Maxim Editor Tells Women: Sucks To Be You
Want to know about women, but don’t know who to ask? Why bother to find an actual woman, when you can get the scoop from none other than the former editor of Maxim?
Honestly, ex-Maxim honcho Keith Blanchard‘s “9 things Maxim taught me about women” could be more annoying. The first is “women like when you play with their hair” — a generalization, sure, but pretty innocuous, and often true. And “women want a simple, clean apology,” without “mitigating factors” or “strings attached” is pretty solid — doesn’t everybody want that?
But then there’s “women are vulnerable to the curveball”:
Compliment a hot woman on being hot and a man will run smack into her defenses, no matter how creative he is (and we can get very creative; this is Prime Directive stuff). But compliment a smart woman on being hot, or a funny woman on being smart, and unless he is a total dorkasaurus about it the man will double his odds at least, as his target correctly recognizes him as unusually perceptive, sensitive, brilliant, etc. Just a minor weakness in your defensive shield, that’s all … nothing to be concerned about.
This makes it sound like women can all be divided into camps — the “hot” camp, the “smart” camp, the “funny” camp — and there’s little or no overlap. Aren’t there smart women who know they’re hot? Funny women who know they’re smart? And does a woman’s self-concept really need to be referred to as a “defensive shield”?
There’s also “for women, no date is over until they’ve shared it with their friends” — yes Keith, we watched Sex and the City too, but not all women use their dates as brunch entertainment. Or, “women dress up for their girlfriends, not for us,” with its explanation: “If it were up to us you would just be naked, all the time. Honestly, seriously.” Me Tarzan, you Jane. What is this shoes? Is food? Zzzzzzzzzz.
Really though, the true piece de resistance, the rotten nugget in this box of unpalatable but maybe sort of edible “nuggets of wisdom,” is this:
Women have a raw deal.
This will sound like I’m just sucking up, but I’m not. We actually catalogued the details in one of the earliest Maxim pieces, “50 Reasons It’s Great To Be a Guy.” You know: “you don’t have to carry a purse around,” and “just one mood, all month long, ha ha!” and so on. Well, as the guys brainstormed, our list kept growing (“haircuts are cheaper!” and “more pay for the same work!” and “nobody is ever, ever looking at your ass!”) and it started to dawn on us that this wasn’t just a funny conceit: Biology and society have conspired to stack the deck unfairly against the fairer sex in dozens of ways. So, uh … sorry.
Purses, expensive haircuts, income inequality — wow, life as a woman is full of little annoyances. Too bad big old biology and society hate you girls so much. Nothing we can do about it though — except laugh!