“I don’t mind it, it adds to your whole bad girl persona.” A guy I briefly dated said to me this summer, after he caught me smoking. I was floored. I have been married! I am from Waco, Texas! I take four different supplements most mornings and drink 64 ounces of water a day! Writers love nicotine, we’re all allowed our vices. There are worse addictions. But in the Madonna-whore dichotomy that exists in the brains of many—if not most—heterosexual men, I thought I was more of a Jackie than a Marilyn. Maybe not? There isn’t a better one of the two to embody.
“Do you think I have a bad girl persona?” I asked one of my girl friends.
“I think that’s what men call any woman they sense doesn’t want to immediately marry them,” she responded. Fair enough. I don’t think of myself as a bad girl, though the men I have dated since my divorce have consistently called me wild, uninhibited, a free spirit or—as men are always want to call women who exhibit feelings—crazy.
Most of adult single life is about, on some level, sex. And for women an easy, cheap, and not entirely genuine or effective way to find power—in a world that grants us very little power by default—is sex appeal. Free drinks and Ubers and dinners. When a man wants to sleep with you badly enough, he’ll be forced to listen to what you say. He may even, on occasion, hear some of it. Almost every man I have ever dated has told me that I am smarter than he is. These confessions are how I know, for certain, none of them believe that it's true.
I asked my triumvirate of straight, male friends—none of whom I’ve slept with and at least two thirds of whom I know would sleep with me—for their take.