Recently I asked a couple guy friends to share with me some of their unanswered questions about girls, why they do the things they do and why they think the way they think. Many of these were reoccurring and seemed appropriate to address here, so I thought, well, why not?

But, before I start I’d like to point out that these are all pretty wide generalizations and I’m quite positive some girls reading this won’t be able to relate to some or even all of these questions. If you guys hadn’t already gathered this, we are humans too so we’re just as unique and of course there is variation within our own gender.

Q: Why do girls always go to the bathroom in pairs or more?

A: Ah, a good reminder that not every question is so complicated or “difficult.” Yes, even for females (hear that, Seth MacFarlane?).
Okay, I’d just like to say that this definitely isn’t something that always happens. Believe it or not, we do fully understand that we are perfectly capable of walking to the bathroom and doing our business on our own.

With that said, for the times we do choose to go with partners or in what some of my own guy friends have described as “herds,” I’ll further break it down for you with these three reasons:

1) To get the obvious out of the way, we don’t want to look like loners. We know we have friends and our friends know we have friends, but there’s still that unwritten section of the high school social code that commands “thou shalt not go to the bathroom by thou self.”

2) Privacy. If we want to catch up with someone, especially pertaining to a somewhat personal subject, this is one of the only ways to do it if there isn’t time to just walk around campus like we could during lunch.

3) It’s just become routine. I need to refill my water bottle, so does my friend. I need to go to the bathroom, so does my friend. We go together, talking and laughing along the way. Shockingly simple, isn’t it?

Q: Why do you love Taylor Swift so much, and even if you don’t, why do you feel the need to quote her lyrics incessantly?

A: She gets it. She may be crazy (girls, please don’t shoot me for that), but she gets it. I think it’s a pretty reasonable assumption to say that most of the time girls feel a lot more in the realm of romantic relationships than guys do as teenagers, and while we’re not always brave enough to voice these feelings outside of our close friendships, she is.

When girls listen to her, it’s like she’s validating their right to these feelings; she gives them a chance to grieve while knowing someone else is grieving with them. I’m not saying this is entirely healthy by any means, but that’s how it is.

As for the part about the lyrics, well, it’s just a cultural thing I think. Part of it’s making fun of ourselves, and part of it is just because we can, I guess.

Q: Why do girls always go for the jerks instead of the good guys?

A: Oh boy. I’ll try to hold myself back here from launching into a rant about the Nice Guy (see ‘”Friend Zoned?” Stop the selfishness; get over it’).

First, really? That is so unfair. Girls don’t always pick jerks, but when they do, please don’t think we actually go looking for them. I’m pretty sure that all guys know this, so you present yourselves as good guys in general, do you not?

It seems to me that a lot of the time, jerks get to be jerks because they see they can “get” girls easier than some guys, who are actually nice guys (yeah, real ones, notice the lower case!) and don’t relentlessly pursue the girls. The jerks might be really smart or be captain of the swim team or play the guitar, and all of these things on top of seemingly being good guys make them appealing. They know this, and they work it to their advantage.

We’re not blind, but that hardly means we have some kind of Jerk-Radar that helps us zero in on guys that will treat us horribly. If we did, you can be sure we’d use it.

Q: Why do girls always have to proclaim loudly that they have to go pee?

A: Um. I’ve actually never thought about this. Maybe so a friend will offer to go to the bathroom with them (refer back to Question #1)? And I should probably point out that I’ve heard lots of guys say this as well, so maybe it’s just another cultural thing, since we’re loud and obnoxious Americans after all. It always seems to be a silent battle to be the first person to say in response, “thanks for sharing,” regardless of the gender of the person issuing the, er, proclamation.

Q: Why do girls hate every picture they take?

A: Easy but complicated:
1) Because it’s most likely going to end up on the internet and who knows who will see it. In our ideal world we’ll take a good picture and people will see it and think, “Wow, that girl is pretty!” So if the picture is hideous, then of course we’re going to hate it because it could be a first impression.

2) Pictures capture a moment forever, and we get nervous taking pictures because if we’re lucky enough to have been looking like a cow in the millisecond it took to take the picture, that picture will forever portray us as a cow, which goes back to the first impression thing. And even if it’s not a first impression, who the heck wants to be immortalized as a cow?

3) Reasons one and two stress us out and make us incredibly insecure, which is why when we swarm the device that’s just taken the picture and you hear us telling our friends that they look great, we’re not lying. Usually we are being honest in these compliments, we just can’t see it for ourselves that we do look great (if we actually do) not because we want attention but because, well, we are our own worst critics.

So, there you have it, guys. Your questions have been answered. If you have more, feel free to submit them to The Foothill Dragon Press at [email protected] and I’d love to answer them.