SNL Dating Advice: Lie To Him, Ladies

In a skit on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, Anna Faris, Kristen Wiig, Abby Elliott and Nasim Pedrad sang a little song for Vanessa Bayer, set to the tune of “Tell Him” by The Exciters. In the SNL cover of the song, the ladies dispense the following dating advice: “Tell him that you don’t believe in marriage. Tell him that you don’t care if you have kids. Tell him, tell him, tell him, tell him all lies.”

The ladies went on to sing that if you want a man, you need to tell him that you love watching hockey, playing Call Of Duty, and reading comics. When it comes to sex, “You have to seen fun, and up for anything.”
Therefore:

Tell him that you’re open to a three-way
Tell him that you watch porn every day
Tell him that you’re not grossed out when he says the word panties

The skit was set in a retro diner, with all of the ladies wearing pink and black, and it was staged as though they were in a Grease-like musical. But the advice dealt with the concerns of a modern woman:

If you want him to stay pining after you
Then you have to hide
All the things women do
Tell him that you’re naturally hairless
Make him think you never use the bathroom
Then when you’re sleeping you can run to Starbucks

The premise that to get a man to fall in love, a woman needs to be manipulative, deceptive and scheming is a fairly old one. Seriously, even Eve was accused of subterfuge. The lies may change, but the idea is still the same: Men are rigid, lazy dolts and ladies need to bend the truth, be flexible and work extra hard to snag them. But chances are, for every woman who listened to this SNL song and said, “It’s funny because it’s true, I hate hockey!” there’s another woman who has stood her ground and refused to watch UFC or play Grand Theft Auto. (That chick is single, though, amirite? Ha. Kidding.)

The joke relies on some pretty standard stereotypes: Women don’t play Call Of Duty. Guys don’t want to think of a woman as someone who poops. Every stand-up comedy routine ever assumes the same crap, even though women play video games and men living with women who fart and shit haven’t tried to create a lady-less colony on the moon. Aren’t we past these silly tropes? Aren’t we in an era of gender myth-busting?

The last bit of the song suggests that once you fall in love, if the guy tries to bail, you’re supposed to tell him that you’re pregnant and it’s his kid. The fact that this whole thing was done in a cutesy, winking way tells us that the SNL gals are in on the joke; they know just how absurd it is that a woman would act like she doesn’t go to the bathroom just to seduce a man. But to be honest, it’s tough to tell: Is the skit making fun of women and the lengths they’ll go to in a relationship, or is it mocking men, and the fact that they want girls who are not into any girl stuff? Or is the message “dating is ludicrous, period”?