What do women really want?

I’ve taken it upon myself to answer this age-old question that men have for time-immemorial been pretending not to know the answer to. I mean seriously, it’s not that complicated, and man’s determination to hold on to the myth that they just don’t know is really starting to cease to be amusing.  

Also, I’m not the first to be taking the trouble to put it down in writing for you men. If it was really that beyond you, all it takes is a simple Google search to learn a thing or two. But no. Why do that when you can seem so much cooler to remain the helplessly oblivious victim.

We want you to be honest: And don’t give me that crap about whether you should be honest when we ask you if we look fat in a dress. In such cases we want you to be kind. Is it too much to expect to hear good things from the person you love and is it really that hard to be nice? Really? And are you really that stupid to not know the difference between being hurtful and being kind?

Back to honesty; we need you to be honest about who you are and what you do. Because the moment you lie to us; for whatever reason; be it to hide a wrong or to avoid a fight; you make us distrust our own feelings for you. It makes us question our own judgment and makes us wonder whether we fell in love with something about you that you’re not. That’s where all the tears and tantrums come from. Be who you are. You lie because you’re afraid we’d leave, and that’s true. If we don’t like you the way you are or the things you do, we wouldn’t want to be with you. At least any sane person wouldn’t. And you should love yourself more than to expect someone to stay with you for something that you’re not.

You like fooling around with many women, flirting with options, being a chick-magnet, being impulsive and living for the day? By all means go ahead. But if you’re seeing some, respect that person enough to let them know so, so that they can make an informed decision whether to love you for what you are or leave you to enjoy your life the way you want to. You can’t have it all.

We want you to be the kind of boyfriend or husband who would love us for everything that we are, appreciate everything that we do, be proud to hold our hands and hug us in public, and make us feel like you’ve found the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. If your girlfriend or wife is not that, and you don’t want to be seen with her in public or have one good thing to love about her, then do everyone in the relationship a favour and walk away and look for the person who would actually make you feel that way. And women: you’ve only yourself to blame for being in a relationship where you’re not treated right.

It’s not that easy? You’ve been in it too long, you’re about to get married, you have children? Look, you always have a choice. Everything you have and are now is due to the choices that you’ve made. You can choose to live in misery or choose to opt out, you can choose to be faithful or you can choose to hurt your soul mate by flirting with an insignificant other, you can choose to stay or go. At the end of the day, you live with the choices that you make. You’re responsible for your choices. You’ve only yourself to thank or blame.

Back to what women want. Do we want you to be rich? Yes that would be a definite plus. Unless your money has been handed down to you by your parents or you’re a crook, being successful means that you’ve worked hard enough to earn something for yourself. It means that you’re not someone who sits around hoping to magically become rich or whine about what you don’t have or live off of your woman. It means that you respect yourself enough. Think all women are gold-diggers? There are as many gold-digger men who stay in relationships for the comforts, so enough with labeling women don’t you think?

Do we want you to have a pretty face? I know some women who like fat people, some who like the pretty One Direction types, some who like skinny white boys and some who like the tall dark types. We may be attracted to your messy hair, funny tooth or yummy chest. It really just depends on the woman. But if you’re a fat person who’s eternally blaming women for not being attracted to you, then you’ve only yourself to blame. Surely no one’s stopping you from putting everything you’ve got into losing weight? If you want to bad enough, anyone can lose weight. Quit making us seem like the bitches for not seeing what a great guy you are behind all that fat and lose it.

We want you to be intelligent. You don’t need to hold a PhD to have brains, be witty, or to be able to impress a woman with your smart mouth. If only you knew the things you’re capable of doing with your mouth. It’s really a shame that your brain can’t think beyond blowjobs. Ever heard of Voltaire having said “Give me ten minutes to talk away my ugly face and I will bed the Queen of France!”? He probably did.

We want you to stop putting us down. Just because you have not been taught better, it does not mean that it’s okay to put your wife/girlfriend down in public or otherwise about how she can’t drive or she can’t cook or she can’t do something when you expect her to drive or cook or do something when no one is around. Doing that only makes people feel sorry for the woman for having to be with a jerk who is the first one to say bad things about her, let alone defend her. You embarrass us, and not in the way you intended to either.

We want you to be able to take care of us, stand up for us, respect us, respect our opinions, and appreciate the fact that if a woman let’s you call her yours, she chooses to be with you, and that she can very well choose not to.

So what do women want? We want you to grow up and stop assuming we don’t know you know.

I am grateful!

I had to go meet an official at the university today to get a spare lecture hall for an upcoming forum. To my increasing amusement and discomfort I had to listen to him explain to my boobs and neckline how inconvenient it was for them to sort out last minute requests for spare classrooms. Lucky for me I was wearing a top with a nice neckline. He was distracted enough not to be annoyed.

I am pretty tired after a long day at campus, the heat can best be described as blistering, my facial expression right now can be likened to that of a camel and I feel strangely philosophic. No make that grateful for what I have. I am therefore going to make a short but meaningful list of all the things I’m grateful for, at least those that come to mind right now in the mood I’m in.

I am grateful for:

1. My boobs: I understand that I have been very ungrateful in the past and have often wished they were smaller, but I’ve wisened up. I need to learn how to use them better, to my own advantage, yes yes without dressing like a desperate whore. Not a problem.
2. Dog-a-doodle: We all need entertainment in our lives, more than we know. Dog-a-doodle is an unlimited source of amusement.
3. Friends and family: An ‘I am grateful for:’ list would be incomplete without them.
4. Google: It has the answers to almost all of life’s problems.
5. Men being perverts: It means that if you have great boobs (and I do) or even a hint of boobs for that matter (and women generally do) you can often get away with almost anything. Watch out perverts, your little weakness will have you wrapped around our little fingers.
6. Having the power to let a man’s mind wander: often they’re too little to be let out alone, and thus easily get lost, making them vulnerable to easy manipulation.
7. Being a woman. Need I explain?

*About the picture: a closer look will tell you that that is actually a cleverly folded paper against a black setting.

Keep your legs together men!

It’s not right that only women (well certain women) are accused of not being able to keep their legs together.

Passing a prestigious bank a couple of years back, I glimpsed a spectacle that to this day remains etched in my memory and on that day wouldn’t have made the gardener who tends to the bank’s immaculately groomed lawn too happy.

It was a bright and sunny morning and welcoming the sunshine with its arms (or legs if you prefer) wide open, was a mangy brown dog, right there on the middle of the impeccably cut grass. I don’t know if it was playing dead, mocking the efforts of the gardener or simply (for some misguided reason) revealing to the world that it’s got balls (and not in a ‘I am a dog with a spine’ way either).

So that’s the picture that flashed through my mind in the bus recently when I had the misfortune of having to stand beside a man in a similar stance (in the dog’s defense, it may have had an itch on its back or have been merely drying off its tummy). In this case, the offender was sitting on the side of the seat closest to the aisle with his legs wide apart and one sticking out (in my defense, the person sitting next to him was not that big-made and neither was the offender so there was perfectly enough room for the two of them to sit comfortably without blocking the aisle. Besides, the bus was fairly crowded and not everyone standing had the luxury of picking a better spot to stand). Grrrrrr….. So maybe I need anger management tips but there is an almost manic fury that rises within me when I come across selfish people in public transport.

Why do men insist on sitting with their legs wide apart? Ok so this maybe a personal grudge I hold against all men, with its origins dating back to my school days. I always ended up getting squashed against the car door when traveling to school as my cousin brother simply wouldn’t keep his legs together – however much I chastised him and however much he obliged, those legs would involuntarily find their way apart.

Thus having my feathers ruffled, I decided to ask around. Apart from a few lewd and crude comments, the overall answer (from those trying to be helpful) was that it was rather uncomfortable to keep their legs right together, no they didn’t always realize that they were being a nuisance to society by doing it, yes it was possible for them to keep them together if they wanted to (easy for me to say apparently) and also a few other comments on a certain little man’s right to breathe. I guess I asked for that…

Ladies are expected to sit with their legs crossed (not cross-legged but so that the bottom of one knee is placed upon the other) or with their legs together – it’s usually acceptable to disregard this expectation if we have seduction on our minds *part from the movie Basic Instinct flashes across mind*.  And although I made fun of my uncle last week for sitting like a woman (in the posture mentioned above, with his legs crossed – in my defense, he was insulting a certain person’s masculinity and I had to say something and what I said was that my uncle couldn’t afford to talk while sitting like that), I realized my mistake when I was firmly put in my place, being told that it was the ‘refined’ way of sitting.

It is isn’t it? It is considered good manners for men to sit with their legs crossed or together or in any way that it wouldn’t be blatantly obvious that well… that they’re thinking inline with the dog mentioned above.

For all those men who protest indignantly that It’s just the way we sit or It’s just too uncomfortable or even The little man will die of suffocation! I’d like to make a little reminder that it’s manners! I’ve noticed that most men with prestige, power and status sit properly: presidents, CEOs, directors, heads of various organizations (well just the sophisticated and intelligent ones I guess). Anyway, I’m sure you get my drift. So the way you sit could very well be one of those things that tell people exactly which steps you frequent in the ladder of success.

So apart from the girly-men looking gay when sitting with their legs together, the real men (emphatic pause…) look refined. So all you real men out there, if you’ve forgotten your manners, it’s time to brush them up. At least in public. Not everyone is impressed with the fact that you people take up more public space just so your little guys can breathe.