“We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.”  - Carl Bernstein

Continuing on my bitter bunny ranting begun in “All Men Are Bastards” – I thought today I would go for the secondary subtitle of “All Men Are Stupid”.  While all the ladies nod their heads sagely, and the gents take a moment of quiet indignation, let me explain myself…

You see I know plenty of men that like curvy girls. (I’ve slept with most of

Curvy Girls

them as I’m a curvaceous slut myself.)  I also know men who like skinny women. (I’ve slept with a fair few  of them too as not that many men are all that picky when it’s on offer.)

But I do believe there is a common theme, like imprinting a mother’s image on a hatchling bird, men like what they see first. I’m not going to go all oedipal on you – that’s just icky. There is usually a driver behind a man’s preference and I think it comes from those formative teenage years and peer pressure.

…Once ingrained, it don’t change much.

I’m talking about those cultural norms. Do most men they know (i.e. their high school peers, elder brothers and other male role models) go for skinny chicks? Or are they encouraged to leer over page 3 of the Sun at “a cracking pair”?

Note: For my non-UK readers, The Sun is a daily newspaper which features a topless girl on page 3 in every issue. Of course, it is popular due to the outstanding journalism – obviously.

I don’t agree that all men like skinny chicks. My own boob and ass based fan club is testament to that being a falsehood. However, I believe men like what they are told to like in those impressionable years.

A pretty teaching assistant from their second year of high school that everyone in class had a crush on – means they’ll always prefer freckly redheads from that day forth. It brings back the pleasure of their first self inflicted shame.

Their father’s stash of “Jugs” magazines, which they found under a mattress in the spare room, means they’ll need unfeasibly large mammaries on their future partners to get themselves off.

The only flaw to my theory is those guys (like our own F’in Man) who don’t conform to a preference. But if they were taught to love all women by their role models and the media available to them then it can still be explained by the single phrase… “All Men Are Stupid” (and don’t I just love them for it!)

Note: if the ramblings above turn out to be based in any semblance of fact then we, as a society, are in for a shit load of trouble when the generations of boys imprinted on freely available hard core porn come of age. It’s already started with the loss of bush. Where else will we end up?

Lighter Ladies

As an addendum I feel it is my duty to suggest a secondary, alternative theory to why some guys end up with a preference for thinner ladies. We all know the myths about penis size – that you can tell the size of a guy’s dick from his hand / nose / shoe size / height. But there is no real correlation between these physical traits and his trouser snake. This is also true of the ladies and the size of their nether cavern.  However, it has come to my attention that some chaps who prefer the lighter lady do so under the misapprehension that they are somehow of a smaller internal girth than more hippy or busty girls. This ain’t true, I’m afraid. It’s yet another myth.

However, it does give me another point of view… only guys with small dicks like skinny chicks. You can purchase the t-shirt here.

I was grappling with what to write on this subject until the stars aligned and Max left a comment on Sam’s Do All Men Prefer Skinny Women? post yesterday that included the line:

.

“You know who prefers skinny girls? Women.”

.

After reading that phrase I knew I had to write about the intense paranoia we women have with being “too fat” (bless you Max).

Readers, the sad truth is that for far too many women being even slightly bigger than their favourite female celebrity/models (who according to the stats I was able to dig up generally weigh about 23% less than the average North American woman) is too fat. As far as I can tell it is we women – not the men in our lives (as evidenced in yesterday’s post) – who are most inclined to associate thinness with beauty and being desirable. So much so that many of us attack and/or compete with women who are thinner than us.

-

A few years ago I befriended a co-worker of mine, who I’ll call Sasha. Now Sasha was beautiful and petite, with curves in all the right places. Her only downfall aesthetically speaking was the fact that she didn’t have any fashion sense. Enter Skye, who after a few months of witnessing her wear one fashion disaster after another, both at work and in social settings, offered to go shopping with her.

“Are you sure you want to?”she asked me, as if I’d offered to give my life to save hers.

Confused, but undaunted by her response, I said, “Girl, I love to shop, especially when I’m spending other people’s money. It’ll be great.’

“Okay,” she said, looking real doubtful.

On the day of our big shopping trip, we headed down to Queen West and quickly developed a system. I picked out the clothes and she tried them on. Sasha loved not having to figure out what worked on her own and I had a blast rifling through racks of clothing trying to find the hottest gear to fit her tiny frame. It was like playing dress up with my favourite doll.

After an intense day of shopping ‘til we dropped, her credit card was begging for mercy. It was then that Sasha announced that she was going to treat me to dinner. Just as I was about to dig into the heaping plates of Chinese food we’d ordered Sasha stopped me and said…

.

“Skye, today was the first time in my life any woman, besides my mother, has gone shopping with me and not been negative. I usually go by myself because I hate dealing with all the snide comments about my being small. Today really meant a lot to me. Thank you so much.”

.

People, she actually had tears in her eyes as she said this. The shit was that real for her, which speaks volumes about the kind of frenemies friends she kept and the hate on a lot of women have for so-called ‘skinny bitches’.

.

“We know that every woman wants to be thin. Our images of womanhood are almost synonymous with thinness.” Susie Orbach

.

I suppose we could continue to blame our obsession with being “the thinnest of them all”on the media. After all it is the media who continues to uphold a beauty standard for adult women that is based on the airbrushed images of 14 year old girls splashed across the pages of fashion magazines everywhere. But since every female over the age of five eighteen understands (at least intellectually) that there is a big difference between the media’s representations of women and reality, perhaps we have to find another explanation for the hang-ups we women have with our grown up female bodies.

For the record, I also don’t think we can go around blaming the men in our lives, because I for one know more than a few dudes who work hard to let their partners know that they love their bodies just the way the are (if not bigger than they are). Furthermore, as Camryn Manheim a big, bold and beautiful woman, eloquently said,

“Handsome, thin, sophisticated men often fall madly in love with larger women, we just never see it on TV.”

So tell me ladies, what gives?

What are your thoughts on why so many of us women do all we can to uphold thinness as a beauty standard that we:

1. Know is unrealistic for the average adult woman?
2. Doesn’t necessarily make us more attractive to men?

God’s honest truth. Until I hit the ripe old age of 27 I didn’t realize that some men actually prefer skinny women. By skinny women I mean the walking coat hangers that girls like Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Ritchie have become. But as I mentioned in Riding the Wave, everyone has a preference. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I usually have some kind of angle on the topics discussed here at metanotherfrog.com, but in this case I don’t. Some men like their women thin. Some like them with a little extra cushion. That’s all there is to it. I know some segments of the media would suggest otherwise, but I would implore all women out there to remember that they live in the real world. Not on television. Not in the movies. Not in the pages of magazines. Not on some far-flung fashion runway.

I once was on a run of hookups with girls who would most accurately be described as slim. Some of my friends began to tease me, telling me I must have a thing for mawga girls. I started to develop a complex. Was I, Sam Sharpe, lover of all women, discriminating against those of healthier proportions?

As I thought about it, I realized the opposite was true. I had so worshipped women with the “thickness” for so long, I had actually discriminated against slimmer women. I hadn’t given them their due. I hadn’t recognized the beauty in them as well. In the end, after returning to my “normal” fare, and enjoying every minute of it, the truth of my attraction to the fairer sex finally hit home.

I love women. I do not discriminate. All shapes and sizes are welcome.

In preparation for this piece, I called several male friends of mine and without preface simply asked them what they would say to anyone who told them that men prefer skinny women. Here are some of the responses:

• What?!?
• According to whom?
• Really?
• Which men are they talking about?

.

Here’s something else to consider. Think about how many songs you’ve heard dedicated to women with curves, with meat on their bones. Girls with big butts, women shaped liked an hourglass, women with thick thighs and pretty brown eyes. Girls with that ‘Coca Cola Bottle Shape’. Now, think about how many you’ve heard dedicated to the joys of skinny women. I can’t think of any. Can you?

Anyway, just for fun, listen to this, or this (for the original dancehall crew!)

In the ongoing battle of the sexes, there is one area where women (mistakenly) believe we have men beat – feelings. We have more of them and we are champions at talking about them and letting them dictate our every action. Score one for Team Woman.

But as a traitor to my gender rational woman, I can’t help but wonder whether this is, in fact a victory. We ladies take pride in the fact that we have feelings and men don’t – except about food, sex, and sports – but I think we may be a little off the mark. See it’s not that men don’t have feelings, or even that they have less feelings than we do. It’s simply that men have a different way of dealing with their feelings. While women believe their feelings should occupy a place of prominence in their lives, with men it seems dealing with feelings comes down to three things – compartmentalization, aggregation, and complete shut-down.

Women believe that it’s healthy to express and examine our every emotion. If we’re feeling something, we have a biological imperative to allow it to course over us, regardless of the detrimental or embarrassing effect these unleashed feelings may have on our lives. Men, not so much. They tend to believe there is a time and a place for their feelings – later and in the back of their minds. This is why you never see sane men crying on the subway or in the bathroom at work.

While women understand and can articulate the difference between bliss, contentment, and elation and are known to say things like “I’m not mad, I’m irked/outraged/furious”, with men pretty much every feeling they have is aggregated up to happy or angry. This is why a man will have the same reaction when the Raptors win the NBA Championship (I’m dreaming here) as they do when they witness the birth of their first child. Perhaps on some level they understand that these are very different circumstances that should warrant different reactions, but men pretty much only run on two tracks. If they’re not happy or mad, they’re neutral. Or completely shut down.

Complete shut-down is what happens when a man is worried that admitting to what he’s feeling will make him less of a man. Whereas compartmentalization is basically “I’m pissed but I can’t deal with this right now”, shut-down is more like ”I will never, even under pain of death or castration, admit to being affected by your actions”. While compartmentalization tends to come out after an argument, complete shut-down rears its head at breakup time. Or “I slept with your best friend” time. This is both a coping mechanism and a serious player tactic because it has the added benefit of making the woman work extra-hard to get a reaction out of him.

So what does this mean for the gals out there that are stupid enough to be in relationships? Well, a couple things. First – lose the idea that you are the only one that has feelings or that your insistence on letting said feelings spill all over everything makes you a superior human being. While compartmentalization may seem like an abhorrent way of life to you, there is something to be said for having the ability to put our feelings in a bubble and think coherently. As for aggregation, well that’s just weird. It doesn’t make much sense that men act like they’re angry when they’re really sad or hurt. But this is where your powers of detection can be useful – you can get all Deputy Dog on him and try to sniff out what exactly is bothering him. As for complete shut-down, my advice to you is to leave that alone. The more you push him to talk to you, the more he’ll dig his heels in. So just flit around on your merry way like you haven’t a care in the world.

At the end of the day I have to say I think we women could stand to learn something from how men deal with their feelings. Just as men could probably take a page out of our books – that shut-down thing is so not hot. But I guess it wouldn’t be much of a battle of the sexes if we were all using the same weapons, would it?

Do men have feelings? The question is so ridiculous that it doesn’t warrant an answer. Ignore all the talk of how men are socialized (though it is a factor in how men do or do not express their emotions) and disregard suggestions that men need to express themselves more openly (that’s woman speak for “like us”).  The simple fact is that the question I started this paragraph with is one that no man would ever ask. Why? Because the answer is evident in everything every man says or does. (Come to think of it, if I’m consoling one of my boys over some heartbreak or emotional turmoil a question that never gets asked is “How do you feel?” Because if it’s a shitty emotional situation, I know what it feels like.)

“I don’t react to a tragic happening any more. I took so many bad things as a kid and some people think I don’t care about anything. It’s just too hard for me to get emotional. I can’t cry no more.”

But where does this idea come from. This thought that men are not sensitive or in touch with their emotions? I don’t have all the answers, but I do have one. I alluded to it in my intro to Man Month and it was there for all to see in Elisabeth Rose’s All Men Are Bastards. For whatever reason our society thinks emotions are the exclusive terrain of the female gender. Not surprisingly, most women cannot take an honest appraisal of these things and don’t seem to realize that men express what they think and feel all the time.

When faced with a situation fraught with emotions, women think the only valid responses are their own. I refer to this as the “all about me” syndrome, exemplified by the fact that during a week ostensibly about men’s emotional response, Elizabeth Rose ended up writing about her own emotional response. (I wonder if it’s occurred to my dear friend that Finn’s actions could be a direct result of him being hurt by the “on again, off again” nature of their relationship? That maybe he was so hurt that he intentionally brought a new woman around? I’m not sayin’, but I’m sayin’).

“No one gives a fuck about me. No one cares…”

Therein lies the rub. There are certain responses that our culture deems as “emotional”. But from my point of view, any reaction, any response in a given situation can be emotional. If a man finds out his woman is cheating and cries is that more emotional than the man who goes to the bar and drowns his sorrow in booze? No. It’s just different (Take an athlete who is cool under pressure. It’s not that he doesn’t feel pressure. He just responds differently than the athlete who loses their nerve.)

“I don’t feel love from them because there’s no love.”

I’ve never known a man that wasn’t emotional or sensitive. Men say and do things that betray our emotions all the time (i.e. bringing a new woman to your “on again, off again” lover’s favourite pub). Some people implode, some explode. Only sociopaths feel nothing.

“It’s just what I said before, everybody in this country is a big f**king liar. [The media] tells people … that this person did this and this person did that and then we find out that we’re just human and we find out that Michael Jordan cheats on his wife just like everybody else and that we all cheat on our f**king wife in one way or another either emotionally, physically or sexually or one way.”

Growing up, I found Mike Tyson to be the most fascinating athlete to watch. He was the baddest man on the planet. He was powerful, strong. He was intimidating. He made his living beating the shit out of other men, most of whom were bigger than he was. He was also the most sensitive athlete I’d ever seen.

Good old Iron Mike uttered all of the quotes peppered throughout this piece. You might think him a miscreant, a thug, a violent man with no redeemable qualities. You might be right. But if you look closely at all his actions, whether or not they are despicable, you’ll see they bear the hallmarks of an extremely sensitive human being.

Do men have feelings? I’ll let Mike answer that one:

“My biggest weakness is my sensitivity. I am too sensitive a person.”

“He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.” –Thomas Paine

I’m sure some of you have already guessed I have (yet another) cynical view point on the existence and validity of male emotions. I must confess though that my cynicism on this topic is due to a recent injury to my pride and some hurt feelings.

Those of you who have been following my misadventures will be familiar with the name Finn. He has been a regular visitor to my bed and had even engaged my interest on a more intimate level than I would usually admit.

However… he recently decided to demonstrate his “emotional openness” by rocking up to the pub we met in to watch rugby with his new squeeze. There was no prior notification of his declining interest in me, or that his interest now lay elsewhere. In fact, quite contrarily to that, he had been sexting me that very morning.  When he arrived in the ex-pat bar for the game, he even managed to look surprised that I was there.

(It is worth noting that I never miss a game, and only ever watch it in the one bar – he is the fickle b’stard who flits around Toronto as suits him)

So there we are. He looks at me; I look at him in delight at unexpectedly seeing him. He looks at her; I look at her in confusion and growing distress. Since I am stubborn, prideful and above all fair – I chose not to make a scene. I know she didn’t pick up on the situation, as since she was an innocent bystander to his cuntery I was careful not to involve her.

I did raise the matter with him, when I asked him not to continue making out with her during the rugby match in my direct line of sight since they chose a table between me and the big screen.

Which brings me back to the topic for this week; I don’t doubt men have feelings – but why did he assume that I didn’t? To my mind his behaviour was:

1. Aimed to hurt my feelings
2. The direct result of him not taking even the slightest moment to reflect on how it would impact me.

.

In either case, his actions were utterly and completely inconsiderate.

So in short – all men are bastards.

And I’m sulking.

And by sulking I mean shagging everything in sight to remove all trace of his tongue, hands and hairy penis from my body’s memory.

Ladies, in yesterday’s post, Men Have Feelings? I shared a story about a man whose unvoiced yet exceedingly obvious feelings were dismissed by his fiancée. Although the responses I got from female readers who shared their comments with me both on and offline suggest that most women are appalled by the idea of dismissing a man’s feelings, I think many of us do so unwittingly every day. From mother’s who tell their young sons that big boys don’t cry to women who raise there eyebrows in suspicion at the first sign of a crack in their man’s armour, we women resist hearing/seeing real emotion from boys and men more than we think.

That said, to help you avoid being a woman who inadvertently disregards her man’s feelings, today I’m going run through my list of things you shouldn’t say to your SO (or any other man for that matter) when he decides to open up and share his deepest feelings (i.e. fears, sadness, etc.) with you.

Here we go…

1. Come on, suck it up/get over it/pull yourself together (or any other variation on this theme).
2. You’re joking right?
3. Wait a minute. Is that a tear in your eye?
4. God, you’re such a mama’s boy.
5. Okay. I hear that, but what about how I feel?
6. Pussy. (Sadly, I’ve actually heard women refer to their spouses/boyfriends this way.)
7. Be a man.
8. You’re pathetic
9. Uhhmmm…can we talk about this later?
10. Oh honey, don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll figure it out on your own.

.

I could get into why choosing to respond in any of the ways listed above after your man expresses his feelings to you is a bad idea, but I’m going to trust that it’s self-evident for most of you. To those of you out there scratching your heads as you wonder why…

I’m sorry – I got nothing.

So Man Month begins and we’re starting with a pretty big topic – the misconceptions we women have about men and their emotions…

.

Ladies, it’s high time we admit it. More than a few of us think we’ve got the market cornered when it comes to the expression of emotions. I mean, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a woman (including myself) say something like….

‘Men only have two emotions, happiness and anger.’

Or

‘They just don’t express themselves properly, like  we do.’

I’d be a kazillionaire. I don’t know if it’s conditioning, what we learned from our families or the influence of popular culture, but we women have got a HUGE superiority complex when it comes to feelings. Far too many us believe (consciously or not) that men:

1. Aren’t in touch with or capable of expressing their emotions.
2. Simply don’t have any feelings worthy of female attention.

Now, before you get all hot under the collar, let me share two anecdotes to illustrate my point.

Anecdote #1 – Believing Men Aren’t in Touch With Their Feelings

A recent conversation with a female acquaintance, I’ll call Mindy.

Mindy: What did you get up this weekend?

Skye: Went to my friend Victor’s birthday party and I had a really good time.

Mindy: Okay, gimme the highlights.

Skye: Well, there was lots of eye candy – always a good thing, the food was great, and the DJ was on point. But what really stood out for me was the gift Victor got from his best friend.

Mind: What did he get him?

Skye: Oh, in celebration of their friendship he gave him this really amazing scrap book he’d made, with pictures and all kinds of memorabilia from their childhood to the present. He even put captions below some of the pictures explaining what was happening and how having Victor as a friend was really imp—’

Mindy: Skye, a guy gave another guy a gift like that?

Skye: Uhhm…yeah.

Mindy: Shaking her head. Girl, Victor’s best friend is gay. No straight man would ever do that.

Skye: So because a guy gave his best friend a gift that celebrated their friendship and expressed how he feels about said friendship you think he’s gay?

Mindy: No, I know he’s gay. Trust me, only gay men and women are that in touch with their feelings.

.

Anecdote #2 – Believing His Feelings Aren’t Worth Paying Attention To

About three years ago, despite all the signs telling her that her then fiancé wasn’t ready to take the plunge, my cousin got married. You see from the moment he put the engagement ring (that she cajoled him into getting her – but that’s another story) on her finger, he started to come undone.

People, as the day of their nuptials quickly approached the groom to be:

• Spent as much time as he could at work in order to avoid having to spend time at home with his betrothed.
• Started suffering from intense migraines and got into the habit of calling in sick to work at least once/month – something he’d been loathe to do prior to being engaged.
• Began complaining about feeling fatigued and the inability to concentrate at work.
• Did his best to avoid participating in any of the planning for their wedding.

.

Somehow everybody but my cousin could see that he was really unnerved by the prospect of being married. When some of the braver souls in our family tried to point out that it appeared her man was unsure about the wedding, and that he may even be suffering from depression, she quickly dismissed their comments. ‘He’s fine’ she kept telling us repeatedly (to this day I still think she was really trying to convince herself).

But what else could she say? Taking the time to find out what emotions were behind his erratic new behaviours would have delayed, if not kyboshed, her goal of becoming a ‘Mrs.’, and to use one of her favourite phrases – ‘That shit was so not going to happen.’ Instead, she pushed his odd behaviour and the host of feelings behind them out of her mind, and got married anyway. (Sorry, but I’m going to leave you guessing as to whether or not they’re happily married now.)

.

Readers, your thoughts?

Ladies, are the attitudes and sentiments expressed by the women in my stories familiar to you? Do you hold similar views?

Gentlemen, ever had your sexuality question when you expressed emotions other than happiness or anger? Or your feelings dismissed by a woman on a mission?

Ladies, raise your right hand if you think you know everything there is to know about your man. You know, like what makes him tick. I’m figuring many of you have a hand up. Okay. Now, how many of you think your man knows everything about you, about what makes you tick? Let me guess, your hands are in your lap.

Now if you had your hand up for question number one, but your hand down for question number two, I’m going to go ahead and assume that you read too much (insert name of your preferred chick lit here) or you still use terms and/or phrases like:

“Let’s take this relationship to the next level.”

Or

“It’s all about me.”

Or

“My mother always said…”

Or

“Gee, that was real swell!”

And you have convinced yourself that:

1. All men are dogs.
2. He won’t respect me if I have sex too soon.
3. If he really loves me, if I’m really all that he needs he won’t look at other women.
4. Going dutch means that we’re both wearing orange.
5. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.
6. He won’t buy the cow if he can get the milk for free.
7. If you lie down with dogs you’ll catch fleas (this one might actually be true).
8. He probably thinks I’m too fat.
9. He probably thinks I’m too skinny.
10. All he thinks about is sex and sports.
11. He doesn’t think about anything.

.

I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t Sam Sharpe the man who wrote The Power of Five and I Feel like Fucking? Isn’t he the one that said that sex is at the forefront of every man’s brain? Well. In a word, yes. But that is only part of the story.

If you’ve been visiting us here at metanotherfrog.com for a while, then you know how much we love a story. And this month stories are what you’re going to get. I hope you’re ready. March is Man month and we’re bringing out the big guns. Myself, Elizabeth Rose, Skye and an all star cast of our favourite bloggers and writers are going to give you the straight goods on men.

If you start with casual sex/have always been a bit slutty, will you ever be the girl he takes home to his mother? – Will I Ever Be The One?

Answers from Our Expert and Enthusiastic Amateur:

Dear Will I Ever Be The One,

I’ve got good news and bad news for you.

The bad news is you’ll never be the one because the notion of being ‘the one’ is a trap. It’s an illusionary heap of B.S. that we’ve all been hoodwinked into believing by our culture. We should all be thanking our lucky stars that there is no such thing. Can you imagine what an insane responsibility it would be? Frankly, I’m surprised that divorce rates aren’t even higher, because the pressure is just too much.

Now on to the good news. Since most relationships today start with sex as a recreational pastime and (far too) many women allow themselves to be ceremoniously marched up to a man’s mother for her stamp of approval, you’re definitely standing in good stead. However, there are only two small problems here. First of all, any man who has to take his woman home to his mother for approval needs to cut the cord (i.e. divorce his mother). If he doesn’t there’s a really high chance that he’ll eventually end up divorcing you. Secondly as delightful as casual sex may be, it isn’t the best way to get to know a man you’d like to marry. As you know, sex changes everything and clouds our judgment. It’s hard to see the truth of who another is through the delicious veil of lustful sex.

Finally, the fact that you’re even asking this question means that you’re operating (at least in part) from a place of shame as you partake in casual sex – which is something you should take some time to reflect on before hitting the sheets with the next man you meet.

Owen Williams author of The Relationship Revolution

Dearest WIEBTO,

I also have good news and bad news.

The bad news is, if YOU think you’re ‘slutty’ then why the hell would you expect him to take you home to Mama when clearly you’re deeming yourself deficient.  Spread your legs with pride, not with shame.

The good news is you can definitely be ‘the one’ when Mama realizes that you have ‘saved’ her son and he is a better person because of you… and then you can resume letting him take you in the ass, or dressing up like a fluffy raccoon mascot until your heart’s content.

Lustful sex is not only a veil that clouds other’s judgments it’s also a tool that can be used to lure a man right where you want him.  Practice makes perfect.

Leesa Gaspari, Comedienne