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Girls find mysterious appeal in bad boy image

By Daily Bruin Staff

Jan. 8, 2001 9:00 p.m.

  Ariana Brookes Brookes is a third-year
English student who mourns the loss of flannel and River Phoenix.
E-mail her at [email protected].
Click Here
for more articles by Ariana Brookes

Angela and Jordan Catalano are making out in the boiler room. He
doesn’t want anyone to know. She is too smitten to argue. Her
friends tell her that Jordan is using her. She is failing geometry
because of it. He straight out ignores her in public, yet she
continues to meet him in the boiler room everyday during geometry
review. Why? The answer has always been clear to me: Jordan is a
sexy brooding musician hunk.

If you have ever turned on MTV, you know that I am talking about
an episode of “My So-Called Life.” If you are anything
like me, you know that it is just about the best television show
ever and can be used as a reference for every guy problem you could
possibly encounter. Angela is the girl that we all relate to, and
Jordan is the guy we all want. He’s rude, insensitive and
flaky, and we beg Angela not to kiss him. And yet, if given the
chance, we’d all jump him in a second. It is the deadly
appeal of the moody boy.

I love moody guys. I love musicians. If a guy is moody, quiet
and can strum a guitar, I’m in love. The moody guy sits in
the back row. He does not talk to anyone. He closes his eyes a lot,
as if, as Angela says, “it hurts to look at things.” He
will never talk to you first, and if you actually manage to get his
attention, the conversation will probably be short and
disappointing. The next time you see him on campus he probably
won’t remember your name, if he even acknowledges you. And,
of course, you will fall head over heels into total and utter
obsession.

You will find out everything that you can about him. You will
find out what classes he’s in, memorize his schedule, and
position yourself in choice places around campus where he might
walk by on the way from a class. You will go to the most pathetic
parties you have ever been to just because you heard that he might
be there. You will even spend hours outside the dorms every night
smoking because you know that he smokes, and maybe he’ll come
outside and you will see him. You will pretty much live and breathe
for him.

  Illustration by HINGYI KHONG/Daily Bruin And your friends
will laugh at you. They will tell you that you’re obsessed,
that they don’t see the attraction and that he’s not
even that cute. They will try and set you up with a cute frat boy
for a date party just so you will meet other guys in a social
setting. Your friends will threaten to kill you if you mention his
name one more time. And none of this will matter if he actually
says hi to you one day on campus.

We have all been in this situation. OK, well maybe not all of
us. We all know those girls who continually seem to have the
perfect boyfriend who always calls her, sends her flowers, asks her
out in advance and introduces her to his friends. I am not one of
those girls.

I don’t like nice guys! I mean, I do; they’re great
friends and they never let you down. They just don’t get me
excited. I need a guy to ignore me. I need a guy to be
melodramatic, introverted and mysterious, otherwise there’s
no appeal.

If a guy is quiet, it must mean he knows something you
don’t. If he plays guitar, he must be deep and sensitive. You
just know that this guy must know the truth about the world, he
must hate anything phony and he must have deep feelings about
things. And well yeah, he acts like a jerk, but that’s just
an unimportant side effect, right?

I mean, hey, don’t guys always complain that the nice guys
never get the girls? Haven’t a million movies been made where
the main heartthrob is a bad boy? Girls like bad boys! They
don’t have to be bad in that they ride a motorcycle and have
been arrested. They can be bad in that they have that Eddie Vedder
appeal, the artistic guy who will probably neglect you because he
is so wrapped up in his own world.

It’s the Holden Caulfield syndrome. Sure he was
intelligent, artistic, sensitive and realistic. He also screwed
around with a girl he didn’t even really like just for fun,
and he never called the girl who he was in love with. I’m not
saying it makes sense; I’m just saying that it’s fact.
Moody equals unpredictable, which equals sexy, big time.

The truth is that girls who like the moody, musician, apathetic
types will always like them. Here is some proof. A good friend of
mine dated one of those type of guys for three years (of course,
she had a crush on him for two years prior to that). He was sexy,
talented and incredibly troubled. He was also manipulative,
insensitive toward women and gave her constant heartache. After
three years, my friend finally got tired of the games and broke up
with him. One would think that she had learned her lesson.

From now on she would only date caring, easy-going, mainstream
guys. Needless to say, she is dissatisfied with every nice guy she
goes out with, and she is always obsessed with one moody guy or
another. And realistically, she probably always will be. Everyone
has their type. She just likes the challenge, the thrill of the
hunt. Nice guys are too easy. It’s no fun.

If there is one thing that can be said about moody,
self-consumed, musician boys, it is that they will never be
predictable, and you will never be bored. Maybe that is exactly why
we love these guys. They will never bore us because they are not
overly available, like the eager-to-please types. They won’t
answer your phone calls right away, and they won’t set up
dates with you a week in advance. They won’t insist on
spending every minute with you, and they won’t abandon their
friends to spend time with you.

Instead, they always seem to be busy. They seem to have some
exciting life that you don’t know about. They are mysterious.
It is almost like they are teasing you, which, of course, only
makes you want them more. Everyone wants what they cannot have. If
a guy won’t give you attention, you will want him even
more.

If you do, however, finally succeed in snagging yourself a moody
guy, it will mean that he truly likes you, as they are not quick to
give their hearts. The sensitive musician side of them usually
manifests itself into total devotion for you, and you will most
likely be the subject of incredibly sexy and tormented songs that
he writes just for you.

He will be your own personal Eddie Vedder, and you will be in
heaven, just like Angela was when Jordan finally came around. You
will have attained the unattainable, the attention of a moody
boy.

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