You Know I'm No Good...

So I have to admit, I am an enormous fan of Amy Winehouse. Coke, smack, crack, gin, cigarettes- no poison can quell my love for this woman. She is suitably nutty in an absolutely fantastic way. Life dramas aside, I harbour a secret desire to be so positively laissez faire, giving society the bird as I do exactly as I please.

However, it seems society is not so forgiving of the bad girl. From Amy’s bloody nights out, to Britney’s infamous umbrella incident we are quick to cast a shameful glance upon girls gone wild. In the domain of the normals, we judge harshly the girls who have had one too many and are causing a scene on the dancefloor. Hell, we’ve given them a name and multiple facebook groups: the ‘trashbag’.

Yet the drunken male escapes punishment. It seems to be that the bad girl can exist only as stylised ingénue Russh style.

However, this is neither the time nor the place for feminist diatribe. After all, this is a BOY blog. So I instead turn my attention to the bad boy.

The ‘bad boy’ has been a pop-culture icon for decades. From James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause, to Elvis’ devil may care pelvic thrusts, as females we are loathe to resist a careless swagger and dangerous attitude.

But why is this? It is certainly evident that black skinny jeans, leather jackets, white tees and wayfarers are a winning combination in just about any decade since the 1950’s. But yet it seems this dashing sartorial selection is inherently coupled with the a similarly consistent personality.

Bad boy looks are rarely immune from bad boy attitude. And with that attitude comes some less than satisfactory relationship behaviour.

We should learn from the prolific cultural and fictional profiling of the bad boy that we are destined to fail. A lone agent, he is not bound by the conventional laws we apply to ourselves, and is in fact this difference we find so appealing.

However, we maintain the delusion that we can ‘change’ the bad boy, using our feminine wiles to bring him under our spell and eradicate the bad boy, but maintain that sex appeal.

Not possible.

Do we care? Not really… we just keep going back for more. I mean let’s face it- he’s a little deranged, certainly a little dangerous. And we love it.

However of course, we could always adopt the Teen Vogue definition of ‘bad boy’. I don’t even know who Nick Jonas is, but he sure as hell doesn’t look threatening to me.

Image thanks to girlwithasatchel.blogspot.com

Love Games

*blog title entirely devoted to Miss L’s new-found obsession with Lady Gaga, as well as of course the most famous Mighty Boosh song, sung by my favourite little downstairs mix-up, Old Gregg*

After my post a few days ago regarding types of men I have been attracted to over the years, Miss L followed up with her assessment of the same issue with great humour and an almost gratuitous photo homage to Zac Efron….

And it struck me that according to her flipbook of sexual desires, Miss L appears quite content with a man who can rock a pair of Ray-bans with attitude (indeed she even accessorised Mr Potter!).

So if she were to compose a list of desirable attributes in a future partner, his ability to rock the glasses would come top?

Or would this be trumped by a deeper desire, more befitting of a meaningful relationship, where accessorising skills came a distant second?

In my case, I have found that whilst my surface desires are often apparently indeed that (bloody shallow), the substance of my actual relationship is deeply different from anything I would write on a list cataloguing my desired attributes.

I am not as skilled as Miss L in creating pictorial representations of dreamboat men in Paint, so instead I shall refer to a list I wrote at age 12, kept in a diary for posterity (and giggles) which describes ad nauseum, my dream boy:
-blonde hair
-blue eyes
-tall and tanned
-preferably in a boy band

Aka I saw myself marrying Taylor Hanson. I’m fairly certain I had planned the wedding and everything… with matching shoulder length blonde hair we would have quite the fetching wedding album *ugh*.

Needless to say, I never actually dated anyone remotely similar to the list I had devised in my mind (thank god!).

Similarly, if I was to compose a list of my present day desires, they would certainly not paint an image of the men I have dated in the not-so distant past. The previously depicted representation of the dirty, indie rocker is far removed from the actual man, who have all been fairly straight, university attending, high achieving individuals who would look horribly out of place pacing the stage of Spectrum.

Similarly, that swagger and arrogance intrinsically linked with guitar virtuosity would be horribly suited to a functional relationship. My relationships are big enough for my ego only.

Apparently relationship books encourage the desperate and dateless to write a checklist of what they want in a potential partner.

I wouldn’t know as I have never read one… apart from ‘The Game’. I read this after spotting it on the bookshelf of a man I was involved in next to more worthy tomes such as his Environmental Management, Physics and Australian History textbooks.
This horrified me: Did his strategic bookshelfing indicate its worth in his life? Did he religiously study this in the same way one would rote learn Einstein's theories before a final exam? Was I an assignment? Some form of assessment as to the level of his skills learnt from such studious application?


Needless to say, after leaving his apartment, I hurried across to Borders to get a Chamomile Tea to calm my shattered nerves, and a copy of Neil Strauss’s step by step guide to transform the ‘average frustrated chump’ to ‘master pick-up artist”.

I shuddered as I flicked through the pages and realised just how many of these ‘techniques’ had been trialled upon me by various men throughout my young adulthood.

And I began thinking: Is ‘The Game’ mandatory reading in boys’ high schools? Young women read Pride and Prejudice in gaining an understanding of Austen’s representations of society and relationships, whilst young men learn that ‘negging’ is the way into a woman’s pants?

So now, I compose a new checklist of desirable attributes, devastatingly effective in its simplicity:
Does not have ‘The Game’ as a seminal influence in his understanding of relationships.
See Number 1.

Hopefully then I shall avoid the awful gameplaying (pun entirely intended) experienced in the declining stages of this particular dalliance.