What is it about bad boys that makes some of us girlies (and some of the boys too) fall into drooling heaps on the floor? My screensaver (on my boyfriend’s computer nonetheless!) consists of photos of Michael Wincott in The Crow, Gary Oldman in True Romance and Dracula and Pete Steele. And I have no clue why they do what they do to me! Is it the smouldering looks of pure evil that they give us? Or the way that most of them seem to have long, dark hair which frames their almost impossibly angular faces? Or is it because they’re unattainable? Very, very unattainable. But generations of women have been sent into orbit by the bad boys of film, TV and music. Jack Nicholson, David Bowie, Ozzy Osbourne, Axl Rose and Gary Oldman are among the legions of men who have been known for their notorious hell-raising and have been dubbed “bad boys”. Which seems to give them an instant attraction to members of the opposite sex (and quite a few members of the same sex). Their all night partying, copious amounts of drink and drugs and constant womanising have led them to become icons that we women fall in love with. But why? You’d think that we’d want to be with a nice, home-loving boy, who didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs and didn’t mess around behind your back. But no, we want these bad boys of stage and screen. It’s probably because they are so unattainable and because we can dream that they’d inject a little much needed danger into our lives. Imagine coming home after a long day at work, putting your feet up, having a cup of tea and then having him tell you that you were going to go to the best club in the country, drink loads of expensive cocktails and take tons of expensive looking white powder. Oh, and he’d tell you that you didn’t need to work the next day. In fact, he’d probably tell you to quit because whatever his henchmen did for him would keep you quite nicely for the rest of your life in that beautiful old mansion on the edge of town. The one with the servants, the chefs, the butlers and the old Rolls Royces parked outside.
There was a report in a recent newspaper (a reputable one, I’ll add. Me, read trash? Never!) that interviewed women who were married to or going out with some of the most famous gangsters in the country. All of them said that no matter what, they never led their women into danger and looked after them. Maybe this is what we want. The security and the knowledge that we’re being looked after. That they’re going not to run off with another woman even though they give off the air that they are. Maybe this is what attracts us to them.
If you have an opinion on what attracts you to the bad boys that we love, you can get in touch at:
Grizel_magazine@hotmail.com