Pretty Pictures

My best friend sent me an email yesterday that provided a much needed ray of sunshine on an otherwise (metaphorically) rainy day.  It was a list compiled by some magazine or another entitled: 'Hollywood's hottest 100 men,' and each name on the list was accompanied by an extremely savoury photograph.  Like any red-blooded woman, I scrolled (slowly) down the list and poured over every inch of each entrant's visage, finding myself more and more 'exhilarated' as the cursor on my laptop drew toward the bottom of the page, and it led me to wonder: does that make me a perv?

Consider this: were I a thirty-nine year-old man, ogling a list of Hollywood's hottest 100 women, and someone were to walk in on me just as drool was beginning to course its way down my chin, I'd wager that terms such as 'Pig' and 'Dirty old man' would be bandied about, depending on the sex and moral bent of the witness.  Yes, I agree that it sounds like I'm betraying the sisterhood by saying that we sometimes have double standards when it comes to issues of morality and taste.  I agree also that not all women are like this, and I certainly don't mean to paint every member of my awesome gender with the same brush, but I think most women will, if they're honest, admit to accusing a guy of being disgusting or creepy at one time or another, for doing nothing more than appreciating physical beauty. 

I know I have.

Yet, to my knowledge, no such derogatory terms exist for women indulging in the same harmless pass time. 

There are, however, unfortunate and equally degrading terms that people use to denigrate women who, for one reason or another, enjoy carnal festivities with successive partners.  Although the words 'Whore', 'Slut,' and 'Mole,' have never escaped my lips, they were used to describe me at one point in my life and, you know what?  It hurt, and needlessly so, because my accusers were wrong.  Just as I believe anyone who calls a man a pig for looking at pictures of gorgeous, half-naked actresses is wrong.  Men and women are very different, it's true, but what separates human beings from most other animals is that both genders in our species were born with desires, and although those wacky theologians might argue that those desires were put there for the purpose of procreation, the fact is that more often than not, we act on them because we want to, not because we have to. 

To put it more succinctly; lookin' at pictures of them there pretty people in their skivvies is fun.

I think that the desire to look upon beautiful - dare I say heavenly? - creatures is perfectly normal, no matter what your gender.  Doubling your standards halves your humanity. 

   

  

Femmish to English: a translation guide.

Expanding on yesterdays post, in which I reviewed an article on the apparently manipulative way women communicate with men in order to get what we want, I thought I'd make things easier for the guys out there still operating under the gross misconception that we are all evil puppet masters.  I'm positive there aren't many of you, and I trust that all two per cent of you will find the following informative.

FEMMISH TO ENGLISH: A TRANSLATION GUIDE TO COMMON PHRASES.

No (Femmish).  No (English).  I'm not in the mood now, but if you keep pawing at me I just might become inflamed with desire and ravish you (Mistranslation).

I'm tired (Femmish).  I'm tired (English).  Please be my servant (Mistranslation).

I'm sick (Femmish).  I'm sick (English).  I'm willing to feign an exotic disease in order to prevent you from going out with your friends on the wicked night of drunken whore mongering I'm certain you have planned (Mistranslation). 

I love you (Femmish).  I love you (English).  You are the poor bastard I've decided to stick my talons into and render useless to other women from the neck down (Mistranslation).

I've been thinking about you (Femmish).  I've been thinking about you (English).  I've been sitting around in my pyjamas for the past two days, tracking down your house on Google Earth and contemplating the thousands of methods I could employ to hurt you if you didn't call soon (Mistranslation).
 

Please help me with this (Femmish).  Please help me with this (English).  Please drop whatever it was you were doing immediately and come do my bidding (Mistranslation).

We need to talk (Femmish).  We need to talk (English).  I''m pissed off, pregnant or about to propose (Mistranslation). 

What a cute baby (Femmish).  What a cute baby (English).  Brace yourself...Daddy (Mistranslation).

I like your mother (Femmish).  I like your mother (English).  Your mother and I are going out to scout for reception venues later (Mistranslation).

I thought you'd like this shirt (Femmish).  I thought you'd like this shirt (English).  I'm slowly but surely trying to change everything about you, starting with your fashion sense (Mistranslation).

Your friend is mean to me (Femmish). Your friend is mean to me (English). Your friend is at the top of my 'People to alienate you from in order to have you all to myself' list (Mistranslation). 

You're being a Douche (Femmish).  You're being a Douche (English).  I have resorted to childish name-calling because you were right and I was wrong, and I hope that doing so will illicit a half-hearted apology for daring to showcase your intellectual superiority (Mistranslation).  

I'm reasonably certain this guide will help, but should you still be unsure what a woman means when she uses any of the above phrases, there is one simple, sure-fire solution...

JUST FRIGGIN' ASK!



   

 

                                    

From the Oh my friggin' God files...

The jewels I find while playing Google Search Bingo never cease to amaze me.  This morning I discovered a site built by men, for men, for the altruistic purpose of helping them to better understand us women.  The particular article I happened to stumble upon attempted to explain the differences between what women say and what they mean.  Not one to cast a shadow over journalistic integrity, the author duly credited his source - a female spy named Pamela (nothing remotely suspicious about that pseudonym).  'Pamela' put her life on the line to clue the author in on the fact that we subtly manipulate our language in order to hide that we're asking for something.  Apparently, guys are so dumb that they won't realise they're doing us a favour and consequently won't ask us for one in return.  'Pamela' went on to provide some helpful examples.

If a woman says: 'I'm so tired!'  she means: 'Can you pick me up from work?'  If a woman says 'I feel sick,' she means 'Don't go on a lads night out tonight,' and if she says anything with the words 'Mother;' 'Hair;' or 'Work' in it, she means 'Not tonight, baby.'  I know a few of my male readers, and they are all sharp, witty, intuitive guys, so the following message is not intended for them, but rather for any men who find women so confusing that they need to rely on 'self-help' articles to communicate with us, (and I seriously hope such a creature doesn't actually exist).  When we say 'I'm so tired,' we mean 'I'm so tired.'  When we say 'I feel sick,' we mean 'I feel sick, swap bodily fluids with me at your own risk.'  As for using our mothers, our hair or work to get out of sex, I honestly don't think that's likely in the twenty-first century unless your 'girlfriend' lives in the magic, 52 inch black box on your wall. 

The rest of the site, featuring articles with titles like 'How to impress a woman without spending all your money' and 'What's stopping you from sealing the deal,' are enough to send any female writer worth her salt into multiple blog-gasms.  I was torn between wiping up the coffee I kept spitting and highlighting all the lampoon-worthy passages, (I haven't seen so much blue since Avatar).  I can't say that the site made me angry; it wasn't thought provoking enough.  It didn't make me sad, either; I have too much faith in the wisdom of the majority of the male population for that.  The only way I can think of to summarise the way it made me feel is with a time honoured expression that crosses cultural and gender boundaries alike...

HA, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!