on pampering his doggy: how a woman is "turned"

Photo credits: The Huffington Post

Why do women like reading about how to make men delirious with ecstasy? And what do men really think of these cute write-ups?

Take the smarmily titled 1970 Cosmo feature "Things to do with your hands that men like." When you get past the initial hysteria (imagine frolicking "in his chest hairs" and studying "all the nooks and crannies of his anatomy with your two hands!"), you see at once that these hand-y maneuvers are all designed to supposedly please a man by turning the woman into:   

1. a helpless cretin (hold his one big hand in your two little ones at the movies.)
2. his mom, a.k.a. treating him like an idiot boy (pat his stomach and ask if there's any movement)
3. a slobbering half-wit (count his ribs; put your hands on his naked waist and stare at him)
4. a willing slave (pumice his calluses; dangle grapes over his mouth...)
5. a potential cannibal (make a sandwich out of him and two pillows--your feast!)

But why should we be ashamed of "pampering our men's doggy or pussycat," so to speak? Isn't love all about giving and not being selfish? 

Last I checked, servitude is not giving. How can a woman ever share the best in her when she hasn't even explored the many other things she's capable of aside from sewing on his wobbly buttons? How can a relationship be two-way when her biggest high is being known as the wife of the renowned---? 

But that was Cosmo in 1970 when "The Female Eunuch" was yet to be published and women's liberation was just on its second wave. It's the 21st century now and women have been empowered ever since Oprah!

Wanna bet? 

Here are some of January 2014 Cosmopolitan's 30 ways to please a man:

• Wash his car.
• Play video games with him.
• Trade back massages, but let him go first.
• Pretend you care about whatever he’s talking about.
• Make his bed.
• Put air in his tires.
• Watch a movie you don’t care about but he loves.
• Tell him he's special.
• Compliment his facial hair.

So! Gushing over your man's mustache is apparently the v2014 of the v1970 frolicking in his chest hair! Ha ha! It's no rocket science to see the disturbing similarities pushed in these articles more than 30 years apart: pretend in order to please; be someone other than who you are to be accepted; serve so that you will be loved. There's no mention at all of interdependence or mutual respect or authentic loving. In reality, these articles are as much an insult to a man as it is to a woman! It assumes that he will suck up all the phoniness like an imbecile who gets tickled when you "try his ring on all your fingers". 

It's only one magazine, yes, and women have come so far in the recent decades. Yet, one can see like messages and beliefs not only in this rag but also in countless fairy tales we fed our kids, in the soap operas we gorge on, in blockbusters, pop hits, and in what has been traditionally ingrained by culture.

Turned. That's the term I use for anyone who shortchanges themselves for the fantasy tale that only ends happily when the coy heroine weds the prince and becomes his princess in his glitzy palace. Turned as in the zombie-ism/vampire-ism "She turned!" meaning she has become one of the unworldly: brain dead, and mooching on the living's blood and flesh. Surely, you get the metaphor?

And so, just in case you're a man who wants a woman for the menial things she does for you, a sucker who gets puffed up because she downplays her intelligence, a Neanderthal who has specific thoughts on how a woman should behave and where her place should be--

...and just in case you're one of those women who still 'live for the man', a Stepford Wives left-over seeking Mr. Right so you will find everlasting happiness, security and completion-- 

(and in case you find yourself secretly itching to "smash his goblet in the fireplace" for the sheer wild romance of it)

cease and desist:

"The day when it will be possible for the woman to love in her strength and not in her weakness, not to escape from herself but to find herself, not out of resignation but to affirm herself, love will become for her as for man the source of life and not a mortal danger." (Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex)