The Art of Women

Sometimes, I do things for my readers that I just wouldn't do for anyone else. Honestly. No I swear. To give as authentic a feel to the material that follows, I read, cover to cover, two completely vapid women's magazines. (Disclaimer time! I’m sure not all magazines women read are vapid. Women who read magazines can easily be brilliant. "Women's magazines" is a generally accepted publishing term that pertains to a specific set of magazines profitably geared toward issues that happen to interest, no one…umm…I mean…a large number of women, unlike my blog which most of my readers are still men or boys...who may or may not shower regularly.)

As a result of this absolutely objective research, I learned at least three things:

1.Women have no business being smarter than men. I don't know how they do it, but they can read stuff like this on a regular basis and still manage to outsmart us guys every now and then. Granted, Maxim or Stuff isn't exactly the high water mark of intellectually satisfying literature – but at least they're smart enough to put less clothes on the models. Here's a disturbing thought: Maybe women are way smarter than us, so much so that they could not possibly relate to us without dumbing themselves down, and they use these magazines as a sort of handicapping tool. Very sporting of them. Very sporting indeed.

2.None of these people know anything about things I care about. I'd love one of these four items to be something like, "Women get a high level of insight on how to plug in their own electronics from the regular ‘ask a midget’ feature." But no dice. Just advice on how to get "revenge hair.” Although, I think revenge hair would make a pretty sweet horror movie, I’d be willing to bet, the editor had other ideas.

3.Matthew McConaughey is surprisingly attractive. According to one of these magazines, Mr. McConaughey is "so hot, we had to hose down the girl who interviewed him." This got me thumbing through the magazine, looking for the picture of the young woman with a wet t-shirt. But on the way, I met up with the thoughtful, gray gaze of America's most eligible bachelor. Then my receptionist, who had acquired this magazine on a special mission (as if I'd be caught dead buying it), walked by, caught sight of the article over my shoulder, tripped over her own feet, and called out "Matthew, save me!" on her way down. Monster.com here she comes.

Women have always been a subject of wonder to me. It’s easy for any guy to say “girls just don’t make any sense.” That statement flows off the tongue so freely because it’s, pretty much, 100% accurate. They have more emotions than Pamela Andersen has STDs and these emotions will go from high to low quicker than Gary Coleman’s career. They can be sweet as an M&M and the next minute scream and yell at you until you feel as useful as a midget in a ‘reach things high up’ contest. But women are certainly not all bad. If they were all bad then you’d see a lot more dude on dude relationships. Fortunately, for all of us, girls smell a whole lot better than guys do. Not that it’s terribly hard to smell better than a combination of sweat, pizza and beer, but never the less, most females have a delectable odor.

The way woman pick out their fragrances will never make sense to me. Why is it that girls seem to be into smelling like food? It’s not just that they want to smell like food, they buy products to make them smell like 47 different food products. I mean not that food doesn’t smell good, especially the food products that females choose to smell like, but it just doesn’t make sense to me. I love food. I probably like a fat steak more than any chick likes, say, strawberries. Does that mean I want to smell like a freshly grilled steak? Well, maybe. But that is beyond the point. Point is everything I like to eat I don’t necessarily want to smell like. Guys wear cologne and body spray that smells like cologne and body spray, no real distinguishable scent.

Whilst, Christmas shopping, this year, I made my way into a Bath and Body Works store, partly lead by my panging stomach desperate for sustenance. Most of my time was spent, I mean, wasted, trying to figure what half of the crap in that store actually does. Once I came to the realization that my efforts would be in vein, I decided to ask for help. The lady, who might I add was very kind, asked me if I knew what I was looking for. I instantly became tempted to blurt out “Lady, if I knew I what I was looking for, would I have just spent the last 10 minutes looking around the store with a puzzled look on my face,” but being the angel I am, decided against such a course of action. I instead responded with, “if I hand you 30 dollars will you just put something in my hand that would make a good present for a 45 year old woman, you don’t even have to give me a receipt.” At this point, if she were to have given me a $5 bar of soap and a hair brush and said it was 30 bucks I’d have complimented her for her kindness and been on my way. Well needless to say, that didn’t happen. This is when the questions started coming: “Well what does she like?” “What kind of scents does she wear?” “What are her colors?” Again, I fought temptation to ask why she would inquire with such pointless banter, but managed to muster out a very measly and weak, “I have no idea.” Here is where the confusion really set in. She proceeded to tell me about a new basket of stuff which included a bar of soap, shampoo, this lotion that felt like it had sand in it and (for some reason) a rock. She ended her, astoundingly accurate, description of the item with “Ohh and it comes in our new, popular, scent: Peach strawberry cucumber lemon.” Ok, I admit, that wasn’t the actual scent, but it had so many different flavors of food in it, I think, even a pneumonic device for it would be hard to remember.

Female body products are very cleverly disguised. I live with a girl. My roommate’s girlfriend lives at my house. No, I am not going to start ranting about how much of a drag it is to live with a girl, cause it really isn’t, I happen to like her and she is just fine as a livingmate. This, simply, means I get a first hand account of all the crap that chicks use. Doesn’t mean that I understand them or why they have them, but still I get to see a lot of the little items.
I definitely consider myself more of a morning person than most other people. I wake up everyday before 9:00 regardless of what time I went to bed the night before or how much partying I did. I do not need a cup of coffee in the morning to get going. I don’t even need to stand in the shower for 10 minutes before I start to wake up. Still, I am not exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when my alarm goes off on the weekdays.

The first thing I do when I wake up is shower. Now, in my sleepy haze the last thing I need is to be thrown into sensory overload. I found this out about a month ago. I learned that at that hour of the morning, I can’t distinguish the overly redolent, pearl white bar of coconut scented soap as something I shouldn’t eat. Once that smell of coconut hits my nose I simply think, wow someone was nice enough to leave a piece of coconut for me to eat in the shower. Once I realize that said item is, indeed, a bar of soap, and not a kind gesture from my roommate or his ball and chain, I then have to go through the cognitive process of weighing my options as to whether or not to ‘sample’ this delicious looking morsel. I mean come on, one little bit isn’t going to kill me, and she’ll never even know I did it.

After I talk myself out of tasting the soap, I look up at the little shower hanging thingy, and see a plastic case that says “Whoosh” on the outside. Peering into its contents I notice it to be a blue gelatin. I poke my fingers in it, whirl them around a bit and give it a good smell. “Well,” I think to myself, “if it looks like Jell-O, feels like Jell-O and smells like Jell-O…” Again, the thought of “Ohh someone was kind enough to leave me some Jell-O to eat in the morning when I shower,” crossed my mind. After further examination, I saw that this stuff ran about $25 a pound. That snapped me out of it. No way am I eating someone else’s 25 dollar Jell-O. It must taste amazing, but still, I’m not paying 25 bucks for Jell-O. Later I found out that stuff was indeed a type of soap. I still say it’s Jell-O.

My guess is that she wanted the Jell-O all for herself. Well, I’ll teach her! We’ll see how she feels about being greedy after I eat all of her Jell-O!