Much like developing sexual feelings for a cartoon Disney prince, striving to be the “cool girl” that all guys love is a rite of passage for many women. Ideally, we outgrow both of these stages, but the pressure to please the male gaze is hard to escape. Gillian Flynn famously captured the effort to be chill in Gone Girl, and while (spoiler) faking your own kidnapping is a bit much, that effort is all too relatable.
Women’s magazines, in particular, have used countless gallons of ink trying to teach us just what it is that men want in a woman, as if being what men want is a goal for all women. It’s not, but these tips are an easy sell. According to these magazines, and the men interviewed in their pages, a large part of being a chill girlfriend is showing enthusiastic interest in your boyfriend’s hobbies.
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I used to pore over women’s magazines looking for clues as to why guys didn’t like me, despite the fact that I was in eighth grade and this advice was meant for women who’d had at least some interaction with men. I was overweight and a know-it-all with terrible acne, none of which made me any less deserving of love but which unfortunately did not make me popular at my mid-sized suburban middle school. Despite these barriers, or perhaps because of them, I painstakingly memorized the pointers I found.
I learned that guys love it when you compliment them; they apparently don’t get complimented enough. They love it when a girl “can hang with the guys.” They don’t like it when girls wear a lot of makeup (which I’m now virtually certain most men could not identify if quizzed). They love a girl who eats a lot (the magazines left out the part about how this is only cute as long as a girl stays thin). And, of course, they love a girl who gets into their hobbies. The advice is always about the same, and much of it boils down to this: Guys want a “low-maintenance” woman — meaning, a woman with no discernible emotional needs — who centers her life around them.
There’s all sorts of media imagery representing women enthusiastically getting involved in men’s lives in ways that make them happy: The romantic interest who sits enraptured as her date mansplains jazz. The girlfriend who accommodates her boyfriend’s all-consuming obsession with one sports team or another. The woman who, against all of her better judgment, gets into BDSM for her rich boyfriend’s sake. There is a huge premium placed on women in opposite-sex relationships adopting a role in the hobbies and activities that their partner likes, but that door doesn’t often swing the other way.
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Where are the men’s magazines teaching a guy how to make the perfect dip for his girlfriend’s Jane The Virgin viewing party? Or for her Super Bowl viewing party, for that matter, since this girlfriend might prefer football to dramedies? Where is the advice telling him that he needs to be able to “keep up” with his girlfriend intellectually to keep her on her toes? Men simply aren’t asked to involve themselves in women’s lives at the same level as women are asked to involve themselves in men’s lives and interests. And no, sitting on a couch outside of a Sephora doesn’t count as getting involved in our hobbies; we do more than shop. Which you would know if you’d been encouraged nonstop for decades to connect with us.
Guys want a “low-maintenance” woman, by which they mean “a woman with no discernible emotional needs.”
All of this isn’t even to mention that the hobbies women are instructed to get into are things that many women already enjoy. Women and men both play video games. Women know and watch and play sports. I played hockey for years and have taken many guys (romantic interests and otherwise) to games, where I knew what was going on much better than they did. Yes, plenty of women know how to cook, perhaps the top hobby men reportedly find “hot” for a woman to enjoy; do I need to point out that guys made us do that and little else but that for centuries?
As for being able to talk about politics, which conventional advice would also have me believe is very important for landing a man, guess what? Women are likelier to vote than men, and more likely to have gotten politically involved after the last election.
Frequently paired with this call to join in on “what he’s passionate about” is the advice that you ought to let a guy “teach you something,” because if we have learned anything from classic flirting tips, it’s that men love to teach us things. (I’m not talking about actually becoming teachers or working to reform the education system in our country; men often focus on more, ahem, local issues, like how you just pronounced “bruschetta” incorrectly.)
Men love to focus on local issues, like how you just pronounced “bruschetta” incorrectly.
It doesn’t matter if you already know what a man is telling or showing you. It also doesn’t matter if you have no interest in it. This is about getting him to like you, remember? There have been hundreds of articles and think pieces about why it is that men feel an innate need to teach, and why it makes them feel so needed, yet very few about how men can overcome that urge and learn to take a back seat every once in a while. Or gain self-worth outside of what they provide for women.
Ultimately, women don’t need our partners to take a central role in our hobbies; in fact, the healthiest relationship may be one where both partners have their own interests. If you don’t like scrolling through Etsy to find embroidered shirts with me, great, do your own thing. But don’t ask me to listen to you teach me about the Legend of Zelda if you’re not going to learn all the nearly identical Bachelorette contestants’ names.
And one more thing: Despite most must-read book lists being dominated by dead, white, male authors, don’t you ever suggest that reading is a male hobby women are just doing to keep up with you.
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