How to Make Men Love You: Taking Apart a Ridiculous ‘Glamour’ Article That the Whole UK Is Upset About

Nobody wants to talk about how Glamour has a section called “Smitten.”

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

There is sort of this unwritten rule among digital writers that goes a little like this: “Do Not Slag Off Thine Neighborly Digital Writer, No Matter How Weaksauce Their Content Mighteth Be, For One Day You Will Wake Up On A Hangover And Dial A List In And You Wouldn’t Want Somebody Going Through That Point-By-Point And Saying That It’s Shit And Useless, Would You?” I mean, how can I go after anything i100 do when I write 4,000-word articles about all your different types of friends? I cannot, and if you are a digital writer, neither can you.

That fucking said, have you read this thing on Glamour, about how to make your man love you? Probably go and read this thing on Glamour, about how to make your man love you. There’s a bit where it legitimately says sharing links from Twitter might make him get down on one knee. Like, we all want our man to love us—do we not? Desperately? Is it not all we live for, the simple grunting affection of a very basic man?—but this seems a bit too much. This feels just one try too hard.

Let’s go through it point-by-point and slice it to bits and try to make some sense out of something that seems, on first glance, to be just slightly too insane:

1. Stocking the fridge with his favorite drinks. Bonus points: Bring him back to his fraternity days by handing him a cold one as he steps out of the shower.

“Oh cool, a beer. Sh–shall I just stand here and… drink it? I mean, it’s just a tin of Red Stripe. My hair’s still wet. My hair is dripping in the Red Stripe. Can I at least put some pants on first?”

2. Making him a snack after sex. It doesn’t have to be a gourmet meal—a simple grilled cheese or milk and cookies will do.

In a way this one is the saddest, most desperate: Not only must you deliver an earth-trembling orgasm to the penis and/or butthole of your dude, but then you have to clamber out of bed and get the George Foreman on and whip up a cheese sandwich. We live in a future where, according to Glamour, jizzing isn’t enough. Can’t just let him finish on your face, not now. You also have to get butter all over your hands while making a grilled cheese or warm those nice Taste the Difference cookies up in a low oven and serve them to this strange infant-man with milk.

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3. Emailing him the latest online gossip about his favorite TV show. You don’t have to have a BFF at HBO. Just share applicable links from your Twitter feed and pat yourself on the back.

“How many emails about Game of Thrones did you get today, mate?”

“Fucking seven. She’s discovered Vulture. She didn’t know Vulture existed until this morning, and now she’s sent me six links from Vulture and an infographic about Game of Thrones that is too hard to read.”

“She still doing the shower thing?”

“Eight AM, I had to drink a beer today. Eight AM. I didn’t even have my contact lenses in, and she made me drink a beer, in full, right in front of her, while damp and wearing a towel. I feel like death. I feel like I am dying.”

4. Bragging about him to your friends, family, the stranger on the street corner—whomever. Proclamations of pride will make his chest puff out and his heart swell.

I just really think telling a stranger on the street that you are in love with a man who drinks beer straight out the shower is somehow going to get you arrested for your own protection.

5. Answering the door in a negligee—or, better yet, naked.

“Why are you answering my door? I have a key. Why am I knocking on my own door? Why are you naked? Hold on, how did you get inside my flat? Why did… what’s that boiling in a big pan in the kitchen?”

6. Being open to what he wants to try in the bedroom and out. An open mind is attractive no matter your playground.

I think this means “fuck in a park, once” or “consider butt stuff” but I can’t be 100 percent sure because the wording of it is slowly killing my brain. I don’t understand why the word “playground” is in there. Why is the word “playground” in there? Does someone want me to have sex in a playground? Surely no one ever wants that?

7. Letting him solve your petty work problem. Many men don’t do gossip, but they do like to fix things.

In a way this is almost sweet, because men like fixing things, don’t they? With their hammers and their glue, with their electrical tape and their scissors. That said, in my experience men and women tend to approach work problems in entirely different ways. My advice when I hear a female friend’s work problem is almost certainly, “Well tell Brad to fuck off and then take his job from him, then! Ask for a £10,000 [$15,000] raise!” because I am beyond oblivious to the careful rules by which women at work have to play, the unfair odds that are stacked against them, the weird pay gap shit they have to deal with every day, the fact that they have to do it all in skirts. By the time you’ve carefully explained that to the type of man who is being described in this article he will probably be really bored and want to have a shower beer and watch his favorite TV show?

8. Spitting out sports stats for his favorite team. Showing an interest in his favorite players will earn you points on and off the field.

HOW THAT WOULD GO:

“Olivier Giroud playing, is he? You know he got 14 goals in 28 games, last season? Neat one-in-two.”
“Yeah. I mean I still think we need a slightly better striker, if not just to compete with him.”
“[DEATHLY SILENCE]”
“I mean I suppose Danny Welbeck exists, but. I mean he’s still Danny Welbeck, isn’t he?”
“[DEATHLY SILENCE]”
“That’s the thing with Danny Welbeck. The main trait. He exists.”
“[SILENCE SO LARGE AND DEATHLY THAT SMALL ANIMALS DIE WITHIN IT, FLIES DROP TO THE GROUND, CATS HISS AWAY IN TERROR]”
“Might just go and have a beer in the shower, just to get away from this.”

The thing about someone—anyone—who does not like sports suddenly knowing one thing about sports is it is weird, unnerving even, like a radiator that suddenly learned how to scream, or a lamp that does math. If you know about sports: fine, cool. If you do not know about sports: That is also totally fine, you do not have to try to know about sports. They are only sports. I have plenty of sadlads on Twitter I can talk to about sports.

9. Making a big deal out of his favorite meal. Does he like hot dogs cut up into his boxed mac-and-cheese? Serve it on a silver platter to really see him smile.

i. Yo sorry but if your man’s favorite food is “mac and cheese with hot dogs cut up in it” then please check you didn’t accidentally pick up someone’s toddler from a nursery school before you get that silver platter out of the attic and wash it twice for dust.

ii. I do not want to eat my hot dog mac and cheese off a silver platter, man. Silver platters are large, and made of silver. They are too big for my lap when I am trying to watch TV. The stress of the silver platter seems to negate all the good intentions behind the silver platter.

10. Treating his friends as well as you treat your own. If you win their affections, you’ll win his heart.

“Talk to human beings like they too are human beings” haha OK, done. NEXT…

11. Sitting side-by-side while he vegs out to the TV. It may not feel like quality time to you, but it’s the best time to him.

“Sit in silence while a man watches sports”…

12. Giving him a massage—happy ending completely optional. In fact, a foot rub works just fine.

Essentially, the advice here is “wank him off,” which, yes, everyone enjoys being wanked off, especially as part of an elaborate and shocking surprise. But this is the bit that, out of the whole list, just makes me feel depressed and empty, like those few grim little seconds after I’ve been wanked off. Number 12 on the list reduces women to wank off-givers and men to wank off-receivers, and never the twain shall meet or connect. Essentially this is saying the way to a man’s heart is through a firm and stern wank off, performed on his dick, because—like cows busting their udders at the seams—men are in dire and constant need of a wanking, and women—with their fragile little hearts, with their feelings—need only love, and the best way of inducing that reluctant emotion is just pumping away at his dick under the guise of doing a massage, or a foot rub. This is all we are. Orgasm givers, orgasm receivers. Gender is a construct—there are only wank-havers, and wank-doers. The only love of which men are capable is the hollow gratitude of being wanked off. Glamour: you just made me hate wanking.

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13. Taking him back to third grade with a gentle tease over anything from how you’ll dominate him on the basketball court to the weird way he just styled his hair.

Talk trash about my hair and I’m getting an Uber home, I don’t care how fucking late it is.

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The central truth is so obvious it is barely worth repeating but let’s go through it anyway: This article is insulting to just about everyone on Earth. It reduces men to big dumb dogs who somehow figured out how to wear baseball caps backwards but more importantly it reduces women to creatures who are desperate to live forever alongside such grimly simple beasts. Central truth: There is literally no one this basic on Earth.

This isn’t the way true love should be. And if it has to be then at least make sure you’re getting back as much as you put in. Like, is the dude making milk and cookies while you are doing the grilled cheeses? Then you are going to have a post-sex feast together, a perfect team, happy and post-coital and filling yourselves with carbs while vegging out in front of the TV. If not, it’s just him lying there, panting, in a sticky pool of his own essence, while you ferry him food and palm him off. Are there not better things to be doing, Glamour? Do you not have lives to live, passions to explore, friends to be hanging out with? Do you really not have anything better to do than learn obscure sporting facts and rub my feet and then my dick? Do you not have hobbies?

Follow Joel Gobly on Twitter.