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What Do Women Want? Bleargh!
Aug. 7th, 2010 11:27 pmThis meme cropped up, yet again, in a movie I just watched, and I am getting soooo tired of it. If we're going to wallow in meaningless generalities, can't we at least mix it up a bit? Spice it up with a bit of variety?
"What do people 158cm tall want?" That's a good one. Or how about, "What do office workers with moles on their left forearms want?"
We are all individuals (insert Life of Brian reference here). Each of us wants a different set of things from life. As soon as you lump two of us together, you're looking at the intersection of those two sets, which is going to be dramatically smaller and may not even include the most important of those things. Imagine what happens when you take the intersection of the 3.5 billion sets representing the desires of all those people in the world who happen to not have a Y chromosome? You'd be lucky to be left with anything at all.
And that assumes that what any person wants is static. For most people it's anything but. It's conditional. It's situational. It changes over time.
There are only two ways of determining what someone wants: careful observation of or conversation with that particular individual. Since stalking is illegal, that means that you're pretty much stuck with actually having to talk to them. Heaven forbid.
Now can we please all accept that, toss our copies of Men Are From Mars into the trash bin and move on?
"What do people 158cm tall want?" That's a good one. Or how about, "What do office workers with moles on their left forearms want?"
We are all individuals (insert Life of Brian reference here). Each of us wants a different set of things from life. As soon as you lump two of us together, you're looking at the intersection of those two sets, which is going to be dramatically smaller and may not even include the most important of those things. Imagine what happens when you take the intersection of the 3.5 billion sets representing the desires of all those people in the world who happen to not have a Y chromosome? You'd be lucky to be left with anything at all.
And that assumes that what any person wants is static. For most people it's anything but. It's conditional. It's situational. It changes over time.
There are only two ways of determining what someone wants: careful observation of or conversation with that particular individual. Since stalking is illegal, that means that you're pretty much stuck with actually having to talk to them. Heaven forbid.
Now can we please all accept that, toss our copies of Men Are From Mars into the trash bin and move on?
