Sophomore year, I had two attractive female friends with very particular tastes in men. One told me that she hated long fingernails on guys, and the other told me that she liked more rugged men. So for three months, I walked around with dangerously close-trimmed fingernails and haphazardly grown stubble on my face. My quest for female approval left me bleeding and hideous.
But there was a lesson in that semester of shame: never take mating advice at face value. This is an especially important lesson for women these days, because a whole industry has grown around giving terrible advice to women.
I first became weary of this industry last week when I saw an article called \What Sex Ed Didn't Teach You.""
The article was aimed at women. The intro said that sex education generally deals mostly with anatomy and the call for abstinence. This was certainly true of my school education. I assumed that this writer would offer useful words of wisdom, like, ""Condoms can help prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases"" or ""Oral sex takes lots of practice.""
Wrong. What was the number one thing sex ed didn't teach women?
""It's no secret men are visual creatures-they like looking. So let him catch you in the shower ... or let him watch you dry off.""
The article offered further suggestions like this, and all of them failed to mention certain traditional elements of sex, like touching, eye contact and-silly, old-fashioned me-actual sex. Other advice was just as bad.
On ivillage.com, there was a team of ""sexologists"" there to answer questions. You have to love people who have to come up with more scientific-sounding titles for what they do to validate their existences. From now on, instead of a drinker, I'd like to be known as an alcohologist.
But their advice was even worse than their job titles. One writer suggested ways for women in long-term relationships to spice up their sex lives. Her top suggestion was to initiate play when male partners ""least expected it.""
Does she know how many traffic accidents that's going to cause? Spontaneity is good, but if women take this seriously, they'll be seducing their partners when they really least expect it-like during dental checkups and parent-teacher conferences.
And it's hard to believe any woman would take this stuff seriously. My friend Emi walked in on a couple getting down in the women's room of a bar recently, and she definitely didn't say, ""I applaud the way you've added spice to your stagnant sex life."" That would just be stupid.
Advice aimed at men is usually designed to make us buy things-like gum, cars and home gyms that will make women want to sleep with us. But women's advice has become its own industry; the advice is the product. This means they have to crank out universal truths about sex and relationships, when the only real universal truths are ones that apply to men, too: Touching is good, staying in hurtful situations is stupid, and communication is vital. These writers are required to not be obvious, which means they just start making stuff up.
Women readers might find this harmless now, when it's just exhibitionist showers and sexy ambushes. But trust me: You too will learn the lesson when you're walking around with ugly stubble and painful fingernails.
