7 Reasons

Tag: Differences

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons Boys Are Better Than Girls

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Boys Are Better Than Girls

    Just over a year ago you may remember Natalie Clifford gave us 7 Reasons Why Women Are Better Than Men. And, for a year, we have let the fairer sex have their moment. Mainly because no one dared argue differently. That is until one man decided to step forward. That man is brave. That man is the writer of The Memory Blog. That man is Richard O’Hagan. Today Richard sits on the edge of the 7 Reasons sofa – in an undisclosed location – ready to readdress the balance. Here, in his words, are seven reasons boys are better than girls.

    7 Reasons Boys Are Better Than GirlsThe idea for this post came to me one Sunday evening. I was stood there doing the ironing and utterly failing to come up with any ideas for my own website when the sight of my wife preparing my dinner* made me think, “Being a boy is so much better than being a girl.”**

    And then I thought, “I wonder if those nice chaps at 7 Reasons would be interested in a guest post which might actually increase their site traffic, even if all of the new hits are from angry feminazis?”

    So here you have it – 7 Reasons Why Boys Are Better Than Girls, and one which hopefully avoids all the tired old suggestions such as ‘being able to pee standing up’*** and ‘not leaking like a BP oil well once a month’.

    1.  Self-Awareness. Boys are simply more self aware than girls are. Boys know that once they have got out of bed in the morning, that is pretty much as good as they are going to look for the rest of the day. A quick wash and brush up, maybe a shave (according to personal and religious preferences) and that is it. We don’t spend time applying many different layers of make-up, or agonising over what to wear that day, because we know we’d only be trying to fool ourselves. And this then leads to…

    2.  Lower Expectations. Everyone knows I am going to show up to any given event looking like I have been dragged through a hedge backwards. I’ve been perfecting the look for years and I know that there is as much point trying to get me to look smart as there is in giving Pompeii a quick dusting. If you don’t spend your life trying to look as if you have just strolled in off the pages of a fashion magazine then no-one expects you to look like that.

    3.  Less Gullible. Let us not beat around the bush here. Boys are less gullible than girls. No-one has ever convinced us that nylon – a material which unravels as soon as you look at it – is a suitable covering for our legs. No-one has ever convinced us that we need to chuck out a quarter of our clothing every three months because “that’s so last spring/summer/autum/winter”. And no-one has ever convinced us to wear beige simply by renaming it ‘taupe’****.

    4.  Cats. The phrase is ‘Crazy Cat Lady’. No-one ever said ‘Crazy Cat Man’ (well, not without being so stoned that they think it is still the 1960s) and no man has ever been found dead and alone in a feline infested flat, with the moggies feasting upon his decaying flesh. Being a girl means developing a strange attracting to furry four-legged gits.

    5.  Shoes. Boys wear sensible shoes. Shoes you can run in (see reason 7). Shoes you can walk in. Shoes which are comfortable. Girls, on the other hand, think that shoes mean some towering edifice which makes perambulation almost impossible and painful toes a part of daily life. Moreover, being a girl means that you feel the need to spend roughly the Gross National Product of Namibia on acquiring more uncomfortable shoes than you could ever need even if you lived for six lifetimes. Boys have one pair of shoes, wear them until they wear out, then buy another pair; Girls have eleventy million pairs of shoes, wear some of them, then chuck them out and start all over again twelve months later (see reason three)*****.

    6.  Driving. Cars were simply not designed for girls. This is no slight upon the perceived lack of driving ability among females, it is a fact. The basic design of the car began with the male physique in mind and hasn’t altered. Girls have proportionately longer legs and shorter bodies than boys. If cars were designed for them they would have deeper footwells, lower dashboards and no doubt many other female-friendly alterations (a lipstick holder or something). No car has yet been made like this, not even the Mazda MX-5, a car no male with a molecule of testosterone in his body would be seen dead driving.

    7.  Running. Running makes boys look manly, as if they are hunting down prey or chasing a foe. When girls run they always look like they are attempting to do a very fast Charleston whilst simultaneously going in the opposite direction. Something which I shall now demonstrate by running away from this angry horde of feminazis******.

    *She was not cooking because I am some kind of raving sexist monster, she was cooking because the local crematorium cannot keep pace with the after-effects if I cook.

    **This was after the umpteenth interruption to reach down something from the middle shelf of our kitchen cupboards, a task I perform willingly but whilst wondering what the use of a kitchen cupboard is if 50% of the users cannot reach beyond the salt and pepper storage level*******

    ***I once heard the occasionally-funny Sandi Toksvig claim that women didn’t regard this as an essential skill. Try telling that to the female attendees at any large outdoor event.

    ****Moreover, the invention of ‘taupe’ had a detrimental effect upon the men of the world, as by the million they were denied Bouncy Bedroom Fun by their female partners after exclaiming “Taupe? Looks like beige to me, love”

    *****For the avoidance of doubt, my wife is not a typical girl. At least in this respect.

    ******There is no reason for this set of asterisks. In addition to alienating 51% of the world’s population, I wanted to break the ‘most asterisks in a post’ record

    *******There are other things as well as salt and pepper on that level, obviously. Or will be, right up to the point where my wife reads this and throws them at me

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons Men And Women Shouldn’t Converse (With Each Other)

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Men And Women Shouldn’t Converse (With Each Other)

    Sitting between us on the 7 Reasons sofa today (and complaining about the crumbs) is Fashion Journalist, Emily Clifford. Emily lives in Sydney and writes for a variety of publications ranging from Glamour and She to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Durban Mercury. Her hobbies include rock-climbing and reading this website. She says G’Day!

    1.  Humour. When women say they like a man who can make them laugh, this is true. When men say they like a woman who can make them laugh, this is false. They just want a woman who will laugh at their jokes.

    2.  Moods. When women say they are fine, this is false. They’re not. And would actually quite like to talk about it. Just not to you. When men say they are fine, this is also false. But it was true until you interrupted them while they were reading Jeremy Clarkson’s column.

    3.  No. When women say no, this is true. They have hundreds of better things to do. Like sleep. When men say no, this is false. Unless the football’s on.

    4.  Travel. When women say they know where they are going, this is true. They have been up all night planning the route. When men say they know where they are going, this is false. They are just going to wing it. Or switch on the sat-nav.

    5.  Decisions. When women say it’s your decision, this is false. The correct suggestion was suggested by her five minutes ago and it should be perfectly obvious. When men say it’s your decision, this is true. They know it can’t come back to haunt them that way.

    6.  Lateness. When women say they have been waiting twenty minutes, this is false. They spent so long doing their make-up and deciding what shoes to wear that they have only been waiting five minutes. When men say they have been waiting five minutes, this is false. They have actually been waiting twenty minutes, but see this as a great opportunity to do something they have read about and be the ‘better man’.

    7.  Dating. When women say they would love to see you again, this is true. When men say they would love to see you again, this is false. They just don’t know how to articulate the words, “This was great, but no thanks”. Bastards.