Are younger women starting to get it? Kitchen bitches are so last generation.

Both Rhianna and Taylor Swift are in the news today, proclaiming their desire for a man who “takes control”. Takes control of what, I’m not sure, but there is something reassuring about young women who are massively successful in their own right, but still in search of a man who knows how to be a man.  Rhianna confesses that she likes dominant men, and if she ever tosses that asshat Chris Brown, there is some hope she might actually find one.

 

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2232023/Rihanna-strips-naked-GQ-cover-reveals-likes-dominant-men.html

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2231935/Taylor-Swift-reveals-likes-man-control.html

 

 

I’ve used the term Alpha Male before, so I’m thinking now might be a good time to explore exactly what that term means, and what it DOESN’T mean.  In a strictly biological sense, the alpha male is the strongest male in the pack who claims sexual rights to all the females and will fight off other males to enforce those rights.  It can be a pretty futile effort, as beta males will sneak in sex with willing (or even unwilling) females, thus preserving genetic diversity.

 

 

When we’re talking about human males, the alpha is at the very heart, a leader.  And humans, men and women alike, respond to leadership.  Alphas can be cocky, funny, sarcastic, brash and irreverent, but none of those things are REQUIRED.  All that is required to be an Alpha is to have a rock-solid sense of your ability to lead and an unflinching acceptance of the responsibility that comes with leadership.  Both those things need to be in place.  Men who go marching off into any and all conflicts and then turn and run at the first sign of resistance are NOT Alphas.  They’re arrogant assholes.

 

An Alpha male looks at the world, and puts the edges on it.  He decides where the boundaries are, and will enforce them.  That is what women respond to.  Alpha Males are unapologetically in control of their own lives and automatically assume the right to direct the lives of anyone who wants to join them on their journey.  They are managers, and if you plan on being with one, expect to be managed.  Politically correct culture will NEVER admit this to be true, but the off the chart sales of Fifty Shades of Grey suggests that women find the alpha male appealing indeed.  Skyfall, the new James Bond film just had the biggest opening of any Bond film ever.  Why?  Daniel Craig.  Indisputably Alpha and women flocked to the theatre in droves.

 

 

There aren’t a whole lot of Alpha males to go around, so fantasy is as close as most women are going to get.  But Alpha females, high achieving, accomplished women like Taylor and Rhianna are on the hunt for one, and good for them.  Venerating the Alpha is a return to a culture that values masculinity in equal measure to femininity.  Alpha males have no use for genderless utopia of shared nappy changing and washing up after dinner.  This doesn’t mean he WON’T change nappies or wash up, it simply means that he isn’t going to be ORDERED to, and he sure as hell isn’t going to do those things in service to some political ideology.  He’ll do them because he wants to.

 

He’s in control.  Always.

 

And women can’t resist him.  In their book A Billion Wicked Thoughts, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam set aside all bullshit political correctness and take a look at what people actually DO.  Ogas and Gaddam argue that romance novels and their Internet-era counterpart, “fan fiction,” dramatize the workings of female desire. Such stories feature the strong, rich, handsome, competent, socially dominant alpha men whom women need to care for their offspring, and to whom they yearn to submit. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/books/review/a-billion-wicked-thoughts-by-ogi-ogas-and-sai-gaddam-book-review.html?pagewanted=all)

 

No matter how successful, how accomplished, how competent in their own lives, women in touch with their femininity “yearn to submit” . It’s part of what femininity means, and precisely why feminism hates femininity so much.  Submission is part of the whole package.

 

Submit to what, though?  Rhianna submitted to a beating from Chris Brown.  Is that what submission means?  Not at all.  And the whole religious “submit” to your husband crap has nothing to do with the submission required by an Alpha male.  It isn’t about denying yourself in service to someone else.  It isn’t about taking orders and being obedient or mindless or idiotic.  It’s about accepting leadership and in doing so, creating something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

 

Jean-Luc Picard is the Alpha male on the Enterprise.  Anyone who steps on board the Enterprise agrees to submit to his will.  And his will is simple:  to explore the galaxy and to protect the lives of every single person on board his ship.

 

That’s an Alpha male.  When you marry one, you give him the Captain’s chair and you take your place as First Officer.  You’re Spock and he’s Kirk and when necessary, you can assume control, but at the end of the day, the Captain takes command, and ultimately, responsibility.  That’s the key to an Alpha male.  He is Alpha because he CARES.  He cares about the people he commands.  A married Alpha man cares deeply about his wife, his children, his friends, his family.  He leads them, protects them, cherishes them and loves them.

 

 

No wonder Taylor and Rhinanna want one.  I did, too, when I was in my 20s.  And I got one.  Good luck in your quest, ladies.  You’ll need it.

 

Lots of love,

 

JB