The cliche of “bad boy” appeal has been a point of contention for men
and women both for a long time. I have heard men refer to it bitterly as the
reason for their romantic disappointments, having been told they are “nice
guys” by women who break up with them. (It is time we women stop
saying that; we mean it as a consolation, but they are apparently taking it
as an explanation.)
Women, on the other hand, feel uncomfortable with the notion that we
fall for bad boys for a variety of reasons: first of all, it is not a conscious
choice or preference we form, and we resent the implication that we are
drawn to not just “bad boys” as portrayed by Hollywood (who are
invariably good guys with better haircuts than the more acceptable suitors
or misunderstood loners with hidden depth), but actually bad men,
because that is both insulting and frightening. Insulting for what it says
about our perceived decision-making abilities; frightening because we are
forced to question at some level whether it is true–we do in truth have the
soft spot for “bad boys,” but what if we’re naive to assume the “sensitive
loner” type of bad boy even exists? What if that is a myth some men
exploit to get close to us, but inside they were bad men all along? And
worst of all is the inevitable accusation at the heart of the “bad boy”
mythos: does it mean women are masochists, inevitably drawn to pain and
cruelty?
This summer, I went to see Batman Begins, twice in fact, and my
reaction to one character in the film spurred me to think on this topic at
length. Cillian Murphy’s portrayal of Dr. Crane was compellingly sexy, and
I was a little embarrassed to admit that to my friends after the show. I
knew it was strange for me to watch the villain of the piece and feel so
fascinated. It’s not unheard of, far from it, but it made me question myself
somewhat. Unable to stop dwelling on the concept of what this might
reveal about my psyche, I decided to examine it. On the internet, I sought
out photos of the actor, to eliminate if possible the idea that I might simply
be responding to his physical appearance. Not so. While he is a
handsome man, his pictures were not stirring anything in me…until I
happened on a shot of him as Dr. Crane. I looked at it and was struck
again by how unsettling it felt to be drawn to the villain so conclusively.
Several years ago, before I met and married Chris, the world was much
more mysterious. The thoughts of others seemed incomprehensible to
me, their psyches elusive. I remember watching the HBO series Oz at that
time, and I remember my intense crush on the character of Ryan O’Reily.
He seemed passionate, romantic, intense, clever, and devoted. Sure, he
wasn’t perfect; he had rough spots, but I was won over by his “bullshit Irish
charm,” as Gloria Nathan, the object of his obsession, put it. And more
than that, I was young and naive enough to be unaware of what true
darkness lay behind such traits and were revealed by his actions. In all
fairness to my younger self, I must add that others of my age as well as
much older concurred with me in conversations about the show that Ryan
was one of the most romantic characters we’d ever seen.
That probably goes some way toward explaining how I managed to
marry a psychopath. It took about 9 months for me to get away from him,
because it took far less for me to realize what he was. Not the
terminology, that came later, but the concept that he was terrible. Evil,
even. It broke my heart in a million different ways, but I could see it. I
went over and over the beginning of our relationship in my head, trying to
determine what was wrong with me that I couldn’t see the truth back then.
The fact is, now I would be able to. Now I would see it a mile away and
decline his advances from the start. But then? I had no idea that he was
possible then. I was trusting to a fault, and though I’d been screwed over
in a number of ways by various people over the years, no one had ever
been so intricately involved in my life and so truly evil in intent. Petty, sure;
greedy, manipulative, dishonest, you bet. I could handle all that. That was
nothing. I didn’t get the concept that a smart, handsome, friendly, average-
seeming guy could be legitimately evil. I still thought people mostly “just
make mistakes” from time to time, but that the vast majority at least
thought they were doing little or no harm.
Having learned otherwise, I was thus even more troubled by my
attraction to the villain in the film. It later struck me that it was irrelevant,
because I certainly wasn’t attracted to the character if I tried to imagine his
existing in reality; I would run from him if he were a real man. I was
reacting to the actor’s portrayal, nothing more. It meant only that Cillian
Murphy had awesome screen presence and charisma, so yay him.
The Ryan O’Reily thing bothered me more. That was genuinely a case
of my being infatuated with a character who was not a good guy in any
reasonable sense of the term. I knew how I’d felt about him when I was
younger and less experienced…I had to see how I felt about him after all I’
d been through.
I was simultaneously saddened and relieved to find that upon reviewing
the DVDs of Oz, I recognized that Ryan O’Reily was quite clearly a
psychopath and very likely guilty of manipulating situations far more than
was ever made clear in the script. His unending and single-minded quest
to win Gloria Nathan’s affections despite his undeniable San Andreas-
sized faults informed his every breath, I saw upon a repeat viewing. Every
move was calculated, every syllable chosen to maximize the effects of the
emotional trap being set. He was like a natural predator so perfectly
evolved that it dominated without question…like the Great White, Ryan O’
Reily was inescapable and undefeatable from the moment new prey
caught his attention.
The reason for the relief I felt is obvious (I assume), so I’ll just clarify the
sadness I felt as being caused in part by the regret over my ever having
been so blind and idealistic that it made me a bright flashing neon target
for bad men. In shamefully straightforward part, though, it is the
despondency of a new atheist, the loss of something which was never
there but still seemed real enough to leave palpable emptiness in its place
once it vaporized. I missed my idealism, my naivete, but more than
anything else, I just missed my husband, because he had been such a
wonderful dream.
Along the way through this thoughtscape, I came upon the surprising
realization of how the “bad boy” cliche actually functions. It’s not a
masochistic impulse, nor is it a sign of superficiality. Women choose bad
boys for the same reasons as sociobiologists have determined we seek
broad shoulders and firm backsides. We are acting instinctually with our
first priority being self-preservation and the well-being of any potential
offspring.
I realize that sounds backwards on the surface, because of the
traditional negativity surrounding the “bad boy” appeal. But let me explain,
because it’s very, very simple.
Women assume–strike that–women know that all men are bad. We
know that. It is something we fight or deny or try to disprove, at least for a
time, but we know it. All men are bad. I don’t mean evil, just bad. (And
men have some corresponding assumptions/knowledge about women, but
that’s a separate piece still to come.)
If a man is good, so far as we have seen or been able to ascertain, that
leaves us a little bit terrified of him. Strange as that may sound, it is not
illogical. We have no expectation that he is literally always good; that
would be a pathetically foolish belief to hold about any human, male or
female. But we all have had the experience of being courted by a man
who only shows his good side, only portrays himself in a blameless light,
never reveals any negative emotions, et cetera. And this is terrifying! If a
man is only showing you the good stuff, the worst thing you can do is make
a serious commitment to him, because then it will be too late to get away
easily when his bad side is exposed.
A man who is never bad in any way is either hiding something, or
possibly still in a stage of development and has not manifested his less
pleasant traits yet. But we know there is (or will be) something there. It’s
scary to have that hanging over us, to wait and see what alternate persona
may suddenly emerge from the man we thought we knew. Most often, it’s
not anything life-endangering or unforgivable, of course. Most of the time
it turns out he likes gambling or smokes pot with his buddies or indulges
in auto-erotic asphyxiation while you’re out shopping. But those notions
are not the point; nor is the point the worst-case scenario possibility.
The point is the difference between the “nice guy” and the “bad boy.”
With the “bad boys,” we feel safer, because they aren’t hiding their bad
sides from us. We may or may not be safe with the guy who seems all
good, but we know what we’re getting into with the bad boy. He’s not a
jack-in-the-box we’ll be cranking the handle on nervously for years, hoping
nothing ever pops out. We can see what we’ll be dealing with already,
and we can make the decision whether it’s more than we want to accept in
a partner. We know all men have bad in them; it’s the ones who don’t
seem to be ashamed of their badness who make the most attractive
mates, because they won’t be as likely to take out their shame and self-
loathing and conflicted desires on us, or to hide their true selves from us
and wind up resentful toward us for the false personas they have to keep
up, or to be unforgiving of our quirks and missteps because they so
ruthlessly police their own.
Another delightful aspect of the bad boy is the inherent loyalty
perceptible in their apparent lack of concern over how likable they may or
may not be to just about everyone else in the world besides their girl. The
men who go out of their way to charm and please everyone they meet are
just as likely to be charming the pants off some of the other people they
meet when your back is turned. There is something comforting about
knowing your man isn’t bothering to win over anyone but you.
Bad boys are often good men, and even when they’re really really not!, at
least we are given the opportunity to see that before it’s too late. And
since it’s a point worth stressing, I’m going to close with something
mentioned at the very beginning: we women owe it to our collective sanity
to stop using the statement, “You are really such a nice guy,” to make men
feel less rejected while we reject them. It’s a lame fallback line, and we’re
trying to be nice and make things go more smoothly, but they’ve been
taking us to mean that we don’t like guys who are nice, and that’s just
simply not true. We love nice guys, as long as they are actually nice, but
hey, that doesn’t mean we want to be involved with every nice guy we ever
meet, or stay involved with all of them. We break up with nice guys
because we don’t have intense enough feelings toward them to want to
date them. Sure it hurts, but we get dumped too, and we don’t determine
that men are biased against nice women who care for them! We accept
the hit to our pride and acknowledge the far more rational notion that they
like us but found us less pretty than someone else, or less interested in
their particular hobbies, or less sexually compatible, or what-the-hell-ever!
Nice guys don’t get rejected for being nice. Nice isn’t a synonym for dull,
and bad boys don’t get attention for their “enigmatic” quality, at least not
past adolescence. Bad boys are the least enigmatic men we can imagine,
and therein lies the appeal.
In real life, at least, that’s the case. In the fantasy world of Hollywood, it’
s usually just a bloody sexy actor.
and women both for a long time. I have heard men refer to it bitterly as the
reason for their romantic disappointments, having been told they are “nice
guys” by women who break up with them. (It is time we women stop
saying that; we mean it as a consolation, but they are apparently taking it
as an explanation.)
Women, on the other hand, feel uncomfortable with the notion that we
fall for bad boys for a variety of reasons: first of all, it is not a conscious
choice or preference we form, and we resent the implication that we are
drawn to not just “bad boys” as portrayed by Hollywood (who are
invariably good guys with better haircuts than the more acceptable suitors
or misunderstood loners with hidden depth), but actually bad men,
because that is both insulting and frightening. Insulting for what it says
about our perceived decision-making abilities; frightening because we are
forced to question at some level whether it is true–we do in truth have the
soft spot for “bad boys,” but what if we’re naive to assume the “sensitive
loner” type of bad boy even exists? What if that is a myth some men
exploit to get close to us, but inside they were bad men all along? And
worst of all is the inevitable accusation at the heart of the “bad boy”
mythos: does it mean women are masochists, inevitably drawn to pain and
cruelty?
This summer, I went to see Batman Begins, twice in fact, and my
reaction to one character in the film spurred me to think on this topic at
length. Cillian Murphy’s portrayal of Dr. Crane was compellingly sexy, and
I was a little embarrassed to admit that to my friends after the show. I
knew it was strange for me to watch the villain of the piece and feel so
fascinated. It’s not unheard of, far from it, but it made me question myself
somewhat. Unable to stop dwelling on the concept of what this might
reveal about my psyche, I decided to examine it. On the internet, I sought
out photos of the actor, to eliminate if possible the idea that I might simply
be responding to his physical appearance. Not so. While he is a
handsome man, his pictures were not stirring anything in me…until I
happened on a shot of him as Dr. Crane. I looked at it and was struck
again by how unsettling it felt to be drawn to the villain so conclusively.
Several years ago, before I met and married Chris, the world was much
more mysterious. The thoughts of others seemed incomprehensible to
me, their psyches elusive. I remember watching the HBO series Oz at that
time, and I remember my intense crush on the character of Ryan O’Reily.
He seemed passionate, romantic, intense, clever, and devoted. Sure, he
wasn’t perfect; he had rough spots, but I was won over by his “bullshit Irish
charm,” as Gloria Nathan, the object of his obsession, put it. And more
than that, I was young and naive enough to be unaware of what true
darkness lay behind such traits and were revealed by his actions. In all
fairness to my younger self, I must add that others of my age as well as
much older concurred with me in conversations about the show that Ryan
was one of the most romantic characters we’d ever seen.
That probably goes some way toward explaining how I managed to
marry a psychopath. It took about 9 months for me to get away from him,
because it took far less for me to realize what he was. Not the
terminology, that came later, but the concept that he was terrible. Evil,
even. It broke my heart in a million different ways, but I could see it. I
went over and over the beginning of our relationship in my head, trying to
determine what was wrong with me that I couldn’t see the truth back then.
The fact is, now I would be able to. Now I would see it a mile away and
decline his advances from the start. But then? I had no idea that he was
possible then. I was trusting to a fault, and though I’d been screwed over
in a number of ways by various people over the years, no one had ever
been so intricately involved in my life and so truly evil in intent. Petty, sure;
greedy, manipulative, dishonest, you bet. I could handle all that. That was
nothing. I didn’t get the concept that a smart, handsome, friendly, average-
seeming guy could be legitimately evil. I still thought people mostly “just
make mistakes” from time to time, but that the vast majority at least
thought they were doing little or no harm.
Having learned otherwise, I was thus even more troubled by my
attraction to the villain in the film. It later struck me that it was irrelevant,
because I certainly wasn’t attracted to the character if I tried to imagine his
existing in reality; I would run from him if he were a real man. I was
reacting to the actor’s portrayal, nothing more. It meant only that Cillian
Murphy had awesome screen presence and charisma, so yay him.
The Ryan O’Reily thing bothered me more. That was genuinely a case
of my being infatuated with a character who was not a good guy in any
reasonable sense of the term. I knew how I’d felt about him when I was
younger and less experienced…I had to see how I felt about him after all I’
d been through.
I was simultaneously saddened and relieved to find that upon reviewing
the DVDs of Oz, I recognized that Ryan O’Reily was quite clearly a
psychopath and very likely guilty of manipulating situations far more than
was ever made clear in the script. His unending and single-minded quest
to win Gloria Nathan’s affections despite his undeniable San Andreas-
sized faults informed his every breath, I saw upon a repeat viewing. Every
move was calculated, every syllable chosen to maximize the effects of the
emotional trap being set. He was like a natural predator so perfectly
evolved that it dominated without question…like the Great White, Ryan O’
Reily was inescapable and undefeatable from the moment new prey
caught his attention.
The reason for the relief I felt is obvious (I assume), so I’ll just clarify the
sadness I felt as being caused in part by the regret over my ever having
been so blind and idealistic that it made me a bright flashing neon target
for bad men. In shamefully straightforward part, though, it is the
despondency of a new atheist, the loss of something which was never
there but still seemed real enough to leave palpable emptiness in its place
once it vaporized. I missed my idealism, my naivete, but more than
anything else, I just missed my husband, because he had been such a
wonderful dream.
Along the way through this thoughtscape, I came upon the surprising
realization of how the “bad boy” cliche actually functions. It’s not a
masochistic impulse, nor is it a sign of superficiality. Women choose bad
boys for the same reasons as sociobiologists have determined we seek
broad shoulders and firm backsides. We are acting instinctually with our
first priority being self-preservation and the well-being of any potential
offspring.
I realize that sounds backwards on the surface, because of the
traditional negativity surrounding the “bad boy” appeal. But let me explain,
because it’s very, very simple.
Women assume–strike that–women know that all men are bad. We
know that. It is something we fight or deny or try to disprove, at least for a
time, but we know it. All men are bad. I don’t mean evil, just bad. (And
men have some corresponding assumptions/knowledge about women, but
that’s a separate piece still to come.)
If a man is good, so far as we have seen or been able to ascertain, that
leaves us a little bit terrified of him. Strange as that may sound, it is not
illogical. We have no expectation that he is literally always good; that
would be a pathetically foolish belief to hold about any human, male or
female. But we all have had the experience of being courted by a man
who only shows his good side, only portrays himself in a blameless light,
never reveals any negative emotions, et cetera. And this is terrifying! If a
man is only showing you the good stuff, the worst thing you can do is make
a serious commitment to him, because then it will be too late to get away
easily when his bad side is exposed.
A man who is never bad in any way is either hiding something, or
possibly still in a stage of development and has not manifested his less
pleasant traits yet. But we know there is (or will be) something there. It’s
scary to have that hanging over us, to wait and see what alternate persona
may suddenly emerge from the man we thought we knew. Most often, it’s
not anything life-endangering or unforgivable, of course. Most of the time
it turns out he likes gambling or smokes pot with his buddies or indulges
in auto-erotic asphyxiation while you’re out shopping. But those notions
are not the point; nor is the point the worst-case scenario possibility.
The point is the difference between the “nice guy” and the “bad boy.”
With the “bad boys,” we feel safer, because they aren’t hiding their bad
sides from us. We may or may not be safe with the guy who seems all
good, but we know what we’re getting into with the bad boy. He’s not a
jack-in-the-box we’ll be cranking the handle on nervously for years, hoping
nothing ever pops out. We can see what we’ll be dealing with already,
and we can make the decision whether it’s more than we want to accept in
a partner. We know all men have bad in them; it’s the ones who don’t
seem to be ashamed of their badness who make the most attractive
mates, because they won’t be as likely to take out their shame and self-
loathing and conflicted desires on us, or to hide their true selves from us
and wind up resentful toward us for the false personas they have to keep
up, or to be unforgiving of our quirks and missteps because they so
ruthlessly police their own.
Another delightful aspect of the bad boy is the inherent loyalty
perceptible in their apparent lack of concern over how likable they may or
may not be to just about everyone else in the world besides their girl. The
men who go out of their way to charm and please everyone they meet are
just as likely to be charming the pants off some of the other people they
meet when your back is turned. There is something comforting about
knowing your man isn’t bothering to win over anyone but you.
Bad boys are often good men, and even when they’re really really not!, at
least we are given the opportunity to see that before it’s too late. And
since it’s a point worth stressing, I’m going to close with something
mentioned at the very beginning: we women owe it to our collective sanity
to stop using the statement, “You are really such a nice guy,” to make men
feel less rejected while we reject them. It’s a lame fallback line, and we’re
trying to be nice and make things go more smoothly, but they’ve been
taking us to mean that we don’t like guys who are nice, and that’s just
simply not true. We love nice guys, as long as they are actually nice, but
hey, that doesn’t mean we want to be involved with every nice guy we ever
meet, or stay involved with all of them. We break up with nice guys
because we don’t have intense enough feelings toward them to want to
date them. Sure it hurts, but we get dumped too, and we don’t determine
that men are biased against nice women who care for them! We accept
the hit to our pride and acknowledge the far more rational notion that they
like us but found us less pretty than someone else, or less interested in
their particular hobbies, or less sexually compatible, or what-the-hell-ever!
Nice guys don’t get rejected for being nice. Nice isn’t a synonym for dull,
and bad boys don’t get attention for their “enigmatic” quality, at least not
past adolescence. Bad boys are the least enigmatic men we can imagine,
and therein lies the appeal.
In real life, at least, that’s the case. In the fantasy world of Hollywood, it’
s usually just a bloody sexy actor.
