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Somebody call Mel Gibson. It's time to make the sequel, "What Women Want II: The Plot Thickens."
If a recent slew of studies is to be believed, the code has been cracked and here's what it reveals: Women want to eat fast-food salads containing toasted almonds during lunch breaks at the companies they own before heading home to happy-looking men who take an interest in babies and are likely younger - but not richer - than they are.
Sound like anyone you know? Maybe. Sound like every woman you know? Probably not. But that doesn't stop marketers, science journals, business magazines and those pesky "Scottish researchers" from continuously touting their findings as the final word on womanly desires.
Well, I'm a woman. And let me tell you what we want: a study that concludes women are unique individuals with such a diversity of preferences, habits, goals, fears and taste buds that we can't possibly be lumped together and studied like lab rats.
Instead, we get:
"What women want: Fast food" (Chicago Sun-Times, April 26). "Women are choosing fast food more often than ever before - 16.2 times a month in 2005, compared with 14.3 times a month in 2004 and 15 in 2001." So says market research firm Sandelman & Associates. We especially like Wendy's Garden Sensations salads featuring toasted almonds and mandarin oranges.
"Women Get Paternal Clues in Men's Faces" (Washington Post, May 10). "Women looking for a long-term relationship like men who like children - and they can tell which guys might be interested in becoming fathers just by looking at their faces," according to a recent study published in a British scientific journal.
"Never mind portfolio, women want eye candy," (Chicago Tribune, May 7). "Scottish researchers believe they have discovered a new area where women, particularly those who are financially independent, are just beginning to mimic men: choosing looks over lucre when shopping for a mate." Looks, the story went on to say, often means a younger man.
"Women want to be their own boss" (scotsman.com, May 8). "Most women would want to be their own boss, but they are reluctant to take the financial risk involved in setting up a business, a new survey shows."
Bookshelves and magazine racks have long buckled under the weight of "What women want" declarations, be they in the latest collection of non-fiction essays (Like such as Caitlin Flanagan's "To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife") or the tired lad mags promising the key to every woman's erotic bliss.
But it's most irritating to me when women are the subject of these "studies," treated like scientific equations who will provide predictable responses to controlled conditions (Give plant sunlight. Plant creates energy. Photosynthesis! Give woman man who likes kids. Woman and man create baby. American dream!) when of course there is no equation for women's collective fulfillment. Some women have no interest in bearing children. Some women would sooner eat their flip-flops than fast food - and some women wouldn't be caught dead in flip-flops.
This striving for sameness leaks into other parts of our culture as well.
The one and only time I tuned into TLC's "What Not to Wear," I watched in horror as some poor, sweet woman was made to feel like an affront to society for loving decorative socks - holiday socks, patterned socks, socks with animals on them, "I love Mom" socks. By the end of the show, she had been stripped of her sock collection and dressed to appropriately fade into the bland masses of well-dressed women around her. Did she look nice? Sure. Did she look like herself? Not a bit.
The point is we women should be embracing our individuality. Society should be embracing our individuality. We are, after all, a group that includes both Maya Angelou and Paris Hilton. Both Madeleine Albright and Anna Nicole Smith. There can't possibly be one set of answers for all of our life questions. I can't help but think a lot of our problems would be solved if we started viewing each woman as her own person and not just a part of some species to be demystified.
Maybe we'd stop pitting stay-at-home moms against their working counterparts and start celebrating any woman brave enough to make either decision. Maybe we'd effectively teach our girls that just because Nicole Richie is so thin you could shave with her doesn't mean they should starve themselves.
Maybe the "What Not to Wear" woman could have kept her sock collection.
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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
