Damsel in Distress

I am the youngest of three sisters. I have lived overseas most of my life. Our family was often not a complete family unit due to my dad’s employment and our education. So like all protective parents, my parents armed us with the ultimate weapon to protect us: Independence. They taught us never to depend on anyone, emotionally, financially, or even temporarily. I don’t travel without my set of handy-screw drivers and my Swiss Army knife set – gifts my Dad gave me when I went to university.

I grew up with a close circle of friends who I still cherish, but with the course of time I learnt how to share my feelings with others without becoming emotionally dependant on them. Perhaps that is the reason most my guy friends treat me like a guy. I can talk about technology, politics, and even fashion without getting sentimental. That is where men get everything wrong.

Independent women believe flagrant display of emotions is sentimental foolery. Emotions are supposed to be a private acceptance of one’s individuality. Putting them out in the open feels like eBay-ing your childhood toys. We are not incapable of emotion; we are just incapable of losing our composure.

I have met countless men of all ages from all over the world expressing their desire of wanting to meet a hot and smart girl to settle down with. A couple of years down the line, I see them settled with quite the opposite of smart girls – not because they couldn’t find the smart girl of their dreams, but simply because they fell for the damsel in perpetual distress.

That is the ugly truth: all men want a damsel in distress. The reality and gravity of the distress of course is dependent on the faction of girls they go for. If a man likes mental torture or willingly doesn’t mind being hen-pecked, there is the faction of girls who love mind-games, know exactly how to get a guy to do their bidding, and yet always come off as the damsels in distress. If men would rather prefer being oblivious about the obvious, they can always go for the faction of girls who are such good players that they will have them playing a second fiddle to every flowery whim of theirs without the men even knowing what a fiddle is. If a man actually claims he wants a smart intellectually stimulating girl, there is the third faction of girls – which I find particularly interesting – women who are either actually so stupid that they are perpetually distressed, or who are so smart that they can even fool women of their games. There is also a faction of independent girls, but when we can have them for best friends, why would a man ever want to be romantically involved with them.

I always thought men were stupid to fall for such girls. But lately, I have realised I was wrong. They don’t fall for them, they want them. They don’t want to be in a relationship with someone more independent than themselves. They’d feel emasculated if that were the case. The so-called damsels in distresses have a twisted way of making them feel their manhood established.

Perhaps if men were less insecure, they could see independent women actually need them too. Maybe they’d see a woman lifting her 20 kg suitcase on her own not as a personal affront to their ego, but perhaps an invitation to show their manliness by offering to lift it for her. Perhaps some old fashioned chivalry can create the distress men so crave for.

I honestly don’t know where the debate ends. Are opinionated women with fully functional brains and a reluctance to indulge in mind-games a social anomaly? If so, is there a university offering ‘DIND100: An Introduction to Being a Damsel in Distress’ this semester?

The writer hates 1001 courses.