Exploring the dating scene over the past few weeks, I've discovered there's a new test by which men will judge women: is she a good girl, or bad?
Drugs, sex and your partying habits come up on the very first date (usually before the appetisers are served), enabling a bloke to decipher quickly whether you're a keeper, or best kept as a one-night stand.
Which is all very well considering everyone has their own dating standards. But these days, what exactly are men looking for?
I've been dumped by a party boy because I don't do drugs. I've been dumped by a man who thought my social schedule was a little too busy for his liking. And I've had to deflect a third who asked me to send him revealing photos of myself to prove I was "adventurous". (Was he kidding?!)
But the trouble I've found is that many single women have come to the conclusion that the badder they portray themselves, the better their chances are.
Go-girl attitudes have been replaced with a go-naughty-girl sentiment. Female-on-female kissing is deemed cool. Pernicious teenage pop tart Ke$ha proudly says she brushes her teeth with Jack Daniels (badddd to the bone!). Snooki, on MTV's Jersey Shore drinks like a fish, swears like a trooper and dresses like a corner-street hooker. And comedian Chelsea Handler prides herself on being a vodka-swigging potty-mouthed bad girl. ("She's hot!" one date recently told me after she said an expletive three times in a row on her TV show. Hmmm.)
Even supermodel Miranda Kerr - the epitome of a health-conscious natural beauty who practises Nichiren Buddhism (a Japanese branch of Buddhism), supported the koalas by chaining herself to a tree (nude) and, says her Wikipedia page, lives on a diet of fresh fruit, steamed veg and fish - recently posed for a photo shoot far removed from her good-girl image: as a platinum blonde-haired schoolgirl sucking on a cigarette.
Do men really dig this new look?
A quick poll of blokes found reactions to a smoking schoolgirl to be divided. But, either way, there's a definite shift in female behaviour.
While I'm not quite sure when it occurred, I remember a while back watching a story on CNN News in which reporter Carol Costellos blamed this "dangerous trend" of bad-girl behaviour on the "third wave of feminism". She said this sort of behaviour had become a "badge of honour" as women celebrate the worst of frat boy behaviour as a way to female empowerment.
Female empowerment? Feminism? Really?
I know from the blokes that women have indeed become more aggressive, sexually liberated and open, and that forward dating tactics are on the rise. But I think the question we need to ask is: why? Are men responding positively to it all? Or are they mightily turned off?
My friend Jason thinks the latter. While at a casino recently, he was picked up by a woman - an act of sexual liberation that left him a little perplexed. "She was dressed like a good girl in a conservative outfit, but then, when she sat next to me, she not only begged me to take her number, but begged me to take her home with me. It was weird and extremely unappealing."
He says that while it can sometimes be flattering to be asked out, when she is so aggressively persistent, it's simply not appealing.
"I will always ask a girl to stay at my place on the first night, but deep down I don't want them to sleep with me. I want them to resist. If they don't, it makes them out to be a slut. At the end of the day, I want a good girl not a bad one."
But some men beg to differ. When I polled colleagues over the Kerr cigarette photo shoot, Bruno said he didn't have a problem with the image she was trying to portray. "Men love damaged and vulnerable chicks," he said.
Martin disagreed. "I always ask: does she have a brain? If not, then I'm not interested. There are plenty of beautiful intelligent women around, so why waste time with an airhead?"
And Dante said: "Bad girls are good for short term but good girls for the long term. However, good girls are almost non-existent. You probably have a better chance with the lotto!"
I've spoken to, and interviewed, enough men over the years to know that, while they might pretend to be impressed by bad behaviour, they're not looking for a girlfriend, but a girl to boost their ego.
Who is more appealing? The party girl or the homebody? The bad girl or the nice one? The sexually explicit woman or the demure and mysterious femme?
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