Okay, so I don’t generally read GQ, but despite not being a regular reader, I somehow found myself alone with the April issue (I was at the boyfriend’s house and needed some, ahem, bathroom reading). Well, suffice to say, I was… displeased.
I flipped through page after page of male fashion, cologne, espresso machines… until I got to an article called Treat Me Right, in which a panel of “women” discuss how they want men to, well, treat them. Why the quotes? I mean, I can’t prove that they aren’t real women… But they sound suspiciously like snarky men doing their best impression of what they think women are like. Or maybe it’s not the panel’s fault, because Lord only knows who was doing the paraphrasing.
And then along the side, there are little asterisks, which then lead you on a little dotted-line adventure down the page to where the “editors” have “editoralized” with what I assume are supposed to be clever and witty comments. Really, they are mainly a male nudge-wink behind the female panelists’ collective back. Which then takes the tone of the article, which was supposed to be Let’s-find-out-what-women-really-want-from-men and makes it into a Dude-check-it-out-they-think-we-really-care-what-they’re-saying-oh-man-that’s-rich! Basically, the nature of most of the editorial comments lead me to believe that the in-office draft of the article was covered in ketchup fingerprints and smelled of beer.
And to rub salt in the wound even further, I can’t even link to it because they did not bother to put it up on their website. Almost every other one of their feature stories are listed, so I do not understand why they left this one out - unless it is because they are well aware that it’s a sub-par piece. Which it is. Which is fine. But I strongly suspect that the topic just did not rank high enough on their priority list. Obviously it is much more important for them to post an article about the the twenty-five most emasculated, disempowered, henpecked husbands on the planet (one of the more prevalent crimes? daring to donate your hard-earned cash to a charity your wife supports! gasp-NO!), pictures of a naked Adriana Lima covering her cooter with a palm frond (note to guys: I know you like it. It’s cool. You keep doin’ what you do. I’m just sayin’.), an interview with Keith Richards, a piece on Russian mail-order brides (I am not making this up), an article about the founder of Girls Gone Wild, who is now in jail… need I go on?
Anyway, since I can’t link to it, I will be forced to quote some choice tidbits.
Okay, so, my first complaint: the women. Yeah, you! Well, not you. The panel. I mean, really. Okay, so they came up with plenty of decent advice (some of it obvious, but many guys still don’t follow it, so I suppose it bears repeating), such as If you take our contact info, use it and Don’t talk to us about how hot your ex-girlfriend was and Place your hand gently on the small of our back. There was even an excellent little section giving guys some good advice on: how to deal when there is a hot babe clearly in your line of sight while you are out with your girlfriend/wife. It was a four-part section and probably too complicated for many people to be able to use in real time, but I agreed with most of it.
But then there were some other bits of advice that just made my eyebrows vibrate. In a bad way. For example, one piece of advice is: When debating whether or not to buy us flowers, the answer is always yes. Great. The next piece of advice: Except when it’s not. Gah! Oh, and by the way, send those flowers to our office, willya? Um. Oh, and never use FTD. What?? Dude, I almost started hating women halfway through this article! What gives? Who are these women? And why are they reinforcing this crappy stereotype??
Oh, and another of my personal favorites: Bathroom humor is never funny. We women laugh so that you’ll think we’re cool and can hang with the guys, but we would like it to stop. Okay, FIRST OF ALL, yes. Yes it is. Especially farting. Farting is always funny. Except dutch ovens. Those are not funny. But I digress. Second of all, ladies of this article - WHY? Why why why? Why are you doing this? This is why guys don’t trust women, why they think that the second they commit to a relationship, that the girl will morph from a stiletto-wearing hottie to a sweatpants-and-baseball-cap couch potato, why they think we will stop letting them hang out with their friends once we have our claws in them, why they think the sex will stop once there is a diamond ring involved. That is a very negative (and, hello, inaccurate) portrayal of my gender by other members of my gender, and I have to say that I resent it.
There’s more, like about how we won’t appreciate anything men do on Valentine’s Day because they’re supposed to do it. But of course, if they do nothing, we will never forgive them. This is self-explanatory and I need not go into why this chafes me, right? Right. And then of course there is the ending disclaimer, “Every single one of the preceding sixty-one bits of wisdom is useless if she’s not into you. And redundant if she is.” You know what? Fine. Whatever. I will just chalk that one up to them wanting a snappy ending. Fine.
Ladies, some of these suggestions were good! A couple of them were very, very good. Why are you mixing them in with such dreck? Some of these were just the opposite of helpful. And something that is especially not helpful is reinforcing negative gender stereotypes! No man is just going to accept that on Monday, you want XYZ, but if he gives you XYZ on Tuesday, then he is done for. Nor should he accept it. Writing this article is not going to turn men into mind-readers, it is not going to make them agree to be punching bags for your ever-changing whims, and it is certainly not going to make them like or respect women more! All it is going to do is make the male readers of GQ even less tolerant of the diversity of female wants, needs, and opinions. When the panel said We like when you take care of our cars… but don’t do it if you are going to muck it up, or or if you will say you’ll do it and then never get around to it, I think that is perfectly reasonable. Female (and dare I say, human) desires can change based on circumstantial factors. But do not make it seem like we want what we want when we want it and the men are just going to have to follow along or get left behind. Do you know what advice like that gets us? It gets us resentful, cranky men and frustrated, dissatisfied women. And writing advice like that and expecting any other other outcome is an action that can only come from living in a fantasy world of self-absorption and misandry.
(Next time, I take on the men of GQ. I decided to cut things “short” here because, well, I have a day job.)