What A Man Wants -Thoughts sparked by Thoovanathumbikal- Part I
"I just need someone who understands me. Whether it is Clara or Radha, it doesn't make a difference"
So says an angry Mannarthudi Jeyakrishnan about the two women in his life.
Radha is a smart, bold, college-going, distant relative of his. She had initially rebuffed his interests before slowly reconsidering her opinion.Clara was a extraordinarily intelligent and sensitive girl whom he met in the curious circumstance of initiating her into the flesh trade.Could they be more different?
I shall cut to speculative sociopsychological musings now:
Isn't it the case that women tend to be able to outline their 'dream men' with more clarity and precision than men can bring themselves to do about their 'dream women'?
(If you think the above line betrays an unquestioning subscription to ideas about traditional gender traits, be warned that it gets worse. I toyed with blaming it all on the movie but decided not to kid. Nothing reveals where we come from like talking about our likes.)
So, is it because women, somehow, tend to know what they want much better than men do? Personal preferences for a specific kind of personality, down to some idea of the proportion of courtesy, assertiveness, humour, sensitivity, empathy and what not. Not to say these evaluations are clinically applied, as women do yield to reasonable recalibration on the ground (after all women are human too! - ok now I need a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card). My point is about the possession of such detailed outline in the first place, which men do not have. Of course, it would be quite unseemly for a man to admit to having such detailed expectations of 'his girl'. But in most cases, I allege, there is no such outline at all!
It is easy to mix this up with the general impression that men are more 'easily impressed', compared to women. 'Evolutionary wiring' explanations have been offered for the same. But even over and above that, a shade of nuance is needed in explaining the hazily defined preferences.
Radha is a smart, bold, college-going, distant relative of his. She had initially rebuffed his interests before slowly reconsidering her opinion.Clara was a extraordinarily intelligent and sensitive girl whom he met in the curious circumstance of initiating her into the flesh trade.Could they be more different?
I shall cut to speculative sociopsychological musings now:
Isn't it the case that women tend to be able to outline their 'dream men' with more clarity and precision than men can bring themselves to do about their 'dream women'?
(If you think the above line betrays an unquestioning subscription to ideas about traditional gender traits, be warned that it gets worse. I toyed with blaming it all on the movie but decided not to kid. Nothing reveals where we come from like talking about our likes.)
So, is it because women, somehow, tend to know what they want much better than men do? Personal preferences for a specific kind of personality, down to some idea of the proportion of courtesy, assertiveness, humour, sensitivity, empathy and what not. Not to say these evaluations are clinically applied, as women do yield to reasonable recalibration on the ground (after all women are human too! - ok now I need a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card). My point is about the possession of such detailed outline in the first place, which men do not have. Of course, it would be quite unseemly for a man to admit to having such detailed expectations of 'his girl'. But in most cases, I allege, there is no such outline at all!
It is easy to mix this up with the general impression that men are more 'easily impressed', compared to women. 'Evolutionary wiring' explanations have been offered for the same. But even over and above that, a shade of nuance is needed in explaining the hazily defined preferences.
This seems to have been overlooked - which is where I come in : possibly, a man is never fully interested in a woman. He is only interested in how they relate to each other. It is not that he is apathetic to her personality in entirety, but beyond a point most things do not really matter to him fundamentally.
I don't make this point in absolute terms, but only relative to a woman's approach. As long as it works for him, most other aspects of her personality are incidental. Of course, he'd develop his likes/dislikes about them over time but hardly are they ever his primary considerations.
Someone with a yen for crude reduction may say that I just took my own sweet time to say something that was common knowledge: the porcine nature of man. Perhaps I did - so, can I have my Get out of Jail Free card please? Thank you. That will be all.
Mannarthudi Jeyakrishnan just wants to be understood. And what he principally likes in his women is that they understand him.
PS: In the next post I am going to make even less sense. So if you plan to read it, and you have not seen the movie, please help yourself to the story here.Skip the last paragraph if you are the kind who wants to 'see how it ends'.
I don't make this point in absolute terms, but only relative to a woman's approach. As long as it works for him, most other aspects of her personality are incidental. Of course, he'd develop his likes/dislikes about them over time but hardly are they ever his primary considerations.
Someone with a yen for crude reduction may say that I just took my own sweet time to say something that was common knowledge: the porcine nature of man. Perhaps I did - so, can I have my Get out of Jail Free card please? Thank you. That will be all.
Mannarthudi Jeyakrishnan just wants to be understood. And what he principally likes in his women is that they understand him.
PS: In the next post I am going to make even less sense. So if you plan to read it, and you have not seen the movie, please help yourself to the story here.Skip the last paragraph if you are the kind who wants to 'see how it ends'.
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