How to Know When a Woman is Mad

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The romance industry conflates finding love with looking a certain way, and it’s hard even for the strongest of us not to internalize messages about the way we look. And worse, these messages are normalized. Just think of things people say when they are getting ready to date someone: ‘He’s cute,’ ‘He’s short,’ ‘He’s kind of chubby,’ ‘He’s tall and fine.’ Or men: ‘I prefer slender girls,’ ‘I’m not really into fat girls,’ ‘I prefer Asian chicks,’ and on and on. It is completely acceptable to say the most appalling things about the way people look when it comes to dating, and if someone is called out for it, their opinion becomes a matter of ‘preference.’

What gets ignored in calling this level of categorization ‘just preference’ is a history and culture of mainstream advertising that impacts our psychology, causing us to actually want to respond to certain things over others. It’s hardly a coincidence that people are attracted to images of femininity that have been beaten into their psyches….We are taught to prefer certain things over others, and when we repeatedly see the same exaggerated images of femininity and masculinity, we internalize a specific standard of beauty and begin to strive for it unconsciously. Considering the exaggerated nature of these kinds of images, preference is not really a ‘preference’; it is more like a culturally sanctioned fetish.

“ In short, to anyone with dating experience, “nice guy” sounds like “essentially lackluster, if largely unobjectionable male person.” And this is what you’re presenting as your best trait. This is what you aspire to. Now, I hear some of you complaining “women always say they want a nice guy.” I know lots of women — I’m even related to a few — and I can’t say I’ve ever heard any of them say that. I can’t prove it, but this sounds like one of those things stand-up comedians say about women and everyone else just repeats. I’ve also never known a woman who cries when she breaks a nail — although I’ve known a few who swear like a 15-year-old sailor in jail — and I’ve never had a woman ask me if her outfit made her look fat unless she actually wanted and subsequently appreciated my opinion. So either I’ve stumbled upon a secret trove of women who aren’t passive-aggressive sob machines, or you need to stop mistaking Dane Cook routines for peer-reviewed sociological studies. At any rate, if a woman does say “I just wish I could find a nice guy,” I would suggest this is the equivalent of “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.” Which is to say, she’s not hoping you’ll say, “You’re in luck, I have a dead horse in my backyard!” The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that the way you use language shapes your perception of the world. (This should not be confused with the Sapir-Worf hypothesis, which states that the Romulans are lying and we should raise shields.) So maybe you’d become a better person if you started by not using such a flaccid, pallid term to refer to yourself. Here’s my suggestion: Instead of trying to be a nice guy, aspire to be a good man. You might be surprised at the results.