I’ve got a friend M—, a woman, who would make some guy a great wife.  There is one glaring gap in her résumé—she can’t cook—but she built her own house, sews skillfully, splits and stacks her own wood, has a tool shop to envy (and uses everything in it), is a good conversationalist, throws great parties, can repair a commercial lawnmower, and the list goes on and on.  She’s pretty darn good wife material.  So why hasn’t some guy snapped her up?  She once told me that all her relationships go the same way.  At first, men are thrilled to meet a woman who likes to build things and isn’t trying to snag a guy just so there’s someone in the house who can fix a toilet.  Then they come to the realization that she owns more tools than they do.  Apparently, this ties a man’s brain in knots.

So what is it that men really want in a woman, if a good companion with a lot of talent isn’t it?  Traditionally, a man wanted a woman who would take care of all the household chores; be quiet and let him make the decisions; be unquestioningly supportive of him even when he made mistakes; and keep him sexually interested despite having to spend most of her time performing a disproportionate load of menial work.  Companionship was something he got from other men, and talent wasn’t a word used in reference to cooking, sewing and cleaning.  But what about today’s guy, the 21st-century man?  What does he want?  Let’s examine a selection of contemporary sources in which men have stated unequivocally what they’re seeking in a female.

According to comedian and late-night TV show host Bill Maher, men don’t really care about young, old, short, tall, fat, thin, blonde, brunette, big-breasted, small-breasted, or any other specific physical quality.  He says if it were up to men, there would be no more breast augmentations because with men, it all boils down to one thing: new and old.  So, the first requirement (evidently for Bill Maher, the only requirement) for the woman of a man’s dreams is the ability to morph her body shape, facial features and hair color, chameleon-like, into something entirely different every two weeks.

You may think Bill’s joking, but this is a male trait I’ve seen borne out in real life.  My mother-in-law likes to tell this story about a couple she knows:  When the husband turned 50, his wife asked him what he wanted and he replied, “A blonde.”  So she started dying her hair and has ever since.  She’s just hoping he doesn’t want a redhead for his 60th.

Much as we women want to believe that men don’t obsess about how we look, I’m afraid the evidence doesn’t support our wishful thinking.  There’s a website called AskMen.com, a one-stop advice shop for men.  I did a little searching there trying to find out what men want.  Clicking on the “Women” category, I found the following sections: Actress of the Week, Model of the Week, Singer of the Week, Beauty Pageant of the Week.  Noticeably absent from this list: Working Single Mom of the Week.  No wonder the sponsor of the category is the manufacturer of a medication for herpes outbreaks.

Enough about appearances.  Now let’s examine the lyrics to Sugar Magnolia, the song famously performed by The Grateful Dead.  It’s one of my husband K—‘s favorites, which is why I know it.  In it, there’s the following:

She's got everything delightful
She's got everything I need
Takes the wheel when I'm seeing double
Pays my ticket when I speed

This doesn’t require much interpretation.  A guy wants a woman who not only doesn’t mind when he gets sh*t-faced, but will cheerfully pay his speeding tickets and also commandeer the wheel when (but only when) her drunken mate is too incapacitated to continue speeding safely on his own.

The meaning of the line, “She can wade in a drop of dew” is a little clouded.  Maybe he wants her to not only morph, but shrink to Tom Thumb proportions on occasion?  Not sure.  “Waits backstage while I sing to you,” though, couldn’t be more clear-cut.  A desirable woman derives happiness from slavishly putting her man’s schedule before her own.

The only other lyric in the song that lists the womanly qualities the songwriter admires is “She can dance a Cajun rhythm.”  Of course, by this a man means that a woman should be able to dance sexily in front of him, not that he would consider dancing a Cajun rhythm with her or that she should dance in front of other men.  In other words, she should want to work the pole in a personal audience for her guy.  To sum up, the song says that the Sugar Magnolia woman “can make happy any man alive,” so these are obviously qualities that would be deemed essential by any male.

What else is on the list of fundamental female qualities?  Well, Thomas Wolfe*, the author of Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River, was quoted as saying, "There is no sight on earth more appealing than…a woman making dinner for someone she loves."  Perhaps not coincidentally, Wolfe only lived to be 38.  He died from a brain illness, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the underlying cause was slow food poisoning.

And what about intellect?  In recent years, I’ve seen survey after survey claiming that most men actually want a smart woman.  In an article entitled ‘Gentlemen Prefer…Brains?’ two-thirds of the men surveyed said that “if asked to choose between beauty and brains in the perfect long-term partner, they would choose brains.”  (As an aside, this seems to me to be a trick question.  After all, in a “perfect” partner, would you have to make that choice?)

But what do guys mean by “brains?”  In the past, if education was valued in a woman at all, it was with the rationale that only a well-educated woman could raise well-educated children.  This line of thinking makes a certain kind of perverse sense, but you have to admit it’s pretty twisted.  It’s like buying a top-of-the-line kitchen so you can microwave Lean Cuisines in style.

I asked my husband K— what he considered an essential level of education for a mate, and he said, “A Bachelor of Silence.”  Touché.  He doesn’t really like it when I try to mine him for material for TMF—not that he doesn’t provide plenty without my having to ask!

Put this all together, and it’s easy to see what modern men want: a woman who takes care of the household chores, such as cooking; has an advanced degree in keeping her mouth shut and letting him make the decisions; sets things right when he screws up, thereby letting him maintain the illusion that he didn’t screw up; and keeps him sexually interested, primarily through constant physical metamorphosis.  Hmmm…it seems to me I’ve seen a list like that somewhere before.  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.**

Next time: What Women Don’t Want.

* Okay, Tom Wolfe isn’t exactly contemporary, but he was 20^th century, and anyone reading this was born and raised in the 20^th century.

** The more things change, the more they stay the same.