What Do Men Want…? By Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

June 8, 2011 Whitney Farmer 28 Comments

Whitney runs a rock music venue on the beach in L.A.. She has an M.B.A., and she has an appointment at the DMV on Thursday.

As embarrassing as it is, I need to confess something.

Four days ago, I bought the latest Cosmo.  At the same time, I also bought some sapphire blue mascara and metallic bronze eyeliner.  While I am not presenting these as excuses, I do want you to have a sense of my mental state at the time I completed the transaction.

In my defense, there was an article about how ‘60s hairstyles are considered to be on the leading edge of fashion now.  There were also instructions on how to conduct a fierce backcomb to give maximum crown height.

Things turned horribly wrong though when I turned to one page past the article that had interested me. From that moment on, I was unable to resist the urge to close my eyeballs to brain-sucking pages. My hands continued to turn them despite the damage I knew I was doing to my mind.  When it was over, I was starving rather than satisfied. When they say ‘The first one’s free…”, they are lying. It costs more than you can imagine.

Part of the wreckage that I can recall was a dialogue stew that saturated the glossy print that tried to help readers understand what men want.

Once upon a time when I was competing in the sport of man-hunting, I would read men’s magazines. GQ, Maxim, Men’s Fitness…the purpose wasn’t to look at all the purty pictures. It was to try and understand what they wanted from me.  It’s useless to ask other women for the true story.  Even our judicial system knows that hearsay isn’t admissible evidence. And a man might not provide the truth if asked directly. This isn’t necessarily his fault. He might get so tangled up in trying to give you what you want in order to get what he wants that he gets lost and forgets where he left his car keys. So, he never gets started on the journey.  Or he may be one of those wounded warriors who has never had true love and is just waiting for the right woman to give him a revelation. And his last name happens to be Charming.

The reason I read men’s magazines is that they present men talking to each other. My theory was that this was a quicker way to get to what was their bottom line. If our positions weren’t too far apart, then I would show up at the bargaining table. Over time, however, I realized that I had begun to care for men in ways that couldn’t be addressed through gaming. They became my colleagues and my friends, and sometimes brothers from another mother, or as if my sons.

That glossy magazine pulled me back into a more dangerous time in my life when I gave more power to the men in my life than I should have. It wasn’t their fault. I chose to ignore the true north on my compass. There is an essential dance between being adaptable and losing yourself for love that must be perfectly executed. Being unwilling to change is the first step to being unable to change and eventually surrendering to death bit by bit.  But sacrificing the call on a life for any reason always leads to the same end as any blood offering for an idol: Zero return on the investment.

The sacrum or pelvic bone has always played an important role in burnt offerings in religious gatherings.  No matter what’s cooked up on the grill – cows or virgins –  the sacrum provides a natural platter from which to dine. That’s the origin of its name: It is sacred. Sexual desire is the crucible that pulls people together, pulls impurities from them, gives them strength, or allows them to be devoured by the mob while the rest of their being is incinerated.  It all depends on choices in the midst of needs, and perhaps distinguishing these from wants. Distinguishing one from the other might be the point when impurities are rendered out and steel begins to be forged.

Anthony Weiner didn’t need to take photos of himself, particularly with photos of his family and powerful colleagues in the background.  He didn’t need to send these to random women. (If I was a political sociopath, I would recruit women such as these to bait key decision-makers opposed to me with ‘That’s hotttt…!’ comments and see if I could get a bite that I could use to my advantage…) He didn’t need to lie about it.  Imagine a better scenario, if asking that he make a better choice from the beginning is asking too much from a guy who has gotten a paycheck for half his life as a public servant and that same public desperately needs strong leaders now. Imagine that he had been honest when the story first broke. Then, the labels of coward and liar might have found a different place to land. Imagine if he could have made a distinction between what he wanted and what he needed, and made a choice that wouldn’t have displayed him as a fool – the worst of all labels for a leader.

The frantic female voices in Cosmo will continue to ask each other “What DO Men Want?” until or if the readers get a revelation that they are shooting at a moving target. That’s what happens when you lose the true north on your compass. What might be pursued instead is what do men – our colleagues and friends and brothers and sons – need, and the uncomfortable reality is that the solution to their problem may have nothing to do with women.

As I close the Cosmo and ask what did Weiner want, I can answer, “I don’t care.”

Quote of the Blog, from Mick Jagger: “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”