“You know what your problem is?” asked Dave.
Boy, do I love conversations that begin with this question. Nothing’s more fun than having a know-it-all friend instruct you on the failings of your existence.
Fortunately, I wasn’t on the other end of Dave’s question. My friend Kim was. She was complaining about her romantic life and asking our friend Dave for advice. The issue was sex appeal and how Kim simply oozes with it. Men are drawn to her like she’s a hunk of steel and they’ve got magnets in their pants. She has few limits, no fears and porn star levels of experience. On the outside, she’s a minx.
But on the inside she’s broken-hearted. Kim feels deeply and wants something real. But few men she meets see her as relationship material. Thus, Dave was educating us over a bottle of scotch.
“Your problem,” he said. “Is that men are intimidated by sexually assertive women.”
“How is that my problem?” She asked him and nervously lit a cigarette. “Sounds like their problem.”
“You know what it’s like?” Dave took a sip of scotch. “Batman.”
“I see your point,” Kim said. “Kind of…not at all.”
“You’ve got Batman, right,” he said. “Batman’s strong, he’s successful, he does good in the world, he’s got his life under control. But see, there’s this other side to him, this dark side where all his sensuality and weaknesses are. We all have a dark side, but Batman thinks he has to fight it.”
“Did I ever tell you how much I love Val Kilmer?” asked Kim.
“Then you’ve got Batgirl,” Dave continued. “All she wants is to take direction from Batman, y’know, she looks up to him and never steps on his toes except in cute little sassy ways that really don’t threaten his power. Most men really want Batgirl.”
“But what about Catwoman?” I interjected. “He wants her too, doesn’t he? Catwoman can defend herself. She has her own agenda and doesn’t need any direction from Batman. He wants her because she’s sexy and strong and tempts him to his dark side. He wants her as much as he fears her.”
“Catwoman’s evil,” said Dave.
“Only because no one will let her enjoy her own power,” I told him. “Batman can’t handle Catwoman because she’s sexual in her own way, and if she’s sexual in her way and not his, then he has to satisfy her and he may not be able to. How can he dominate a woman he can’t satisfy sexually? How can he control a person who has her own agenda? How can you tame a wildcat fighting for her own survival?”
A trail of smoke poured from Kim’s lips. “I totally need to see that movie again.”
Dave and I glared at each other. He was just about to attack my Catwoman theory when Kim flailed her hands in the air as if she’d burnt them.
“Oh my God,” she shouted. “I’m Batgirl. I just realized I’m Batgirl. I wanna be Catwoman but I’m really Batgirl. Oh God, who else is there? Pick somebody else. I don’t wanna be Batgirl!”
“You’re not Batgirl,” Dave assured her.
“I’m totally Batgirl,” she whined. “Oh God, this is terrible.”
“Well, even if you were Batgirl, it’d be okay,” I said. “She’s the one Batman loved.”
“No, Batman loved Vicki Vale,” Kim whined. “And she didn’t have any power at all.”
According to Dave, lust and admiration were mutually exclusive concepts for some men. Apparently for these guys, the two-hour conversation a woman had about the implications of Derrida’s quasi-transcendental thinking on modern deconstructive theory was erased by the image of her boobies jiggling as she grinded him into the box spring.
And so what was a woman like Kim supposed to do? Deny her desires and be the Madonna dazzling a guy’s romantic vision, or give into them and become Magdelene getting flicked off the hem of his robe?
Kim wasn’t interested in smothering her sexual passions and didn’t really buy Dave’s Batman analogy. However, she did come to one conclusion. Whether she was Batgirl or Catwoman, she had to stop knockin’ around with jokers.
“Your problem,” he said. “Is that men are intimidated by sexually assertive women.”
Uh no,
Nothing would arouse us (men) more than to have a hawt woman (catwoman or batgirl type) grab us by the collar, pull us into a dark corner, and say “eat me out, now.”
99% of straight and bi men (and probably quite a few gay men as well) put in that situation would immediately drop to their knees without saying a word.
It is all a matter of how the woman in question is assertive, and, lets be honest, how she appeals.
Though, the average woman is more than appealing enough.
There is a difference between saying “kiss me” and “take off your pants.”
Svutlov
PS Why no Batwoman?
Is it because she is a Lesbian?
She is DC’s main character at the moment.
Yum. Good writing is like going through a Tunnel of Love at an amusement park. You know that nothing really bad will happen to you as the little swan boat follows the twists and turns of the tunnel and you admire each lit-up set that someone has put there to amaze you and when you come out you want to take the ride again.
Another great column. But I think you use the wrong parallel with Catwoman, it’s WAY more complicated than that. Batman isn’t intimidated by Catwoman at all. He’s intrigued by her. He hasn’t yet figured out why he can’t dismiss her as just another criminal like the Joker, the Riddler, or Venom, and the rest of his rogues gallery. She is obviously is very appealing to him, but he has dealt with attraction before and brushed it aside. Yet, Catwoman is not afraid of Batman, and she playfully teases him everytime they meet. That is compelling to the Dark Knight in a way that taunting by his other enemies hardly even registers with him. Catwoman has her own obsessions which mirror his own, like hanging out at night like he does, and using an animal for inspiration for what she does like Batman uses a bat for what he does.
Catwoman, in turn, is just as intrigued with Batman. She is quite used to getting her way with men in just about every way. If she fights a man, her gifted skills allows her to prevail just about everytime. But she has tangled with Batman numerous times and loses everytime (even though she manages to get away sometimes). She can also get into a man’s head sexually and pull his strings with ease, but she has never been able to do that with Batman to the point she wants to. He will bend, but never break, allowing them to occasionally engage each other sexually but never to the point where each will forget about that which drives them. Batman is a man and has urges like any other but uses a strict disipline to never allow that to interfere with his war on crime. Catwoman will not give up her life of thievery, and Batman will not give his sworn duty to rid Gotham of criminals. And yet, they make an exception for each other. Why is that? What is the sex appeal here?
I think it’s that they challenge each other, and try to get each other to come out of their character to be more acceptable to the other. They can’t quite do that yet, and that’s what makes this dance fun and always fascinating. They sense this bond within each other, and are not in a rush to bring it to an end.
Yeah, I’m a big fan of Batman.
You are so fucking hot, Laura.