Boring is the new black

Ever since the legendary French designer Coco Chanel’s Little Black Dress hit the fashion world in the 1920s, taking every discerning woman’s fancy by storm, and making the color black fashionable, elegant, sexy, dangerous, hip, cool, relevant, progressive and exciting, fashionistas have been on lookout for the “new black.” 

It just so happens that those same adjectives are the signifiers that get women interested in men: sexy, dangerous, exciting. Face it; women are magnetized by trouble. The more menacing (in a sexy sort of way) a man is, the more they are drawn to him. Show me a woman who would jump up and down and do a rain dance after scoring a first date with an unexciting George Costanza (nebbish pal of Seinfeld fame) type character and I’ll give you my nosy neighbor’s shirt right off of his back.

So I was floored when I came across Lauren Dzubow’s article in Time magazine. The title alone — “Boring: The New Cool” — had me reeling. I thought: What? Boring? Cool? It is so not…

 And so I read on. Her arguments seemed sound and well argued. Sure, some people love their drama — most women, in fact, live on vulgar amounts of carbs, chocolate and problematic relationships with “bad boys.” Asked why they endure such relationships, the answers are almost identical: they are in for the ride of their lives with sexy, exciting (albeit unpredictable and complicated) men and they would much rather have that than sit at home Saturday nights doing Sudoku puzzles by their lonesome. 

But Dzubow says, “For career success — and long life — there’s nothing like good old dependability.” Case in point is American superstar of the moment, President Barack Obama. “You’re becoming a bore,” Obama’s roommate chided him during his student days at Columbia University. For a guy used to being in the cool crowd, it was a “scathing indictment,” the president recalls in his memoir Dreams from My Father. But he admits there was some truth to it. By then, he writes, he was concentrating on his studies, running three miles a day, fasting on Sundays. And no more getting high. All in all, his was becoming a rather predictable, disciplined life. It was the same “No-Drama Obama” who assured America with his steady composure and won the White House.

Sure, the “no drama” motto is something that should be seared into everybody’s brains, splashed on T-shirts and bumper stickers, and chanted as mantras by these tree-posing yoga practitioners that include most everyone in the world right now. But boring? No, thank you. 

Some degree of boring is good if it refers to one’s conscientiousness — one of the “big five” personality factors in standard psychology (everyone possesses all five traits, in differing degrees; the others are openness to experience, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism).

People who score high on the conscientiousness scale (as determined by several personality inventories) are dependable, orderly, self-disciplined, achievement oriented, cautious, industrious, and deliberate — the type who could, say, run a masterfully efficient company, govern a superpower, and while we’re at it, rule the world.  (Those who score low tend to be careless, irresponsible, disorganized, and unreliable.)

All of that, women definitely want. We lust over visionaries, movers of progressive organizations who propel either the economy or humanitarian causes forward; we fantasize over buccaneers and mavericks in the grown-up capitalist and political world, those who are risk takers and innovators. And to be all these, men need to be conscientious, stable, dependable and industrious. They also need to be brave, cunning and adventurous — but never, ever boring.  They have got to be even-tempered and predictable with their colleagues but outside the work environment and especially around women they need to be fun, exciting, dynamic — dangerous, even — because that’s what it takes not only to score big in the dating world, but to simply be happy.

I remember back in high school, there was this boy with smoldering good looks, the brooding Mr. Darcy/Pride and Prejudice type. Let’s call him Ram.  He was a certified chick magnet — well, up until the first date, that is. He was so boring that my friends and I used to threaten each other with, “Sige ka, if you don’t do this, I’ll set you up with Ram.” An hour with him was sheer torture; it was a cruel test of patience — getting all of eight words out of him in a whole hour was like pulling teeth. I’d rather sit in front of the mirror and watch my eyebrow hair grow.

There are some women who much prefer the “boring” type. I know of a few who want their men much like their drinks — benign, non-alcoholic mocktails adorned by bamboo umbrellas or the occasional tropical fruit or gardenia if they order it from an upscale bar. 

These are the type of women (with self-worth issues) who want their men close to mute at social gatherings and by their side at all times. There was this one lady who emphatically told me that she expects her husband to always sidle closer to her in the event that an attractive woman wanders close by. “It’s just good manners, I think,” she said. “It affirms his loyalty. I expect him to move closer to me if a good-looking woman comes near us, say, for picture taking or small talk during socials.” She added that she expects him to stay put beside her at all times. “That’s what an ideal husband is like,” she claimed, sounding like she was trying to convince herself more than anyone else. She looked like she could have used a gallon of joy spiked with a good dose of reality administered intravenously. I imagined what an ounce of confidence could do to a woman like her. “Ideal husband” was not what came to mind as she told me all that.  Boring, henpecked, or loser with a noose around his neck and shackles on his feet was the visual I had. 

I am rather of the flute of bubbly, balloon of cognac, double-vodka-straight mindset. I prefer the type that is effervescent and potent, hot, biting, stiff, with a slight grate on the throat that leaves you giddy and wobbly-kneed after several shots. 

If a woman wants a tongue-less, opinion-less, harmless kind of man that will hang on to her apron strings at all times, she should get a pet.

I was at a birthday party recently where dozens of women were on the dance floor.  There was a sprinkling of men, the punished and the coerced who were going through the motions but the majority sat snug in their seats, content to be watching the merriment from a good, safe distance, finding more enjoyment in their liquor — when in came this tornado of a man who whisked all of eight or nine women of varying ages (from the budding 20-somethings to the been-there-done-that grandmas) on to the dance floor.  He literally swept them off their feet and on to their toes for manic turns on the dance floor. They circled him and he made it a point to dance with each and every one. There were shrieks of delight and animated talk of all things interesting and stupid.  He was like the Pied Piper who put them under a spell and led them to a happy corner of the universe that night. Inhibitions were cast aside for those few precious, dizzy moments, when everyone was made to feel like the prettiest, most important woman on the planet. He was like a cyclone that stirred the dust from under their skirts and sent it reeling all the way up to the tufts of clouds. 

“He’s my kind of people,” one of the women he danced with said. “Isn’t he fun and excitement personified? I wonder what his wife is like?” Some other lady from the group piped up: “I hear she’s a mocktail, non-alcoholic and staid.” 

Don’t we all want that stable, conscientious, dependable, high-achieving, self-disciplined type? But a cookie-cutter boring man will never go with that vintage fuchsia Chanel bag in mint condition or that Yohji Yamamoto deconstructed ladies’ tuxedo; not with that spanking red Audi R8 that a woman just purchased with her own money, nor with her favorite courtesan red lipstick that never fails to bitch up her pucker. Boring is not the new black; it never goes with anything in her closet and it has no place in her life.

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