It’s a man’s world

Here are some things women do that men hate. The trouble is, I bloody hate them too.

1. ‘Oh yeah, Anna, she’s GORGEOUS. Like, she’s SO HOT. You’ll love her.’ Anna is perfectly nice, buys her round without hesitation, has a working knowledge of who Kim Kardashian is sleeping with (men should really thank the Kardashian sisters for helping British women to know more about American sportstars than ever before). She’s not offensive to look at, clearly, but she’s not GORGEOUS. I don’t know why women do this to each other.

2. The time women take to get ready is mathematically untenable. Think about it. The average woman has 4 limbs, and 1 face. Total cubic centimeters are not likely to exceed 150. (I couldn’t be bothered to do any maths on this. I did ask a colleague, but oddly he refused to believe I needed to know the centimeters of a normal sized face ‘for work’). How long can you spend on 150 cm?! ‘I’ve just got to do my make-up.’ Have you seen the size of your face?! How can it take so long?! I’m panicking in case you decide to brush your teeth.

3. ‘No, thanks, I don’t want chips.’ ‘Oh, great. Well, I don’t want a wine glass. I’ll just be using yours. And I won’t need a napkin, either. We can share.’

4. ‘And then, I was all like, yeah, well, that’s not the EXACT thing I said so I think you’ll agree that you’re entirely wrong.’ Let me help you. Anecdotes are like mini-stories. They start (this is when you usually begin to tell me what the weather was like, and how you were wearing the wrong shoes), and then there’s the middle bit (which really should be more interesting than how annoying it was that you happened to wear wedges that day), and then the end. Now the tricky thing is, the time between the beginning and the end ought to be sufficiently short that the listener can recall the former when hearing the latter. I do try terribly hard to listen, honestly, but if you want me to show sympathy because your boss is being irrational, spend LESS TIME TELLING ME ABOUT YOUR SHOES. There’s only so much sympathy I can muster. (And I will have expended far too much time fretting about your poor shoes).