you see a resemblance? I don't...

But I also think the “kid” brother Jeremy (who plays a high school student but is actually 22), played by Steven R.  McQueen, will grow up to be a total hunk (just like his grandfather the late Steve McQueen was). Oh, let’s not forget the cast’s Zach Roerig, who plays Matt and is a total cutie. Then there is his best friend Tyler, played by Michael Trevino. Now, I shouldn’t be finding Michael Trevino attractive if Zach is my type, but I do. I love the fact that Tyler reminds me of Jonathan Rhys Meyers on his good days. Oh, and let’s not forget the guest star Taylor Kinney, who played Tyler’s Uncle Mason for 6 episodes.

Matthew Davis

Steven R. McQueen

Well, so the above examples have all been from The Vampire Diaries- but it does serve the point of this article perfectly. I find the male cast to be extremely attractive, even though they couldn’t have looked like each other less. 

Michael Trevino

Zach Roerig.

Taylor Kinney.

The point is, what attracts you, attracts you. There is no point in making up rules. But don’t get me wrong, I do have rules and a certain type when it comes to personality. I want decent, fun-loving & friendly.  There is no way I am giving up on that. Other than that, I am pretty open to different types when it comes to looks.

Take a look at some other celebrities that I find attractive, to further visualize my point:

*Jon Bon Jovi, Mel Gibson’s youth, Colin Firth, Gerard Butler, Clive Owen, Denzel Washington, Antonio Banderas, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Keanu Reeves, Paul Walker....

So, boys and girls, do you have a type? Really? I think it is just more fun if you don’t.

Men Want Porn, Women Need Vampires

    Yes, I realize it is a weird title. It doesn’t make it any less true, though. This is basically a word-play on a bestselling book’s title. The book is called Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love and the moment I saw the book, I was really turned off by how stereotypical it was. I was in fact inspired to write a reverse article – why men need love and women need sex, to point out that both sexes need& want love and sex. We want it both and we hope to find that we can find them in the same person.

But then, as stereotypical as the title was, it is not entirely wrong. Even though sex is a biological need for both parties, women seem to be more fond of associating sex with love. It just sounds better and we really feel like we will get better sex if we are in love. And guys seem to be more obsessed with finding a woman who is good in bed, while women cross their fingers that the guy they fell in love with will be good in bed. Bit of a dilemma, right?

I am not saying you can’t have sex without love or enjoy it if there aren’t mutually intense feelings. But women are typically labeled as the more romantic ones. And well, we do form the majority of the romantic movies’ audience and the readers of romantic escapism books. And while there are certainly girls who enjoy porn, you are far more likely to find porn stuff in a guy’s room than in a girl’s. Go through her computer and DVDs or her movie/TV-watching history or her books, though, and you will run into vampires. It can be that she is more into classic stuff like Bram Stoker or Anne Rice. It could be the Twilight series, it could be the Dracula films. But it is really hard to find a girl who hasn’t enjoyed watching one vampire on the screen. So why the hell are we obssessed?

Playboy Cover. Image via:

repository.wwe.com

Oh sure, just like porn stars and male magazines’ cover girls have the bodies that attract men, the casting/writing for vampires are done with the utmost care: The guys are hot. They have great faces and bodies, intense looks and seductive traits. And even though we get our share of villains, there is always this leading vampire who falls for a human girl and we get this ever-lasting love story, where the guy risks his life to save the girl. It might be cheesy or corny, but as long as the writing and casting can pull it off, us girls are willing to buy it all. The blood and the sex might be drawing men in, but for girls- it is usually the sexy and passionate love story.

Image via: werewolves.com. You see the guys on each side? They are both vampires. The one on the left is played by Ian Somerhalder. The other by Paul Wesley. Yes, girls love them both.

And guys might make fun of it as they want, but frankly, I’d not poke fun if I were them. It is not like they are always watching state of the art films with substance. They can watch as much Nolan or Scorsese or Fincher or whoever they like. There will still be those porn movies we know they love watching for you know what.

So yeah, guys and girls tend to see love and sex differently at times. I propose we leave each other alone with this. They are never going to respect our crush for Boreanaz or Pattinson or Somerhalder. And we never want to catch them at it, especially when they are getting assistance from their “quality” stash.  

But I suppose once in a while, we get series like True Blood, that seems to give both parties what they want at the same time. It is nice to find a vampire thing to watch together. And hey, occasionally, we do end up in relationships where we want similar things.

So guys like porn. Girls like vampires. But we both want the love and the sex after all...

Sluts, Manwhores & One Night Stands

This really might solve the memory loss for the guy but what if she doesn't remember either?

Katherine Heigl’s Abby calls Gerard Butler’s Mike a manwhore in The Ugly Truth. Well, he has a dirty mind, a dirty tongue and he does sleep around a lot. But  manwhore sounds a bit harsh, so I am just going to call Mike a slut. Here's how I define a slut: a person who sleeps around too much, has one night stands all the time and has sex on first date a lot- sluts. Obviously, the girls who do these are regarded as sluts in many countries, no matter how liberated or open-minded they claim to be) maybe with the exception of Scandinavia...) So, if women are going to be called sluts, so should men be.

Gerard Butler as Mike in The Ugly Truth - he is posing with the fun-bag twins (a.k.a the girls he wrestled with in Jell-O). Image via allmoviephoto.com

How did this come up? I was sitting in a bar with friends and chatting with a Scottish mate. He kept entertaining us with all the dirty stories he had (you know, stories that you could catch on Sex and The City or Entourage episodes). It was all really fun and entertaining until I realized he was trying to make himself sound like a victim- like the girls forced themselves on him, that any embarrassing result was due to the girl and all that…

He was entertaining me, until he said he could never really date a girl who slept with him on the night they met. It'd be if he just meant that it may not be a great idea to start something meaningful with a person you just went to bed with. But what he means is how can he possibly date a girl who just slept with him right away? You don't date sluts, do you?

Whoa, what? What kind of a double standard is that? I am not the biggest fan of one night stands, but if a guy is going to consider a girl “not relationship material” because of this, there is something very twisted in his logic. When to sleep with a person is a personal and mutual decision. 

But I know one thing for sure. If she is a slut, so is he. And I kept laughing at his face all night, saying he was sooo slutty and not relationship material. He hadn't looked at it like that before.

Now, I am not taking a moral point of view here, folks. I am just all for equity. What is the point of all this? Well: imagine how awkward (and entertaining for us females) it would be, if a guy met the girl of his dreams and he had sex with her right away. Perfect scenario, right? She is hot, fun and impulsive. But then he realizes she is not returning his calls. And who could blame her? How is she going to know he doesn’t do it with every girl he meets? How is she going to take him seriously? Yep, that was sarcasm...

Every coin has two sides, boys. Just so you remember it..

5 Parameters That Keep Us Single

     When you have been single for a long time, your friends love to treat you like you don’t have a boyfriend because you are looking for The One, a guy looking like your favorite celebrities or some other theory that indicates that you have very high standards for the other party’s looks, personality or both. Well, the thing is, you don’t really have to go after the impossible to remain single. 

Recently I was thinking about how it was a shame that there weren’t many attractive men around. Sure, there are some but finding a guy attractive doesn’t cut it alone. He has to be straight, single and you need to be his type as well. And of course when these come together, you should be into you enough. Otherwise he will just waste your time.

So let’s say you found your straight, single, attractive (to you) and into you, there is another thing you need to have a relationship to work: he has to be a good boyfriend. And by good boyfriend, I don’t mean candles and flowers and all that crap. He just needs to be nice to you, respect you and be able to show he likes you. If the guy is a lousy boyfriend, it won’t cut it if he is the nicest guy on the planet.

So the next time you want to blame something for your being single, you can very well curse the statistics. After all, it is not that easy to find a single, straight, cute guy that attracts you and that you attract. And he also should be a good boyfriend too. Yes, girls. We are screwed.

And boys, don’t raise your eyebrows already! If you are single, chances are you are looking for that single, straight, cute girl who is your type and wants you and isn’t a total psycho in a relationship. Good luck to you too...

I don’t think things work that much differently if you are gay. You need that cute person to be gay or at least bi and the rest is the same.

And if you are bi, maybe you might have a better chance at beating the odds.  

Let me know if you recently met someone who fulfills the 5 parameters and you have my blessing. And wish the rest of us some good luck.