Picture the worst guy you’ve ever met. A sexist beer-swilling caricature of the dregs of masculinity, a douchebag with a neckbeard, swaggering about in the kind of graphic T-shirt Ed Hardy would mow the lawn in.
Are you turned on yet, ladies?
Don’t lie. I know you are, because sometimes I am that guy.
Let me explain. I’m a comedian, and a woman (which is obviously impossible but for the sake of the story let’s just go with it). But sometimes, I’m a man. For the past couple of years I’ve performed as my alter ego Dave, the beer-soaked tossnut mentioned above, which has presented me with a scenario I never envisaged: fighting off women who love douchy men.
It happens like this: I’m in a filthy warehouse venue and I’ve just come offstage. My face is smeared with fake blood and glued-on clippings of my own hair that I keep in a bucket in the dressing room. I look disgusting.
I’m trying to escape to remove all the grime when a woman comes up to me and proceeds with the usual: she enjoyed the show, is that real hair, where do I get it, and then this:
“This is going to sound really weird, but…”
I know where this is going.
“I kind of find Dave …”
“Attractive?” I say.
“How did you know?”
I know because this happens all the time. While her tone is that of someone divulging a unique secret, like the first person to admit they were a furry, women often find Dave attractive. Not me, Dave. And not just any women, straight women.
He’s an intentionally unappealing character, so I find this attraction genuinely baffling. Why oh why?
The fact Dave’s a man may explain why straight women are into him, but the repulsive part surely must negate that? Well, maybe not. Some of my best friends are straight and from my anecdotal research, I hear there’s a certain appeal to the jerkbag bogan guy. Dave certainly fits that bill.
On the other hand, I read somewhere that women are attracted to men with very manly features (wide jaws, big caveman brows etc) because, according to evolutionary science/”this thing I read”, they have the best genetic stock. And that’s certainly not Dave. Dave’s features are those of an incredibly beautiful woman (winky emoji).
But apparently the catch with those manly A-grade-genes-guys is that they’re prone to be less reliable partners, ie jerks. So if a lady’s on the market for marriage material, she’ll tend to go for guys with more feminine features. By that logic, these Dave-loving-women want to marry me. (Or Dave, anyway. We all know women can’t marry women. What next? Women marrying plants?! The world’s gone mad. Stay strong Australia.)
Perhaps I have accidentally created the perfect male: a caricature of blokeyness wrapped in feminine features. Case solved, fellas! The trick to attracting ladies is to look like a baby and behave like a jerk.
Of course, that’s ridiculous, not to mention offensive, and there’s a huge grain of salt to be taken with any genetic evolutionary theory on man-woman relations. They omit social conditioning as a factor, which is problematic to say the least and in this case they’re explained by me, which is even more problematic because I don’t understand science that well.
If we leave evolutionary science alone, we’re left with the tried and tested allure of the androgynous. There’s something titillating about that unknown space between male and female. Fluidity is exciting, even to the mainstream, which explains the appeal of Justin Bieber, and why everyone swoons over Tilda Swinton. A fake beard provokes a general sexual intrigue. My girlfriend has a similar issue to mine. The number of times she’s been asked if she and Dave have ever “y’know … done it?” is roughly equivalent to the number of times she’s asked me not to mention her in articles I’m writing (sorry babe!). For the record, she hasn’t. The obvious reason being that she’s a real life human woman and Dave is a fictional character.
And it’s in this fiction that the real intrigue lays. It’s fantasy. You can’t have sex with Dave, because just like Tilda and Justin, he’s not a real man. He’s a perfectly safe projection surface for your fantasies, a sort of Manic Pixie Dream Husband, if you will.
Of course there are plenty of real Daves out there, and your own personalised douche is waiting for you. Hell, he might be a phenomenal lay. But if you’d rather just chat me up on the way to the dressing room and avoid driving all the way out to the tip where he works and then finding he’s used your Gillete Venus on his balls, that’s a service I’m happy to provide. You’re welcome.