I linked to an excerpt from Norah Vincent's experiences as living as a man in a recent thread. Here is another:
The women I met wanted a man to be confident. They wanted in many ways to defer to him. I could feel that on many dates, the unspoken desire to be held up and led, whether in conversation or even in physical space, and at times it made me feel quite small in my costume, like a young man must feel when he's just coming of age and he's suddenly expected to carry the world under his arm like a football. And some women did find Ned too small physically to be attractive. They wanted someone, they said, who could pin them to the bed or, as one woman put it, "someone who can drive the bus". Ned was too willowy for that. I began to understand from the inside why Robert Crumb draws his women so big and his diminutive self begging at their heels or riding them around the room.
Yet as much as these women wanted a take-control man, at the same time they wanted a man who was vulnerable to them, a man who would show his colours and open his doors, someone expressive, intuitive, attuned. This I was in spades, and I always got points for it. But I began to feel very sympathetic toward heterosexual men - the pressure to be a world-bestriding colossus is an immensely heavy burden to bear, and trying to be a sensitive new age guy at the same time is pretty well impossible. Expectation, expectation, expectation was the leitmotif of Ned's dating life.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/mar/18/gender.bookextracts
I think that women, who seem on average to be not as concerned about the physical appearance of potential mates as men are, have the better end of the bargain. The ability to be attracted to someone for who they are (something people have a degree of control over), rather than what they look like (something we have much less control of) is enviable. Falling in love with someone's looks can mean having to put up with a terrible personality. Which many men are willing to do if a woman is pretty enough. Something I don't think most women understand about most men (many of us at least) is that we can be strongly attracted to women that we do not like. We can enjoy having sex with women we don't like. I personally don't think I could, but I can admit that I've known women with horrible personalities that I thought were very pretty. In my experience, women don't usually compartmentalize in that manner. If they dislike a man, they don't find him attractive.
Men have the better end of the bargain when it comes to making up for physical shortcomings by becoming successful and powerful.
Newly Promoted Marketing Executive Treats Self To Girlfriend Upgrade
LOS ANGELES—Ever since he was hired by Kaiser, Seifert & Briggs Marketing Group two years ago, Sean Gordimer has been striving to impress the company's top brass. A 1995 graduate of the University of Southern California with a B.A. in business administration, the 23-year-old Gordimer has put in 60-hour weeks and attended every marketing seminar possible in an effort to get noticed and land that big promotion.
Sean Gordimer
So on Monday, when a Kaiser, Seifert & Briggs' vice-president informed Gordimer that he'd been chosen to be the new associate director of corporate communications for the Wellstone-Howe account, and would, subsequently, receive a $20,000 raise, he couldn't help but celebrate.
"As soon as I found out I got the promotion, I ran to the phone and called my girlfriend Kelly [Schayes]," a smiling Gordimer said, recalling that magic moment toward which he had worked for so long. "I told her we were through."
The next day, the newly promoted Gordimer treated himself to a girlfriend upgrade, replacing Schayes with L.A.-area restaurant hostess/aspiring actress Robyn Turner, 21, whom Gordimer described as "a notch more attractive" than his previous partner.
"Kelly was extremely good-looking, no doubt," Gordimer said. "It's just that her breasts were somewhat on the small side, and, frankly, I would be lying if I said it didn't bother me a little. Fortunately, as the new associate director of corporate communications for the Wellstone-Howe account, I was finally able to do something about that."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29777
Yes, it's cruel, but the humor lies in its only being a slight exaggeration of reality. As Robert Crumb noted, forget fairness.
