Why man love bitches?

Sherry Argov sold five million copies of a book that calls strong, self-possessed women by a provocative label and tells them to wear it as a compliment. Published in 2002 and somehow still trending on TikTok twenty-something years later, Argov's book did something the dating-advice industry rarely manages: it picked an unmovable thesis and refused to soften it. Argov's claim is that the women men chase, marry, and stay devoted to are not the sweetest or the prettiest. They are the women who, in her phrase, won't bang their heads against the wall obsessing over someone else's opinion.

The word "woman of self-respect" in her title is doing tongue-in-cheek work. She does not mean the cartoon corporate villain or the Joan Collins-on-Dynasty cliche. Her ideal is what she calls a Steel Magnolia: flowery on the outside, steel underneath. The woman has presence of mind. She does not get swept off her feet so fast that her shoes fall off. She is, above all, not afraid to walk away. Argov interviewed hundreds of men while writing the book, and over ninety percent of them, she reports, laughed and agreed with the title inside the first thirty seconds. What they kept telling her was that men want a mental challenge. Women heard "mental challenge" and assumed it meant chess games and political debate. Argov says the men meant something else entirely: a woman who does not appear needy and who cannot be wrapped around a finger.

That is the whole book, more or less, expanded across ten chapters and one hundred numbered Attraction Principles. I am going to lay it out fairly, including the parts where I think Argov is wrong, because the book is more interesting than its title and more annoying than its fans admit.