Funny chaps, Women.

I can't claim to understand the female of the species. This was my particular attempt to understand 2 women whom I know.




Despite my good weekend I find that once more something troubles me and occupies my thoughts, nagging at me in much the same way that a wife would. Although I consider myself something of an empathic sort and pride myself on my ability to relate to pretty much anybody, lately I find that women are confusing and bemusing me more and more with each passing day.

Now I should clarify a couple of things before I even get started; this is not going to be a diatribe about what funny chaps women are. Nor do I intend to whinge endlessly about the fact that I have thus far failed entirely to pull for about the last 6 months (although I could of course complain bitterly about that at quite some length and the next time I'm horribly drunk with friends I intend to do so!). Rather I wish to pass comment on one or two elements of the female psyche that I find utterly baffling, probably because I am but a mere man and thus have no chance of fully plumbing the dark depths of women's thought processes. As always, it goes without saying that I don't mean to cause any offence by what I write.

There are two things in particular that I found myself thinking about more and more; women who stay with men who are abusive to them is the first, women with eating disorders is the second (my oh my, I can just sense the chuckles building up in you as you've read that...). Now that I come to think about it, neither domestic violence nor anorexia is the sole domain of the fairer sex. There are men who suffer from one, the other, or both. However, in general both are associated with women and it is on that basis that I shall proceed.

Okay then, deep breath and here we go...firstly we have good old-fashioned domestic violence. Can anyone out there at all possibly explain to me what the hell possesses women to stay with a man who hits them? I really just do not get it at all, and I am starting to lose count of the amount of young, attractive, and strong willed women who waste their lives with idiots whose only way of expressing themselves is with their fists (if for no other reason than I can't understand why they'd stay with them when lovely me is young free and single...).

Of the women I know who were (or still are) in this type of relationship, I have noticed one or two common factors. Firstly, they are not as emotionally hard as they may pretend to be. Without exception, the men seem to be able to ensnare them by an act of abject misery on the rare occasions that their victims pluck up the courage and common sense to leave them. They use an act, which blends together all of the best elements of whining to demonstrate his weakness; saying they can't live without you which gives the impression that he loves her; occasionally they'll even weep and apologise for their previous behavior in order to show repentance; without exception it finishes on the promise that things will be different this time (indeed, it usually is; they tend to have learned their lesson by this point and only hit the women where the bruises won't show...).

This always seems to work because the women end up feeling guilty about leaving the pathetic little heap of DNA in such a state. So back they go, and the violence starts again (although sometimes it takes as much as month for the man to return to his usual ways). And what is more, the women tend to end up convincing themselves that they somehow need this man in their life! Who are these men, and why haven't they all been hired as salesmen? Anyone who can convince a woman that what she really needs is to be thrown through a door and have her face pulped could surely sell ice to the Eskimos.

I'm sure that their respective friends have already said it to them, but they *really* don't need anyone like that in their lives. If it is a fear of loneliness that keeps them with an abusive man then I can assure you that it is not as bad as a regular beating and the feeling that one is worthless. If it is the feeling that the violence is somehow their fault (because a lot of these men claim that the women somehow make them violent; fair enough if they greeted their husbands with a hearty kick in the testicles followed by a barrage of abuse then perhaps the men would have a point, but otherwise...) then they really need to improve their feelings of self worth, and that is never going to happen whilst with a man who treats them so utterly dreadfully.

I am given to understand that for whatever reason a woman convinces herself that she loves the particular monster that she is with, one of the main reasons that they stay and suffer the endless abuse is the conviction that their man will change. They will *never* change, not ever. Not whilst they remain so cowardly as to refuse to address their own inadequacy that leads them to take out the misery for their own failings on their partner. And that is what I think is at the root of why men lash out at their partners. I think that for a very personally and deeply shameful reason (no, I'm not a women beater; lets face it, if I tried to beat the lady I currently live with I would find myself with innumerable broken bones and ruptured organs and bloody good thing too!).

After I'd split from my girlfriend, we found ourselves enjoying a heated and drink fueled argument. The insults raged, the furniture was assaulted, and the ornaments flew with gay abandon. And then, in order to convince the good lady that I was the man that she really needed in her life, I pinned her to the wall and screamed at her for about half a minute. I count that as possibly the most unforgivably stupid thing that I have ever done in my life (and I'm including the time I ate 3 ladybirds for a bet when I was 5). Eventually the abject terror on her face made it's through my alcohol soaked synapses. I had never felt as bad before or since as I did when I realised I was responsible for putting her in fear of a physical assault from me. I still haven't forgiven myself and though I have been utterly absolved by my ex, I hope that the only reason that she has forgiven me is because I despise what it is that I did and I have taken steps to address the issues that caused it to happen in the first place. However, I suppose it could just as easily be for the reasons that I have detailed so far and that saddens me, because it shows just how easy it seems to be for women to fall into the mindset of the abused.

Our second fun packed topic is eating disorders. Anorexia, Bulimia, and Body Dismorphic Disorder are the main ones that I'm referring to, but in real life it is difficult to categorise a sufferer so neatly, so I will only refer to them in general terms. Again this is mainly the province of women, especially in the media which seems to be both chief offender and public informant when it comes to this topic.

Again, I cannot claim to be anything other than utterly bemused by someone willingly starving themselves, inducing vomiting, or hacking their flesh to ribbons. We are told that the media is to blame because they impose unrealistic standards on women and continually bombard them with images of young, slim, beautiful women with not a flaw in sight. I don't completely accept that; okay so the women in magazines look fantastic. It is their job to look fantastic, and have none of you ever heard of airbrushing? The editor of Loaded (the archetypal ladmag) freely admits that cellulite and blemishes are regularly airbrushed out of pictures of models and celebrities in their pants. Also, if sufferers are so deeply influenced by the women they see in magazines, why can't they look up from their copy of Cosmo and take a look around them. They will see hundreds of thousands of women who do not look as if they have just stepped off the catwalk. They will be all shapes and sizes (and yes some of them will be thin; some women just are) and the vast majority of them will look good, be they size 8 or size 18.

It seems pretty unrealistic to blame the media for eating disorders when it represents a comparatively small percentage of our daily visual intake. There has to be more to it than that. I think that if it ties in to anything, it must be a self-esteem problem. Perhaps they think that they can only be attractive when thin, and somehow they always think that they are fat regardless of their weight and appearance. A lady whom I know with an eating disorder told me that whenever she looked in a mirror she saw a dumpy and overweight woman with flab on her arms and legs, saddlebags on her thighs, and a spare tire round her stomach. She's 8 and a half stone. At her worst she was less than 8 stone and looked skeletal and frail. She now looks fantastic, but still worries that she is too fat and unattractive, and this makes every day a battle for her.

At the risk of sounding flippant, I have to say that I find it difficult to find a hollow eyed, gaunt faced and grey skinned skeleton in any way erotic. Nor is the idea of a woman vomiting a tremendously exciting prospect (unless you are like a certain friend of mine who has a fascination with roman showers, but that is by the by) and yet women still do this to themselves in the name of beauty. I think I speak for a lot of men when I say that I prefer a woman who looks like a woman as opposed to a half-starved pre pubescent. So if it's not the media, and if they are so misguided as to believe that men want them to look the way they end up looking, what causes them to think in that way?

Clearly it is something deep rooted in both the individual and our society as a whole (for it is so widespread now that it cannot be a case of hundreds of thousands of women simultaneously developing these disorders individually) and it is not for me to unravel such a Gordian knot. Both domestic violence and eating disorders occur and are propagated by a lack of self esteem, so for some reason a lot of women don't feel as good about themselves as they ought. This is not a good state of affairs, and by blaming scapegoats such as the media we are doing everyone a dis-service. Once again, it is the standard finding that there is something wrong in our society, and we need to find out what it is and how we can best remedy it. Otherwise we can look forward to more bruised and scrawny women wiping their vomit flecked lips clean whilst they cry at how worthless they are. That is not right.