How to be the perfect girlfriend

Watch this and you'll know what's going on

Hardly relevant to me, you might think. Yet I couldn’t resist a sneaky peep, if only to see what girls reckoned they should be doing to make themselves "the perfect girlfriend", and if it was similar to how I imagined such a girl. What I witnessed made me laugh out loud, I admit, but also managed to offend in spades me and my fellow man. A man is a complex creature: multi-layered with many moods and emotions, varying tastes and an ability to develop and grow as a person. To be told by some woman standing behind a camcorder that I am "still a caveman at heart" irritated me so much that I left half my beer and went to smash stuff up.

By all accounts, men have changed very little over thousands of years, and our needs remain essentially the same. In no particular order, they are food, beer and women. Now far be it from me to deny that most of my sex definitely rates this trio, as I have certainly acquired a taste for all three, but I was struck by the ridiculousness of this stereotype.

I know of plenty of blokes who don’t like beer, and would rather have a nice glass of white wine or a WKD any day, and ‘beer’ is just too general for me anyway - a Stella’s good but it just isn’t a Corona, is it? I also know some gay men who would positively vomit at being told by a complete stranger that they love women in just the same way as their caveman predecessors did. And food? Surely everyone, women and all, likes a bit of food from time to time, and if they didn’t, well, they’d be pretty stuffed.

The film proceeds to direct females on how to pander to these needs, telling them to make an effort but also to relax their standards around their boyfriend as well, perhaps by slouching around, eating like a pig or leaving the washing-up, as if these are all obviously male traits. Apparently this is what I, as a man, want my girlfriend to do. Wrong.

OK, so everyone is allowed to slouch around from time to time, but I don’t want to see my other half stuffing her face with a fat cheese burger while gherkin and ketchup rolls down her front into her lap, just as I wouldn’t want my male friends to do it. Nor do I want the washing-up to be left undone. In spite of what Video Jug says, a massive pile of dirty pots and pans with last night’s Bolognese sauce caked on would not make me automatically think, “Ahh, my girlfriend is incredible”.

And the sheer suggestion that I would appreciate it if asked by my girlfriend to pull her finger is frankly sickening. I’m still reeling from the discovery I made two years ago at Reading Festival that girls actually poo in the same way boys do. Yes, I’d like my girlfriend to be relaxed around me, but not to the extent that she becomes a farting slob. We men, in spite of these generalisations, are not farting slobs.

I have already dwelled too long on the gross misrepresentation and generalisation of men that occurs in this video, but I believe there is an important point that must be made loud and clear in response. Yes, lots of men like food, beer and women, but then so do lots of women. Lots of men don’t like any of those things. Yes, some men fart and swear and growl and measure things, but lots do not (I certainly don’t). How to be a perfect girlfriend? Quit stereotyping, and be yourself.

Rant over. I’m off for a pizza and a can of Fosters.

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