Why Do Men Care What Women Want?

There's been a media driven obsession, culminating in a Mel Gibson movie, no less, about men discovering what it is that women want. 'What Women Want' articles and pieces of footage are spread far and wide over the surface of the earth, to the point where little baby penguins on the polar ice caps are being raised in nests lined with articles for men telling them what women want.

(No, baby penguins aren't actually raised in nests, but they will have to be soon, because we're running out of space for all the literature on what women want.)

If you believe what these articles say, apparently women want to be spoiled princesses, having it all, career, family, money, power, and all the while with a man to attend to their needs and make sure that they feel validated and actualized and what not.

Strangely enough, 'What Do Men Want' articles aren't nearly as popular. That's because women have largely stopped worrying about what men want. In the last twenty to thirty years, culture has started to revolve more and more strongly around women.

It's not necessarily a terrible thing, but it is quite unequal if you think about it for a moment.

The truth of the matter is, the on the ground, every day woman wants a man who is loving, faithful and makes her feel special. That's about it. If a man can make a woman feel special, and if he can also convince her subtly that she would be lucky to have him, then it's pretty much game over. Women are predatory animals, we don't want what comes too easily, which is why 'nice guys' have a harder time of it.

It's actually pretty obvious what women want, but for some reason, this media storm continues, presumably being fed by men who still want to know.

In thirty years, we've managed to develop the Internet from a fledgling network to a world wide super power beyond the control of any one government. We have gone from having to use a bulky land line phone in the house to being able to make calls on a little touch screen device that will also allow us to play games, listen to music and make incriminating videos. We have electric cars. And yet we still, after thirty years of ridiculously intensive study, apparently don't know what women want, in spite of the fact that women are everywhere and quite easily studied in their natural habitat.

The obsession with discovering what women want isn't really about discovering what women want at all, it's about reinforcing the idea that women are demanding, mystical creatures whose whims must be attended to if a man is to be successful in a relationship. It's also about reaffirming the stereotype that men are clueless morons unable to understand even the simplest of human motivations. Even these two reasons are secondary however. At the end of the day, all this 'what women want' schmaltz is really about creating an over class of women and an underclass of men who must please their women.

It's essentially nothing more than role reversal, the pendulum swinging from the 1940's and 1950's where literature abounded telling women how to please their men. So yes, a little bit of this is understandable, or was understandable, in 1998. Can we please evolve beyond 'what women want' now? It's boring, it's overdone, and it's holding us back from actually being equal.