Once in awhile you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right. The concept of this week’s “Walkin’ Shoes” came directly from a texting conversation I had with a friend of mine the other day. What began as a conversation about jealousy morphed into one about dating in high school. More specifically, it dealt with the Nice Guy versus the Bad Boy dating inequity.
Before we get too far into this maelstrom of cliques, Aqua-Net, and pegged jeans, I want to clarify that this article has nothing to do with holding a grudge about who did or did not date me, and for what reasons. I am fully aware that I was a nerdy bookworm with a bad 1980s mullet and an affinity for watching bad sci-fi on the VHF channels late at night. Even the 80s, that was not a good combination.
So, all you guys who were like me, and were interested in girls way out our league, did you ever get frustrated when those girls you liked always picked the jerk over the nice guy? Didn’t it seem like it was always the outcome? And as we got older and into the high school, it happened more and more.
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| Don't be this guy. |
Why did girls like the bad boy? Was it because they were revolting against the social norms put forth by their parents? What teenage kid doesn’t like do exactly the opposite of what their parents want? Or does it simply come down to those hormones raging in ever-erratic levels at that age? Maybe it’s something deeper.
Before I take a moment to look it up, I think that the bad boy attraction has a lot more to do with the evolutionary process than anything else. The bad boys are the fighters, the protectors of the clan. These guys, back in the caveman days, would be the hunters. They would be the warriors. In an age of “survival of the fittest,” these are the men that would be more likely to produce stronger offspring.
Meanwhile, guys like me, who didn’t die out because we couldn’t hunt or protect ourselves, were made into the shamans or bards. While we were important to the cultural evolution of the clan, we were expendable, too. And shamans did not marry in case being with a woman “drained us of our powers.” So basically, women choosing the bad guys meant that we were able to beat the odds and survive as the human race.
Now that I’ve looked up on Google the reasons women date the bad boys, I realize that I have no idea what I’m talking about. My justification of why I didn’t date much obviously was a futile grasp at overcoming my own teenage awkwardness.
According to an article in Psychology Today, the women polled explained that the so-called bad boys are never boring. There’s always a sense of excitement around them. Nice guys are nice, but they’re just not as much fun. Obviously, these women have never been around me for very long. I’m not boring, and I’m all about fun.
The article continues by stating that as women enter their 30s and 40s, they’re more likely to eschew the fun for more stability. I guess that means I should have been trying to date women in their mid-to-late thirties when I was in high school. I’m pretty sure that the authorities would have something to say about that, though.
For anyone reading this who is taking this article with much seriousness, please don’t. I was having a little fun trying to explain away my horrific dating record in my teenage years. It had nothing to do with me being a complete, anti-social, bad fashion, bookworming, dork. Those excuses are invalid. Completely. It must be that evolution is against me. I accept no responsibility for any of this. There must be some other lame excuse I can use instead.
Craig Bacon likes to claim that he’s not boring, but his wife just scoffed when he said that out loud. She obviously needs a new dictionary for Christmas.