Advice About Relationships
Relationships help pass the time by trapping you in arguments about things that don't matter.
Just The Facts
- Relationship advice usually reveals a lot more about the person dispensing it than about the relationship.
- The #2 source for relationship advice is friends trying to break you up for their own purposes.
- Most relationship advice makes things much worse.
- That said, here is some relationship advice.
Dating, Relating and Fornicating
Modern dating involves other people telling us how to think (self-loathingly), what to do (remove body hair) and when to have sex without shame (Tuesday).
Historically, women haven't had much choice in relationships. If your father didn't trade you for a cow, you applied for your withered maid license. When Papa died of Labours & Toils Disease, he left you a horsehair blanket and a large debt to the oppressive Lord Miseryshire. Your best hope was that this cruel noble would himself die, leaving his estate to a dashing son returned from the Indies to claim his due in heaving bosom.
For a woman to survive, she needed a sharp tongue and sharper wits to hide it. The fairer sex became master manipulators just to land a station in life where they weren't beaten for letting the spinning wheel overheat. A few won their freedom in bloody kickboxing battles, but didn't date much thereafter.
Jane Eyre dared argue that ugly women could marry, if the man was useless to society.
By the Victorian era, women were considered too frail for anything hardier than gossiping, fainting or prostitution. Since giving birth would have exploded them into a shimmering red mist, women ordered their babies from the Pumblechook & Figg catalog.
Behold the Victorian man!
He bends barrel hoops, kills all his own food
and has never seen a nude woman.
What changed? VAMPIRES. The Austro-Hungarian undead seduced an estimated 16 percent of English womanhood. The nearly lost art of sex once again became a way to pass time before dying. Victorian men emerged furious from the coke mines, and swore to avenge this outrage, even if it meant sleeping with their wives.
The real reason for World War I, as well as the English complexion.
The gendercide was over - but the war was just begun. As women asserted their rights and the dream of choosing their own spouse grew less ridiculous, society found new and slyer ways of dashing their hopes...
Frustrating and Mating
Once allowed outside, women easily won the battle of the sexes, thanks to superior intelligence and unflappable insanity. Millions of men lost their lifestyles in tragically happy marriages to innocent-eyed beauties. Katherine Hepburn alone was responsible for no fewer than three dozen screwball comedies.
The secret to womankind's success was the pools of knowledge found in magazines like Cosmopolitan, Truck-Driver for Her and Gody's Ladies' Handbook of Recipes & Cunning Entrapment.
Gody's Ladies' Handbook also confirmed the existence of the female period to great controversy.
Among the early findings:
- That men seldom say what they're thinking
- That men are thinking exactly what they say
- That men enjoy sex
- That women might not go to hell for enjoying sex
Today these magazines forsake sound advice to play keep-away with women's self-esteem. These Iagos of print foster insecurity, nurturing hope only when it inspires greater fear. Hey, publishers! If women wanted someone to chip away at their confidence with outrageous flattery followed by vicious backstabbing, they'd have lunch with their best friends.
Just because magazines are 85 percent advertising doesn't mean they need to keep their readership unhappy and eager for products to fill their empty lives. Oh wait, yes it does. Those ad fuckers think The Feminine Mystique is a how-to manual.
This used to pass for legitimate editorial opinion.
Self-hating and Berating
Consider the erroneous advice on the cover of a contemporary women's magazine.
But you probably didn't notice the text
Notice how the magazine pays homage to the bullshit of the past while relentlessly kidney-punching it. Clearly, the modern woman is ready to go, even if she crushes your pubic bone into powder getting there.
Yet for every nugget of anecdotal wisdom about how to please your man and hate your body, the magazine contradicts itself. This is based on the Sex & the City rule, which states that women want essentially everything men want, but feel guilty about it, or at least feel guilty about not feeling guilty about it. Unfortunately, Sex & the City itself is seen as a reasonable front for relationship wisdom these days. It's still 2001, right?
Which Sex & the City character are you? It doesn't matter, they're all shallow Manhattan elitists. Honestly, when in your life would you heed the wisdom of a woman dressed as a giant flower?
Catnip for workaholics.
So how to enjoy oneself on a date and adhere to the rigid dictates of strangers? Here's a tip! Ignore some common rules plucked from today's checkout aisle:
- If you get a guy's number, wait three days to call so he wonders who you're sleeping with over the weekend. This counts as fantasizing about you.
- A man won't respect you if you have sex on the first date, unless it's with him.
- You look terrible. Have a friend Photoshop you before a date.
- Love yourself for who you are, says a magazine that has never had a size 10 cover model.
- You should never let a man pressure you into sex, unless he paid for dinner and a movie, because, come on, that's like $75.
- Trust is the foundation of a healthy relationship. Hire a private investigator to dig up your boyfriend's secrets so you know how exactly what kind of bastard you're dating.
- When having an affair with a married man, it is polite to wait at least six months for him to leave his wife before you "accidentally" get pregnant.
- Dumped? Wow, there must be something wrong with you. Figure out what before you waste anyone else's time, you goddamn train wreck.
Fortunately, the relationship advice these sources dispense is so terrible that within three generations anyone who heeded it failed to reproduce. Modern women know dating is more fun when you're sane, and these publications are dying off faster than the cast of Golden Girls. The long, hard battle for equality is nearly won, and in some states, it's even legal for a woman to ask a man out! However, it should be noted that God has natural disasters planned for each of these states. Enjoy your plague of locusts, Sinsylvania!
So it's obvious women enjoy sex, and possibly cities. Does that mean men want children? Here's a popular "lads' mag," a seething furnace of impotent rage hissing with a steamy need for validation.
There's also Entourage, but the less said about that, the better.
Men's publications are breeding a new caste of helpless, self-obsessed neurotics, just like women's mags did before their readership evolved an immunity to it. GQ and Spy once dispensed useful information like how to knot a bow tie without strangling yourself, how to autoerotically asphyxiate without strangling yourself, and how to repair a car without strangling yourself. Today, Men's Health and Maxim fret over traditional women's concerns, like abdominal fitness and finding the clitoris.
True story: The three licensed Maxim products are hair dye, bed sheets and sweaters for kitty-cats. Ladies, you must treat such a man like you would a Victorian woman; use your hard-won independence to shield him from the world. Meanwhile, enjoy the equality waiting on the horizon.
You won't like what you find, ladies!
Poor femininity! All this time we were trying to save you from discovering the bitter truth! But you wouldn't turn back! Now having finally balanced career and family, you've learned both should be avoided.
Follow man's example, you mistresses of the Earth--guzzle beer, hunt gothic monsters and conquer the Indian sub-continent. For these are the only comforts left, and you've earned them.
Brendan McGinley knows a healthy relationship is built on trust and the willingness to don a PVC bodysuit.
I always love the magazines who's covers have articles with recipes for cakes and sweets right next to an article about loosing weight. Really guys?
ReplyCome on now, that's a great idea.
That way people who are fat (or at least believe they're fat. They often aren't the same people) can pick up the magazine to try to lose weight, and then when they inevitably give up because losing weight requires work they can turn back to the same magazine in order to learn how to make those cupcakes they've been dying for. That's a win-win situation right there my friend. or I should say my lady friend if you're a chick, since referring to you as such may confuse the easily confused as to whether or not we know each other intimately. Such is the way of the internet.
That picture of Kim Kardashian is one of the few pictures of her before she started to resemble a nasty-looking alien.
ReplyGreat article, so true. I used to read those women's magazines because I liked learning about makeup and fashion from them, but then I finally got internet connection and could just watch videos on youtube to learn how to apply my makeup. I remember reading bollocks like Cleo and Dolly and they were all pretty much the same but with different wording.
ReplyThat was hilarious! Great article.
ReplyThis article repeats itself a fairish bit.
ReplySo do the magazines
HOLY s**t look at all these f*****g fonts
ReplySEX WAR BELOW AND ABOVE
Replyproceed with caution
I can't even tell if this is misandrist or misogynist. Who cares, it was funny.
ReplyEverything I know about McGinley suggests he is an equal opportunity hater.
"Sex: You're Doing It WRONG, Dammit!"
ReplyThat made me lol!
hey congrats on getting on Best of Digg weekly
ReplySo much repeated content. So little humor.
Reply Hide All See All 4 Repliesyou sir are a f*****g idiot if you don't find this hysterical.
No, I agree. The content that WAS there was hilarious, but it sort of lost the effect after being repeated three times.
I also agree with the dude who was agreeing with the dude.
Good god, I can't tell who is agreeing with whom anymore! I agree with the people who disagree about agreements and... agreeable...agree....degree....blargh!
Jane Eyre wasn't ugly she was just plain, hence "Plain Jane". Many models and "beauties" look a whole lot different w/o makeup. There's a lot of "plain" supermodels or celebrities who are considered hot.
ReplyOtherwise I like the setup of the topic! And it's pretty dumb to rely on magazines of all things for relationship advice.
Actually, I remember a Dove commercial that showed this vividly. They showed what appeared to be a plain looking woman. Then they fast forwarded through putting on makeup, styling hair, etc. At the end, the same exact woman was shown to be a model and put on a billboard.
You know what I missed. f*****g mormons.
ReplyThen you are really missing out! Mormon boys are the best! They are all gay, and so grateful and guilty for a great time it is amazing. Forget the women. They carry cash registers and manacles, and sex is just the trap they spring to get married.
I loved the first chart. Creative.
Replylol, this was very good. The men's mag and the s**t about vampires was great.
ReplyWay to run a gag into the ground, guys.
Reply"Those ad fuckers think The Feminine Mystique is a how-to manual."
ReplyI. LOVE. YOU.
"That men seldom say what they're thinking
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesThat men are thinking exactly what they say"
What?!
it means men dont talk much, but when they do they mean it
Or... men do not talk much, because they are seldom thinking anything at all?
probably more like men think stuff they don't say (God knows the smart ones do,) but when they do say, that's pretty much what they're thinking
Ayuh, it's not a very good joke, as you can tell by those three guys trying to explain it.
This article was one of the best cracked has had in a while. It was funny, but it also was smart. I liked the sarcastic way it pointed out true stuff!
ReplyI can't believe I actually got halfway through this before I decided to stop. This is shit.
ReplyYou are most likely Maxim's wet dream demographic, this article was brilliant.