Meet Tyler Durden

Y’all remember Shawn? He’s been MIA for some time because he’s finishing his screenplay (did you know that he writes scripts with the likes of the Shrek team...We have a regular celebrity cruising this place). Shawn’s been fixating on his work and I do appreciate that he still comes here and reads…

In an email he sent me this morning, he wrote: PS -- I do, however, have one question: When a woman lists "protection" as a prime attraction attribute she looks for in a man, what the heck does that mean? Protection from what? Wind? Rain? Roving packs of dingos? Great White sharks? Bonks on the head? Do women really feel so unsafe they prize a bodyguard above all else?

…so am going to answer the above as today’s blog entry…

And for the record, everything I am about to write is about me and should not serve as a generalisation re women. It is merely my personal perspective on how I relate to men and the kind of man I want in my life. Other women can speak for themselves…

It’s not that I feel unsafe (at least not here in North America where I don’t have to worry about rape as genocide and my man murdered due to his chosen religion) or actually need protection. It’s more that I want to make certain the man I’m with would – should the occasion arise – be capable of protecting me (most notably: physically).

This doesn’t mean I can’t protect myself, but it does mean that I believe he would afford better physical protection (perhaps even better social protection, but that is an extremely different dynamic & conversation which I can’t cover right now). Ultimately, I don’t want to throw down with anyone except the punching bag in the gym…but I like me a fearless, fierce & aggressive man.

In return, there are things which he could find inside himself (to a degree), but are better received from me. For me equality does not mean ‘sameness’, but rather, recognition that the differences inherent in both must be equally valued and revered. Within this discussion is a greater feminist argument to be made and for which I don’t have the patience this morning (and for the record, I don’t believe that a woman’s ability to bare her breasts on Girls Gone Wild is a measure of a progressive feminist movement. That measure comes in the form of: Women in office, the right to equal pay & education, etc.) .

The best way to explain this is to reference two of my favourite movies, the one I consider the quintessential chick flick: Fight Club, and Gladiator. The former rips in to the whole notion that men live in gyms and sculpt their bodies for the aesthetic (read: Mr. Universe) rather than out of necessity (read: war & hunting). In the later, Russell’s character embodies all of the characteristics I look for in a man (especially the short skirt).

But we don’t live in the age of Maximus, and so I find that I lean toward the aggression of Tyler (who > had he lived in the time of Maximus, would have been a less romantic version of…).

Tyler Durden is the anti-Metrosexual. I thought I used to dig the Metrosexual, until I was placed in some situations where the Metrosexual turned into the Superpansy. The Tyler Durdens of this world are primal and aggressive and they bleed and they don’t manicure their god damn nails. When faced with challenge and fear, they’re anything but scared…which, I think, is a rare quality in 2006.

As an aside and beyond the above, let me get to the nitty gritty of Tyler Durden. As basic instinct dictates, Tyler seems to possess both incarnations that meet my off-the-top-of-my-head needs of swaggering rightfully-cocky sex-bomb:



& raging animal:



(& remember: I think Brad Pitt’s kind’a ugly.) On a personal note, I’ve only ever met two men who fit the above profile(s). They are the archetypical alpha males and always, there is an aggression that sits right beneath the surface and in to which they could tap (and both have) should they need to.

Many women like the soft-spoken drunken and tortured poet (someone I got over when I was 22). I prefer the guy that’s spitting blood and with knuckles ripped…defying and challenging anything that stands between him & what he wants. (& I don't mean this in the Bushian way...but rather, with principles that match my own. And if I'm what's on the other side of that challenge and he's spitting blood in order to get to me, my heart's already racing and I'm already short of breath...)

Wow. I probably have a lot of daddy issues.