What women do we love? Let's think about that for a minute. For some time Esquire -- tag line: "Man at His Best" -- has featured a section called "Women We Love." I went online to see some of the women "men at their best" are in love with.
The eight all-time (since 2002) most loved women are Kate Beckinsale, Megan Fox, Katy Perry, Christina Hendricks, Anna Torv, Angelina Jolie, Beau Garrett, and Monica Bellucci. In the thumbnail preview shots, two of the women appear to be putting their fingers in their mouths, one is lying in bed seductively, one is wearing a wet T-shirt and one has her lips parted suggestively. Only Angelina's image suggests some kind of self-respect.
I click on bustier-clad Katy Perry and skip down to the interview, trying to ignore Ms. Perry in full black lingerie (complete with garter belt). After all, this is about man at his best; there must be something serious here that we all love so much.
Ah, here it is: "I always wanted to suspend from the ceiling in a twirling banana," Katy tells Esquire.
I'm done. I close the browser window and stare out the window.
Who are the men Esquire's talking about? What is it that we love about these women? Their twirling-banana-swing fantasies? Their factory-fresh "breasts"? Their naughty smiles? Are those things truly what men at their best love about women?
When Hanna Rosin wrote about "The End of Men" in The Atlantic, she pointed to the fact that women represent the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history, and that for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. But there is something more basic going on.
In media and culture, men are increasingly caricatured as knuckle-dragging cartoon characters, particularly when it comes to how we view women and sexuality. And by whom? Men, of course. It's not women running the strip clubs, porn websites and editing spreads in Esquire. We have an enemy, and the enemy is us.
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Yes, we are the minority in the workplace and at college. That's because our motivations and meaning in our lives have been scrambled by popular culture, which mandates that the thing we really should want -- the thing that will prove we are the alpha males -- has turned out to be hollow, addicting and spirit-crushing. While we watch football and stare at Megan Fox, women in this country are getting shit done.
Put more bluntly, I am talking about the difference between eye masturbation and making love. "Women We Love" aims at the former, focusing on naked pictures of improbably shaped, unattainable movie stars who play dumb for our satisfaction. (I suspect that Katy Perry is quite bright, bananas aside. And largely, it's not the women's fault they appear so vacuous.)
Most of the guys I know are unfulfilled, looking at pictures of women they will never meet (moreover, these women don't actually, technically, exist). They prefer making love with a woman who stirs their passions on more than one level. But we have been conditioned like so many Pavlovian dogs.
Yes, good men love women. But we love women in all their complexity -- for the things they do, for their intelligence, their wit, their athleticism, their creativity, their power and their force of personality. We seem to have forgotten that along the way. Our brain-numbing intoxication by pornography in all its forms threatens to end us -- not because it is morally wrong, but just because it distracts us from the truth and scatters our power. It's one big acid trip fantasy with no connection to improving our lives, being good fathers and husbands and advancing our careers.
The models I have met in the flesh have all turned out to be quite unattractive. When a supposedly beautiful woman opens her mouth and soulless, empty nonsense tumbles out, the perfect 10 becomes a two in a big hurry. No amount of cleavage can make up for the lack of soul.
My wife is a lawyer-turned-decorator-turned-child-advocate. Yes, she is hot -- but she is also smarter than I am, far more graceful in a crowd and can convince just about anyone to do just about anything when it comes to helping at-risk children. She is hot, not just because she is beautiful, but because she is all those other things, too.
So, with no further ado, here is my list of the women men love, if we actually stopped to think about it. These are women who are fascinating, cool and lovable. They have it going on, and not because they might (or might not) want to suspend from the ceiling in a twirling banana.
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As far as Tom’s list….well, that’s preference. There are a few that I understood…..and a few I really didn’t get. But I’m sure that if you asked him why he picked any of those women, you’d get a more in-depth answer than “Because she sooo Hawt!!”
It's nice to see a man acknowledge the unbalanced image of woman in the media. Thank you for that, Tom :)
Not that I have a problem with it, but it's interesting that Mr. Matlack's list includes a woman who doesn't dig "man" (at his best or at his worst, presumably).
Sounds like you've spent too much time listening to bitter, self-hating women complain about images of more feminine women in "the media," all so you can appear "sensitive," because you want what other men want, too: to get laid.
Women've been dealing with negative public body images for at least 4 decades. We also know damn well how men think. Our filter is fine-tuned. Most women learn to ignore the magazine covers and the Male Gaze. We have to survive. We have to eat and go to work, just like billions of REAL PEOPLE with REAL LIVES.
And real life is about the heart and soul, anyway. Most people don't look like celebrities. Even CELEBRITIES don't look like celebrities. Most people don't have time for that. We have to get along with one another. People with humility, modesty, compassion and respect understand nobody's perfect.
Sounds like you have some pretty strange issues as you watch that pretty mouth open over that heaving chest, Tom. A little too closely: Like you EXPECT her to be stupid. Sounds like YOU need to get over the way women look. We are!
Meanwhile, real women just wish those two qualities - beauty and intelligence (or "soul," or whatever you call it) - were not mutually exclusive.
Lady Gaga, as has shown us in the past, is partial to being suspended from the ceiling covered in blood after feigning masturbation on stage. Sheer spiritual inspiration.
My list would be:
Tina Fey
Rachel Maddow
Hillary Clinton
Zadie Smith
Maureen Dowd
Beyonce
Melissa Harris-Perry
Meryl Streep
Katrina Vaden Heuvel
Ellen DeGeneres