He's sweet. He's cordial. He's friendly.
He actually respects women and their bodily autonomy and is a hopeless romantic at heart. But above all of this, he's nice. I started watching the newest season of White Lotus and there's a character in the season that kind of infuriates me.
I could not for the life of me tell you his name because so many of the characters this season feel so empty. But if you are watching this season, he's a character that has a crush on Lisa. And we follow the season as he hopelessly pines after her, trying to convince her to date him and not get tangled up with the bad boy security guards who are less deserving of her attention and affection.
No, he's the one who's the most deserving because he's nice to her. It really brought to mind all the other characters who fell into the nice guy trope that really bothered me because at the forefront, we're expected to root for this underdog and his quest in winning over the girl because he's friendly, compassionate, and nice. We're always the good guys in D and D.
were lawful good and City of Heroes were the heroes and Grand Theft Auto, we pay the prostitutes promptly and never hit them with a bat. However, when you really look into it, nice guys can be just as controlling, emotionally manipulative, and misogynistic as the bad boys. They don't actually care or respect women's bodily autonomy because they consistently prioritize their own romantic gratification over the needs of the women.
They're willing to lie, manipulate, and coersse women into feeling safe around them just to make them feel more affectionous towards them. Look, there's something I need to tell you. Oh, yeah.
Okay. I don't really know how to say this. Just say it.
Okay. Here goes. Mhm.
You slept with him? I didn't know what else to do. He had those big sad eyes.
Oh, sure. You had no choice. And if that woman should give her attention and affection to another man, the nice guy will mope and be disappointed and angry that their continued loyalty and compassion was not rewarded with romanticism.
These men are not altruistic in their intentions. They don't actually want to be these women's friends. Everything they do is in service of ingratiating themselves into these women's lives, wearing them down, so to speak, until they finally reward their efforts with sex or romantic relationship.
How did you get her to go out with you? Well, she moved in across the hall. They started to slowly wear me down like a river carves a canyon.
So, in today's video, I want to give my take on this decadesl long trope and break down how these characters can often be just as misogynistic and opportunistic as the players and womanizers we are so used to seeing in the media. Nice guys finish last. So, you've probably heard the phrase nice guys finish last.
Remember, nice guys finish last. You're Mr Nice Guy? Yes.
Oh, Stanley, do you realize how much mail we got about that letter? I mean, there are literally hundreds of women out there looking for a guy just like you. This is a really popular saying, but what does it really mean?
It implies that men who are overly agreeable, kind, and compassionate open themselves up to being taken advantage of by the people around them. Or, you're such a nice guy means I'm going to be dating leatherwearing alcoholics and complaining about them to you. Now, this doesn't just mean women.
Men can also take advantage of other men. But in the context of dating, this idea has been used to fuel a lot of misogynistic ideologies around women. I know women like Damn it, Mom.
I told you I could handle this. I just want to ask her something. You truly love my son?
I love him so much it hurts. All right, then. When is his birthday?
Mom, I'm not, you know, that is just offensive that you would even ask me that. It's today. I know the idea that women will take advantage of men by taking all of their money, cuckolding them, and manipulating them into doing things they aren't comfortable with.
Concert tickets. You wanted You're kidding. For Friday night, Stanley, this is great.
Oh, yes. So, what time should I pick you up? Well, see, here's the thing.
Why don't you just go with your friend? Stanley, I couldn't do that. No, come on.
Stanley, you are the nicest guy. Really, you are. Yeah.
Nice guys finish last because they are unable to set firm boundaries with the people in their lives. Now, I'm not saying that this doesn't actually happen and that there aren't women who actually take advantage of men in this way. No, I think we'll have to return the car and the necklace.
Yeah, that too. But none of those things matter because we have something better. We have love.
But the fear of being manipulated by women has led men to pick up some very harmful practices. Before men were simps, people would say they were whipped. You should put on yours and then we'll match.
I worked hard to get this armor. Sorry. I just thought it'd be nice if people knew we were a couple.
Fine, I'll change. In a lot of modern media, nice guys are put through this Cinderella-like transformation where they shed their nerdy, passive persona to adopt a more aggressive, hyper masculine image. This is seen as the ideal man that women would find attractive.
The underlying idea being that women are submissive beings and are only attracted to men who can dominate them. The idea that women are seeking out male domination leads to the nice guy putting on a front of hyper masculinity in order to appear more attractive and desirable to the woman he wants. This is where the whole idea of niggging comes from.
What are negs? A neg is a negative compliment that throws a pretty woman off her game. Like, normally I'm not turned on by big teeth, but on you they work.
Step one, she notices the eye patch. May I say, Penny, not a lot of women could look as hot as you do with such greasy hair. All of this further serves to propagate the idea that women love bad boys.
Look at him. He is such a badass. He looks just like Luke Wilson.
Mhm. Men who will insult them, mistreat them, or ignore them. Hi.
Uh, hey, Jessica. Oh, hey, Morty. Hey, Jessica.
Right. Um, yeah. Hi.
Sorry. I thought you knew my name because we've interacted so many times, but maybe I was just being stupid. Sorry.
Hi. I'm Jessica. That's me.
Cool. See you around. Yeah.
I hope I see you around. Guess we'll see that women are more drawn to men who are emotionally unavailable and withdrawn aloof even. The number one mistake nice guys like you make being too keeper interested.
You have to act aloof like you don't really care one way or the other. So for most of modern media the idea that adopting this persona is effective in winning over women per 60 70 years ago leading men on screen looks like this. But after a time a shift happened.
There was more of a challenge to the idea that nice guys finish last. We started seeing more underdog leading protagonists, men who led with empathy and compassion. They actually respected these women and cared about their well-being.
The nice guy as a new archetype for the leading man was supposed to embody everything the emotionally distant machismo guy was not. But were these men genuinely nice? Or did they simply adopt a new way of coercing women to fall for them?
We can't be friends. One of the underlying principles of this trope is the idea that men and women cannot be friends. The idea is that a man, no matter how much he purports to wanting a friendship with a woman, will always secretly want to have sex with her.
Of course, that we can never be friends. Why not? What I'm saying is, and this is not a come on in any way, shape, or form, is that men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
That's not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved. No, you don't.
Yes, I do. No, you don't. Yes, I do.
You only think you do. You're saying I'm having sex with these men without my knowledge? No, what I'm saying is they all want to have sex with you.
So, the only reason a man would want to be nice to a woman is because he wants to sleep with her. We see examples of this idea in many men across media in Friends. One of the main reasons why Ross became jealous of how much time Rachel was dedicating to her work was because he felt that her coworker Mark's interest in her was because he was attracted to her.
What? So, this guy's helping you for no apparent reason? And he's he's a total stranger.
Yeah, his name is um Mark something. Huh. Sounds like Mark something wants to have some sex.
What? He couldn't get behind the idea that a straight man would be that nice to an attractive woman, offering her a highpaying job if he didn't want to sleep with her. I'm just saying.
I mean, why else would he just, you know, swoop in out of nowhere for no reason? To be nice. Hey, Joey.
Uh, are men ever nice to strange women for no reason? No, only for sex. Thank you.
Which actually did kind of turn out to be true. So in that sense there is no true nice guy because there is always some ulterior motive. Men can never truly be altruistic in the way they interact with women because it is always with the hidden intent of making that woman more affectionate towards them because you waited too long to make your move and now you're in the friend zone.
No, no, no. I'm not in the zone. No, Ross, you're mayor of the zone.
In I Carly, Freddy is trapped in the godforsaken friend zone. He is helplessly in love with his best friend, Carly, who at every point rebuffs his affection. We talked about this.
We can be buds, but you got to get over this crush thing. I am over it. Seriously, I'm in love with you.
You just want to be friends. And I'm totally cool living with that constant pain. In the revival series of the show, this dynamic was further explored and came to a head when Freddy confronted Carly about toying with his and affections when they were younger, feeling that Carly had weaponized his attraction towards her.
But Carly also had a point. Left because I was uncomfortable. You said that in a hundred years I could only ever be your friend.
I said that our friendship was the most important of my life. That meant something to me. But I guess to you, being my friend is just a consolation prize.
The nice guy will accept being friends with the women they're interested in, half hoping that their continued loyalty and kindness will endear the woman towards them and eventually make them fall in love with them. In The Big Bang Theory, Leonard has no issue posing up to Penny doing anything she asks at a moment's notice, like picking up her TV from her ex-boyfriend's apartment, all to ingratiate himself into her life. Well, your ex-boyfriend sends his regards, and I think the rest is fairly self-explanatory.
I'm so sorry. I really thought if you guys went instead of me, he wouldn't be such an ass. No, it was a valid hypothesis.
That was a valid hypo What is happening to you? Really, thank you so much for going and trying. You just you're so terrific.
Leonard spends the whole show being amendable to Penny's desires and needs because he believes that so long as he is kind and loyal towards her, eventually he will be rewarded with her love and affection. A really interesting aspect that keeps popping up in this trope is that men sometimes don't make their romantic feeling towards these women known upfront. All under the guise that they are more respecting of women and see them more than just sexual objects.
when the truth is they're either afraid of rejection or simply cannot muster up the confidence to ask them out. Ross spends the entire first season of Friends hopelessly in love with Rachel, but never just outright comes out and let her know. But do you think it would be okay if I asked you out sometime?
Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Okay.
Okay. Maybe I will. Instead, he makes it seem as if he's only interested in being friends with her, but then gets unreasonably upset whenever she dates other men.
Uh, in his mind, his latent attraction towards her is enough to keep her around, even if he's unwilling to be forthright about his feelings for her. A similar situation shows up in The Big Bang Theory. Leonard hesitates for the entirety of the first season to let Penny know how he truly feels about her out of fear of rejection.
He still tries to impress her and goes out of his way to endear her towards him, but never actually tells her how he feels, but always gets disappointed and sad whenever she does date someone else. Hey, do you want to I don't know later. Excuse me.
Hey, Penny. Hi, Mike. You ready to go?
Yeah, I just have to change. I'll give you a hand. Oh, stop it.
Bye, guys. I turned on the time machine. Ted Mosby from How I Met Your Mother is also a really good example of this.
He decides to just be friends with Robin, all the while still having romantic feelings towards her. But being friends as a consolation prize is never well-intentioned because they eventually become resentful of the women if they never return their feelings. And it's not like I didn't try, Rachel, but oh things got in the way, you know, like like Italian guys or ex fiances or or or Italian guys.
They may become passive aggressive and even guilt the women into feeling bad for not loving them back on their terms. I thought you had selfrespect, honey. It's not what it looks like, okay?
It's It's not what you think. Just please listen. This is exactly what I think.
I thought you were smarter than the [ __ ] who do it with him. I didn't think you were one of them. She's not yours.
You know that, right? You don't just deserve her because you liked her. Nobody asked you.
They're also always wrapped up in self-pity and entitlement. They romanticize the self-inflicted suffering they experience. These men are hopeless romantics and will do whatever it takes to win the women's affection.
A man's right to love and affection takes supremacy over a woman's autonomy. Another core aspect of the trope is the idea that these men in pursuit of these women are simply working in service of a higher power to find the one. The one person in the entire world that they are meant to be with forever.
And it doesn't matter if that person also thinks they're the one. They are willing to wait to move heaven and mountains, do anything it takes to be with this person because they are their one true love and soulmate. This is the core principle that the show How I Met Your Mother was founded on.
In this show, we follow Ted Mosby, a helpless romantic in pursuit of the one. In How I Met Your Mother, Ted Mosby spends the entire show in pursuit of finding the one. He believes that there is one woman he's meant to spend the rest of his life with, and he's willing to go to great lengths to pursue them.
I'm done being single. I'm not good at it. Look, obviously you can't tell a woman you just met you love her.
But it sucks that you can't. I'll tell you something, though. If a woman, not you, just some hypothetical woman, were to bear with me through all this, I think I'd make a damn good husband because that's the stuff I'd be good at.
Stuff like making her laugh and and being a good father and walking her five hypothetical dogs. But in the pursuit of these women to find the one, Ted often times ignores their ambivalence towards him. It doesn't matter if they actually are attracted to him and want to pursue a relationship with him.
His needs takes precedence over their autonomy. He'll at any given moment make grand romantic gestures to convince women they belong together. But it's all self- serving.
It's all to fulfill the ideology in his own mind about what his romantic future will look like. Ted feels entitled to love and a happy ending. In his mind, his pursuit of romance and the one takes priority over these women's autonomy.
You picked the wrong guy. Ted, you picked the wrong guy. You made a really, really, really bad choice.
Ross from Friends falls into the same problem. He believes wholeheartedly that Rachel and him are destined to be together. So, even when she starts dating other guys, particularly his friend Joey, he has a hard time coming to terms with it.
Even during their breakup after he slept with someone else, he wouldn't accept the fact that their relationship was over because to him, she's the one. I can't imagine I can't imagine my life without you, you know, without without these arms and your face and this heart, your good heart, right? And This form of idealization that the nice guy does isn't even really rooted in substance.
The nice guy wants you to believe that the reason they are attracted to these women is because they are able to look past their physical features and see them for who they truly are. They want you to believe that they are attracted to their personality or their mind. Unlike the other men who are pigs and only want them for their bodies.
But the truth is their initial attraction and fascination with these women are also based on physical attributes. They like these women because they're hot. Before they even know anything about them, their physicality is the only thing that draws them in.
So, it's not rooted in any cosmic pursuit of finding the love of their lives. It's still rooted in the same vapid superficial aspect that they judge other men for pursuing women for. Bad boy versus nice guy.
Why do nice people choose the wrong people to date? We accept the love we think we deserve. Can we make them know that they deserve more?
We can try. Now, let's talk about these men in relation to the bad boy, who is supposed to be their complete antithesis. Often times, the nice guy will be envious of the bad boy's ability to attract women, especially the women they themselves desire.
They also sometimes begin to resent these women for finding the bad boy attractive. How could they think these men who they deem as less deserving of their love be more of an ideal mate than themselves? Crucial to this point is the idea that these men are better partners for these women because they actually respect them and appreciate them in a way that the other bad boys would not.
Can I kiss you? Oh, um, sure. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Okay.
But as we've discussed so far, that's not typically the case. And in fact, the nice guy and bad boys motive can be very similar in that they simply want to be with the women because of what it would mean for them. They don't respect these women's autonomy to choose who they want to be with and become resentful if the woman does not choose them.
because as much as they position themselves as being respectful of women's autonomy, that respect only goes so far. Men love The Godfather because they feel emasculated by modern society. It's a fantasy about a time when they could go out and solve all their problems with violence and sleep with every woman and then come home to their wife who doesn't ask them any questions and makes them possible.
Hey, hey, hey, it's a normal male fantasy. No, movies like that socialize men into having that fantasy. The minute the woman actually asserts her autonomy to choose who she wants to be with and who she wants to give her love and affection to, all of a sudden there is a wrong choice.
This kind of trickles down into real life. There are people who dedicate time to teaching young men how to not be nice guys and be the bad boys that actually gets the girl. But when it all comes down to it, there's definitely a case for why women would be attracted to the bad boy versus the nice guy.
Not because they're rude or insulting of the women, but because they tend to be more assertive and direct in their intentions to pursue a relationship. Like I mentioned before, a recurring aspect of this trope is that the nice guy oftent times is very intimidated about even approaching the women they desire and make their affection known. Instead, they hope that these women will just slowly come to the realization that they are actually attracted to them.
The bad boy is not supposed to be seen as an ideal or someone to strive to. In these dynamic, they are very clearly painted as the wrong choice. And the nice guy feels a sense of superiority to them because in their minds, they're treating women the way that they want to be treated.
So nice guys may be more compassionate and endearing. But ultimately, if they are only interacting with women in that way to extract romantic favors from them, are they really that nice? Effectively, if these men still cannot respect women's bodily autonomy and right to choose, if they feel the need to manipulate women to fall for them or resent them for not rewarding their loyalty with romanticism, they can be just as toxic, misogynistic, and manipulative as the bad boy.
So, that's it. Let me know what your thoughts are below. Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe.
