by Collie Collier
November 2003 Firestarter column

I've heard the plaintive question 'why do women want bad boys instead of nice guys?' so many times I finally had to answer. Short answer -- they don't. They're doing what they're taught to do.

I've been considering this ever since I first heard the question in college. My answer then was a startled, "But they don't!" Since then -- through personal experience, observation of those around me, and watching media portrayals of relationships -- I'd have to say my answer is still correct, but I understand the empirical evidence behind it better now.

Let's look at this analytically, assuming a hypothetical young female who is interested in guys. What are her peers, society, and the media teaching her regarding relationships?

The media's job isn't teaching you how to find nice folks to hang around with. Its job to make you feel desperately inadequate, so you'll gratefully buy their products, with the implied promise of how 'cool,' 'hip,' or whatever else you'll suddenly become, after using them.

The media is really good at its job.

Here's an interesting factoid for you -- a study was made of advertising models, to figure out what human body shape they statistically most matched. The results were eye-opening.

Our society has an obsessive love-affair with the body type which most matches... adolescent boys.

Don't think about that one too hard. It's kinda icky...

Have you ever noticed these carefully media-crafted roles are emotionally stultifying and impossible to fulfill? Have you ever critically analyzed how life is portrayed in the media? Our expectations are deliberately blown out of proportion to reality by the media -- because comforting illusion sells.

Here's our hypothetical female, unable to be as thin, rich, or successful as the expensive, handler-driven, made-up models the media presents as the norm -- which are not normal. What alternatives are there?

Well... there's Barbie. As the bumpersticker says, "I want to grow up to be Barbie -- that bitch has everything!" Unfortunately she's an impossible role model too. Normal humans just aren't shaped that way. However, our average young woman probably won't realize these body models are utterly incompatible. She's even less likely to laugh and say, "What nonsense those images are!"

A nice girl preferring a bad boy is an expression of a (peculiar) cultural norm: women nurture and civilize men, who consequently provide for them. So what would a nice boy preferring a bad girl be saying, in the societal rubrics we're speaking of here?

The implied expression would be of a male providing for an uncivilized, sexually free woman. While there are stories about this sort of idea, it is not societally seen as a good thing. Our society seems to believe men are supposed to be in control of women -- not the other way around, and not a lack of anyone controlling at all. The fact this control-based rubric is horrifically damaging to those involved doesn't matter to the society or the media supporting it.

She may wonder what's wrong with her -- why can't she be that way too? When she looks around, she'll see her peers are usually asking the same question, and doing their best to be sure all their peers feel just as inadequate as they. Society's doing its best to affect them too, after all -- in the end, the media does nothing more but take society's existing rubrics to a profitable commercial extreme.

I do find it encouraging to see young women who appear to play a more self-assertive role -- but is it really her? Yes, she may be wearing a shirt declaring "Dump him!" However, has she truly decided to be an unabashedly self-aware woman... or is she just slavishly buying into the latest media-created role model for her gender?

Have you ever noticed how often women's magazines heckle and lecture? Some of the headlines are downright demanding: "Bedroom Dos & Don'ts" or "Must-Have Fall Fashions!" Why must we do what we're told in bed, or buy these new clothes?

Others seem to need to denigrate men in order to exalt women: "10 Topics to Turn Him Off" or "Younger Men! Enjoy One Today" or "7 Strange Ideas Guys Have About Sex" -- do we really need to lie to guys, treat them like sex toys, or laugh at their misconceptions? Would we like that if it were done to us?

Our hypothetical young female will probably deeply internalize just how much she sucks. No one could possibly ever like someone who is so worthless as she. She'll be lucky if anyone ever shows any interest in her at all. In fact, she'd probably better latch onto the first guy that comes along.

Alternatively, our hypothetical young female can internalize the media's classic good girl role instead, which is nothing more than a nurturer of others -- a civilizing force, as it were. What does a properly good girl want in a guy, in the artificial realm of media?

They want someone who lets them really, completely fulfill that role -- who needs their specific nurturing and civilizing. If she's the best nurturer ever, then obviously she doesn't suck. Her love will somehow save the wild boy, domesticating him into a good provider.

So what's likely to be the first guy she meets who actually shows some interest in her? Someone with a huge ego, who's more interested in what she represents than who she truly is. Someone who thinks she'll have sex with him. Someone 'mysterious' or 'dangerous' -- who obviously has mastered the media's implied package deal of cool -- and thus makes her feel slightly less inadequate than usual. Someone the media tells her needs her complete, selfless devotion and nurturance.

Someone who's willing to come up to her and actually ask -- long before a nice guy has worked up the courage to do so.

According to the media, nice boys don't need her nurturing -- they're already civilized, thus not exciting or fulfilling enough for a nice girl. The fact that bad boys are sometimes just genuinely unpleasant, nasty people doesn't enter into the equation at all.

Some poor girl who's deeply internalized her media assigned gender role will buy into it heart and soul -- no matter how much she's subsequently torn apart by it. She won't be able to get rid of this harmful media-created delusion until she dumps the artificial crap her society's trying to feed her, and learns who she really is.

So let's turn around this hypothesis regarding the excessive internalization of societal roles, and analyze it bluntly and critically. First, for intellectual curiosity, does the hypothesis answer all the potential questions it raises? I think the answer is yes. We can test it by flipping the original question -- by asking why nice boys don't prefer bad girls as much as nice girls seem to prefer bad boys.

How would the 'excessive internalization of societal roles' theory answer this question? A nice boy, by the media's definition, is one who is a good provider, already civilized, and not really in need of a nice, nurturing girl. What's a bad girl? Someone who refuses to be a nurturer at the cost of her personality -- perhaps even someone who is in charge of her own sexuality, rather than 'saving' it for one guy in need of her nurturing.

A nice girl preferring a bad boy is an expression of a (peculiar) cultural norm: women nurture and civilize men, who consequently provide for them. So what would a nice boy preferring a bad girl be saying, in the societal rubrics we're speaking of here?

The implied expression would be of a male providing for an uncivilized, sexually free woman. While there are stories about this sort of idea, it is not societally seen as a good thing. Our society seems to believe men are supposed to be in control of women -- not the other way around, and not a lack of anyone controlling at all. The fact this control-based rubric is horrifically damaging to those involved doesn't matter to the society or the media supporting it.

So yes, the hypothesis does explain why the reverse of the original question does not flourish as a societal concept -- it doesn't match society's favored rubrics.

Secondly, because I like considering things like this, let's check out the original questioners again. Why do nice guys plaintively ask why good girls prefer bad boys? Is that assumption really true all the time -- or could the original question be based at least partly on nothing more than sour grapes, i.e. the 'nice' boys are asking this because they're not 'getting any,' and the bad boys apparently are?

Are these young men really nice, if they're not willing to just be friends with a girl, rather than expecting sexual favors in return for their company? Are nice boys really nice if they're not willing to transcend restrictive cultural gender roles -- for both themselves and the women in their lives? Let's remember slavery to a limiting societal gender role is stifling both to the master as well as the slave.

So no, I don't think women like assholes better. I think it's more they believe they don't deserve any better, or they're buying into societal myths about who they must be. They don't feel they can even ask the right guy without scaring him off... and due to shyness or whatever, the nice guys aren't making their interest known, and are spooked by nice girls who ask them first.

We know this on some level -- we helped create the rubric. We are society. If we don't like it, it falls upon us to change it -- not to just wander around plaintively bleating, "poor us, why don't any nice girls like us instead of the mean guys who make us feel inadequate?"

Yes, that was unkind. But think about it: aren't we yet sick of asking such a stupid question? Aren't we tired yet of the peculiar and stifling gender roles it implies? Isn't it time to dump such restrictive roles for something better, healthier, and more fun for both genders?

I think sometimes folks don't seem to realize it is possible to find the right person -- as long as you're patient, and not afraid to ignore the usual societal/media based restrictions. Our societal roles are finally changing, thank goodness, as is demonstrated by the current confusion as to who should ask whom... but that's a possible issue for another column.