We Read It So You Don't Have To: The Boring Things Men Do When You're Not Around

In case yesterday’s glimpse into the “secret language of men” wasn’t revealing enough, March’s Glamour offers a look at “The Secret Lives of Men.”  Whoa—it’s not enough they speak a different language, but they have entire clandestine existences?  They’re, like, spies or secret agents or something.  Maybe men really are from Mars!

Alas, if guys were truly conducting operations straight out of a James Bond movie when left to their own devices, it would result in an article approximately a billion times more interesting than this one. So one dude eats Chinese food when he escapes his girlfriend’s health food fanaticism?  Who cares?  Even his girlfriend probably doesn’t care.

Here’s what else the men admit to:

1. Men watch porn, fantasize about inappropriate partners, go to strip clubs, and wonder if their wives will leave them.  Yes, and...?  Also, we may be old-fashioned in our preference for face-to-face communication, but we don’t think a magazine article is the way to reveal to your girlfriend that you’ve been thinking about her sister as something other than a future in-law. 

2. Men like Rachael Ray.  Boring.  Dreams about Paula Deen coating you in butter?  Spill it.  But since Rachael Ray is a cute woman who cooks, it’s not  a stretch that men would be fascinated by her.  Next!

3. Men do boneheaded, non-gender-dependent things like fritter away money and lie about their SAT scores.  On second thought, maybe that lie is gender-based—it’s the same sort of overcompensation that results in monster trucks with six-foot-tall tires tailgating in the fast lane during rush hour.  Come on, guys, we know you’re trying to make up for something other than your shamefully low score on the math section.  Ahem.

4. And…you know what, we can’t bring ourselves to read any more of this.

The only confession that veers anywhere near fascinating is Josh Robertson’s revelation that he forgot he has a child, if only because we were pretty sure such a thing wasn’t even possible.  Sure, he didn't actually carry the kid in his body for nine months or give birth or anything, but he forgot about the existence of his son?  Really?  Worse (for the story, not for his son) is that Robertson’s forgetfulness doesn't result in anything more dramatic than a whole lot of introspection (only a tiny fraction of which made it to Glamour’s pages, we’re guessing).  We aren’t suggesting he abandon the kid on the subway or anything, but at least that would have been worth reading about. 

Next time Glamour aims to reveal the “secret lives of men”, it first ought to be sure those secrets are actually worth reading about.

Comments

[Stunt_Girl]

Interesting, almost that exact same article appears in the UK Glamour this month. The odd detail like currency, football teams and shops which are mentioned in the articles have been changed to make them relevant to us, but other than I reckon it'll be word for word. Would writing an original and interesting piece really be above these people? I wonder what else they're lifting straight from the US version.

On a related topic, we have Anne Hathaway and not Liv Tyler on our Glamour cover, but that exact Liv Tyler image is used on a different magazine's cover this month. Must be an easy job for a fashion journo when all you have to do is copy and paste.