Women explained:

What Are You Thinking?’

Our fearless female columnist tells it as she sees it.


January 2008

What are you thinking?” It’s the question designed to irritate men more than a stinging nettle in a jock strap yet still women persist in asking it.

Let me first say that I have never asked a man this ridiculous question. Perhaps I just don’t care enough about other people’s opinions or perhaps I am terrified of the inevitable humiliation that will follow when the answer given by the man-in-question is: “Your sister’s legs.”

But as a woman I do know enough about my species to explain why they will ask you this asinine question. And as I am on a one-woman quest to rid the world of stupidity, I can help you deal with this question so you need never hear it again.

A woman will ask a man what he’s thinking so that a romantic moment can be manufactured. It doesn’t matter to the romance-starved, attention-hungry woman that the best romantic moments are completely spontaneous. Nor does it matter that she will probably ask the Dreaded Question while you’re watching the football or reading a newspaper article about terrorism or removing a particularly troublesome protruding nasal hair with rusty tweezers.

She will ask you the Dreaded Question in the hope that you give an answer that is straight from a Valentine’s Day card. Correct answers to the Dreaded Question include: “You, my precious petal.” Or, when she is wearing soup-stained pyjamas and she has a cold, she wants to hear: “How incredibly beautiful you look today.” Or, worse still, she will love it if you say: “I was thinking about how much I want to marry you and have babies with you.”

Of course, if you play along with her desire for a romantic moment, you could find yourself inadvertently blurting out a marriage proposal. Then your hitherto peaceful weekends will be filled with tedious discussions about wedding reception seating plans and matching the best man’s tie to the bridesmaid’s dress. This simply won’t do.

The only viable solution is to tell the truth. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous or offensive or morally wrong the thought in your head at that precise moment happened to be. Share it anyway.

Imagine the look on her face when you tell her you were thinking about how hot her mother looks when she washes up. Go on to describe an obscene fantasy involving rubber gloves and Fairy Liquid for good measure.

How she will laugh uproariously when you tell her your brain was occupied with an elaborate plot to stop the neighbour’s dog from using the front garden as a toilet. Be sure to describe exactly what you will do with dynamite, gunpowder and large fishing hooks next time Rover issues a dirty protest on the lawn.

See? It’s easy. Even you were literally thinking of nothing and the Dreaded Question merely interrupted your valuable staring-into-space time, tell her your brain is devoid of any thoughts whatsoever. Or that you were in the middle of a thought so deep and complex that your brain is still trying to condense the thought into an easily digestible form.

Tell the truth and you will be able to get on with your life in peace and quiet. Spin her a romantic line that’s as convincing as Donald Trump’s hair and you’ll be asked what you are thinking with monotonous regularity. The choice is yours.

Style explained: It’s just the pits

There are certain parts of the male anatomy that are very pleasing indeed. Broad shoulders, a manly chest and a deep voice are all objects of great beauty to the lusty female observer. But not the dark, hairy, sweat-beaded cavern that is the male armpit. No great work of art has ever been dedicated to the male armpit. Tchaikovsky didn’t write the Armpit Overture. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s love poetry never expressed armpit affection.

It is for these very reasons that men should strictly follow the 4B rule when it comes to exposing their armpits. The bedroom. The bathroom. The beach. The basketball court. These are the only four places where it is acceptable for the male armpit to be on display. Unless you’re after sleep, sex, a shower, a shave, a swim or a slam-dunk, please wear sleeves.

If you still feel the urge to wear a muscle top or a vest top, ask yourself these very pertinent questions. Are you Billy Ray Cyrus? Do you aspire to be Billy Ray Cyrus? Is Billy Ray Cyrus someone who you would consider as a style icon?

If you have answered yes to any of the above questions, there is very little hope for you but at least you are reading Men’s Style so that’s a step in the right direction. If you answered no to those questions and still have remnant urges to go sleeveless, I am fast running out of patience but may have one more weapon in my anti-armpit arsenal.

Have you ever noticed that the calibre of tourists in posh Middle Eastern hotels slips somewhat during the summer months? Yes, thanks to stinking hot weather and drastically discounted hotel rates, Dubai in July is the new black. As in Blackpool. The foyer of your favourite five-star will be overrun by middle-aged chav-men in vest tops, their armpits drenched with enough sweat to solve Africa’s water crisis.

These are the kind of men who complain loudly and embarrassingly about foreign food. These are the kind of men whose wives have skin so leathery that they can only be distinguished from their handbags by their neon pink fingernails. These are not the kind of men to whom you should turn to for style advice unless you want to look like Frank Butcher on holiday.

But amid all my good intentions to keep the male armpit firmly ensconced in sleeves comes a new and slightly alarming trend. All men of taste and discernment will be pleased to read our Elegantly Waisted feature in this issue where Men’s Style heralds the return of the three-piece suit. It’s good to see men making an effort in the suit department but there has been talk of some guys doing the dapper three-piece thing by day and then hitting the clubs by night wearing the waistcoat component of the suit. With nothing underneath.

The Lady Boss is not convinced by this trend and fears that if it is attempted by mere mortals, they will look like they have merely forgotten to put a shirt on. There are probably a couple of men out there somewhere, blessed with sculpted upper arms, that might be able to pull this look off with aplomb but it’s playing with fashion fire for most other guys. Not even George Clooney can pull this one off. And he is the coolest man on the planet. You have been warned.

Life explained: why you need a building

The Middle East is an excellent place to live if you are into status symbols. Out here, your car can never be too big and potent, your suit can never be too expensive, your shoes can never be too exclusive and there are watches whose edition is so limited nobody has actually seen them.

But a drive around Dubai will reveal that you truly are nobody until you have your own building. Donald Trump has been the proud owner of Trump Tower for years (although rumour has it that ex-wife Marla Maples also used the term ‘Trump Tower’ to refer to a part of his anatomy. Clearly that was in happier times.) but a drive down the Beach Road will reveal a series of flags with Michael Schumacher, Boris Becker and Niki Lauda looking sternly down on you promoting their new development with ACI. We can look forward to Michael Schumacher Business Avenue and Boris Becker Tower (like Marla Maples, they might have received confirmation from the woman with whom Becker had his now-infamous broom cupboard tryst to verify the accuracy of that building’s moniker). Lauda meanwhile has put his name to the either boastful or anatomically incorrect Niki Lauda Twin Towers.

Sure buildings, bridges and causeways have been named in honour of Arab royalty for years but with non-royals now jumping on the bandwagon, it’s only a matter of time before you’re nobody until you have a building in your honour. Or at least a golf course Tiger Woods-style.

The gold-digging women out there might have once wanted a man with enough cash so that she didn’t have to go to work. That was more than enough pressure for a bloke. But now she’s going to want a man with a monument.

Yes, soon you will only be able to impress women, friends and business associates if you can say: “Meet me in the lobby of my building” and by that, you don’t mean a nameless block of flats above a laundromat and a shwarma joint. Your own building will put you up there with Schumacher, Becker and Lauda in the cool stakes. But if you’re not rich or famous enough to have a building named in your honour, you could always start small and work your way up to your very own tower block. Sadly, Boom-Boom didn’t want the Boris Becker Broom Cupboard named in his honour but for a much lower price than the Boris Becker Tower, that broom cupboard could be yours, baby. Do you dare to dream?