For Jake’s sake

Our fearless female columnist tells it as she sees it.

March 2008

So, the secret is out. Women want all men to be Jake Gyllenhaal. Or if they can’t actually be Jake himself, then they should do their darnedest to be a very close approximation of Jake Gyllenhaal.

Yes, according to the latest survey, commissioned by Ridiculous Surveys Inc, women reckon Jake is the bee’s knees, the ant’s pants and the cat’s pyjamas all rolled into one. Then the British dating site, www.ukdating.com, surveyed its 40,000 female members and concluded that women want a tall, blue-eyed bloke who drives a silver Mercedes.

Meanwhile, Allan Pease, one of the authors, along with his annoying wife Barbara, of the generalisation-heavy book Why Men Don’t Listen And Women Can’t Read Maps, goes one alarming step further and says it’s all about biology. When women are ovulating, they want a big he-man like Russell Crowe and at other times of the month, we want a metrosexual softie who’ll rub our feet, like Jake Gyllenhaal, Pease reckons.

This is not only completely unrealistic. Every day, you’ll have to ask the missus about the state of her cycle to decide whether she wants a cave man or a teddy bear. If maths isn’t her strong point, she might not even be sure herself if she wants to be cuddled or ravished and then you’ll just get upset and declare that women actually don’t know what they want.

Then there’ll be a stupid, pointless argument. It’ll be the kind of argument that starts off small with a comment about putting an empty milk bottle back in the fridge or some such triviality, but by the end, you’ll be screaming at each other, insulting her mother and will spend endless nights sleeping on the couch after you’ve committed the ultimate sin and told her that her bum looks big in that dress.

And all because you listened to the advice of a head-screwing survey or a cheesy self-help book. As men and women get ever more neurotic as the years roll by, we are all in grave danger of turning into overanalysing idiots. Thanks to the scourge that is women’s magazines, this lunacy used to be pretty much restricted to the ladies. But as men ware encouraged to express themselves and be more sensitive, they too are falling victim to thinking too much and being swept away by silly surveys and inane books. Guys, don’t do it. Follow your instincts rather than the result of a dating website survey of 40,000 single, needy, desperate, unrealistic women. There are probably very sound reasons why they are all single.

Style explained: piercing urges

US comedienne Rita Rudner once said that men with pierced ears are better prepared for marriage because they’ve experienced pain and bought jewellery. I say this is nonsense.

The pain of getting one’s ears pierced is nothing compared to, say, catching your husband in bed with a lap dancer called Bambi or childbirth. On the pain scale, it rates lower than a mosquito bite, well below a paper cut and certainly nowhere near as ouchy as stubbing your toe when your feet are cold.

And as for the fact that he has bought jewellery, well, all he has bought is either a small stud or a little hoop earring. At least you hope that’s all he has bought. If you are a man with a pierced ear and there is currently a giant wooden parakeet earring dangling from the side of your head, you have far bigger issues that I am not prepared to deal with right now.

But the men with their little collection of studs and hoops are not instant experts in the art of buying a woman jewellery. That is absurd. Buying a woman jewellery is a minefield. Some low-maintenance lasses will be happy with anything sparkly while for some fussy cows, it has to be a multi-carat extravaganza that will blind pilots flying overhead.

So that just leaves earrings as a style statement. On this, I am ambivalent. For some guys, a subtle hint of silver from the earlobe is quietly sexy. For rock stars, it’s compulsory to pierce an ear along with getting the de rigeur tattoo and, if you’ve really made it big, a diamond in your tooth won’t go astray either.

But if you are wearing a diamond in your ear that is any bigger than a small pea or there are charms hanging off like chandeliers, you’re not cool. You just look like a bit of a git.

And if you’ve pierced other parts of your anatomy, frankly I don’t want to know.

Life explained: travelling dillberries

I love travelling. There’s nothing better than experiencing new places, meeting people you’re just not going to bump into while waiting in line at the bank and learning about other cultures. It’s all good. Except for airports. And on planes. It is here that people behave so completely appallingly and it has got to come to an end.

Naturally, children are a nightmare. They cry, complain, kick the back of your seat on already hellish economy class flights and make that hideous squealing noise that I am sure I never made as a kid. If some entrepreneurial type starts a kid-free airline, I’m there with bells on. In fact, I know plenty of parents who’d happily offload their brats onto Aeroflot in the cargo hold with the pets and take the No Kid Air flight without batting an eyelid.

But what is really annoying is the people on travellators in airports who just stand there instead of using them to keep on moving. Honestly, you’re rushing between flights, you just want to sit down and have a drink and there is some useless great lump of flesh standing there staring gormlessly into space.

People, it’s not a carnival ride. Seriously, if it was a carnival ride, it’d be a pretty rubbish one and you’d demand a refund. If you’re not going to move your legs, pretend to be an invalid and have one of those golf cart things take you through the airport. Obviously other people do this – you hardly ever see someone getting whisked through an airport on one of those contraptions that actually loks as if the can’t walk. Clearly there’s a scam going on.

At least I have declared zero tolerance on dealing with the hordes of morons at baggage carousels. I may be a mere lady but I travel so light, I almost float away. Not for me the packing of three hairdryers, 27 pairs of shoes and a leopard-print ironing board. If I can’t take it in my carry-on luggage, it stays at home, If only some people had the same policy for their children…