#6 Burt’s Bees

Burt’s Bees is more than just your average chapstick. It’s more than lip balm or any other moisturizer you might have accrued in your arsenal. Burt’s Bees is the very essence of a girl’s lip care. It represents, nay it signifies an entire culture of modern femininity. Owning Burt’s Bees is like having an Ace up your sleeve.

Regardless of its minty flavor and pizazz, the product symbolizes an entire culture of active female members of any capitalist society. American girls particularly, in recent years, have come to care more about organic and “earth-friendly” products. The modern woman notoriously loves nature.

While most girls innately care about taking care of their lips in general, (perhaps an effect consequently caused by the “importance-of-lipstick” media–and accordingly generation of people–of the late 1950’s), Burt’s Bees is a trendier and, therefore, more popular symbol of today’s American woman. For a girl, owning Burt’s Bees is most important to her identity, and moreover it is of great significance and essential social capital for other women to acknowledge any woman’s possession of the product.

#5 Jeep Wranglers

As far back as its creation, the Jeep Wrangler can been seen throughout American pop culture along side various other symbols of femininity. It is both literally and figuratively the vehicle of women’s liberation. Why? Because the Jeep Wrangler is one of the most dangerous things a girl can do and/or own while still having a convincingly false sense of security and safety.

Now, you may be saying “But not only girls have Jeep Wranglers!” This is very true. And it is why, in most cases, women love guys who drive the easy-to-topple golden chariot of popularity. While most women, when driving in cars, would be more inclined to keeping the windows up as to not “mess up their hair,” the Jeep Wrangler is perhaps the number one exception to this natural reaction.

Women love the Jeep Wrangler because, inherently, women love the beach. This psychological representation can best be explained by the theory of Pavlov’s Dog, a phrase used to describe the way in which someone is conditioned to react in a certain situation without the use of critical thinking. The same way in which a dog salivates after hearing its owner snap his fingers, expecting to receive a treat, women immediately connect the image of a Jeep Wrangler with the beach. But not just the beach in the sense of simply shorelines; but the very essence and notion of fun, adventure, satisfaction, and letting go of their inhibitions. Their brains flash to the whimsical daydream of them sitting in the back on the Wrangler’s signature roll-bar with their blonde friends and/or some HGH-infused italian hunks.

Basically, girls believe, in their heart of hearts, that the vehicle was made just for them. It signifies their liberation and escape from the mundane and oppressing lives that they have been socially constructed to maintain. It’s more than just a car. it is more than just four-wheel drive, anti-lock brakes, passenger side air bags, removable doors, and power steering. No, rather, as Tom Cochrane once wrote, “Life is a highway…” and women want to ride it all night long… just in a Jeep Wrangler.

(photo: 4wheeldrive.about.com)

#4 Donnie Darko

If i had a dollar for every time i heard a girl say “Oh my god… Donnie Darko? I LIVE by that movie!” i would be a relatively rich man. Donnie Darko is the quintessence of indie movies and every film student’s wet dream. But for girls this film is so much more. It transcends the obvious lust and admiration that most women admittedly share for its protagonist, Jake Gyllenhaal, although he plays a significant part in their love of this movie.

When it comes down to, most girls just don’t understand this film. Some might even argue that the director himself doesn’t really know what it is about. So why is it so appealing to them? Well, the film has everything that girls like: psychology, the 80’s, a hip soundtrack; and through it’s convoluted mysterious plot line, it still tells the story of a boy-meets-girl-they-fall-in-love-despite-the-obstacles-in-their-way outline. This is important, as it is why women go to the movies in the first place.

As most independent art films, Donnie Darko offers the audience a chance to decide for themselves the meaning of it all. But girls thrive on believing that they know what the movie is saying. They believe that it speaks to them, when in reality it is no different than most other films of its “genre”.

If you really want to get on a girl’s good side, try asking her about what Donnie Darko means to her. Claiming that you “just didn’t get it” will make them feel even better about their opinion regarding the film, because Donnie Darko is one of very few films that girls are most opinionated about. It’s important to let them maintain this belief and indeed to allow them to feel, on an individual level, intellectual.

*(photo from filmfestivals.com)

#3 “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey

At nearly every party there a crucial point where the conversations are fading quick, the keg and jungle-juice are running out, and the beer pong table is occupied by the same handful of dudes for over an hour because no one cares to sign up to play anymore. It is at this time that the host (or a keen and observant guest) must reach for his or her iPod and play the one song that will save the ship before it sinks. That song is Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.”

Like deer caught in headlights, girls drop what they are doing and saying as soon as the sound of that commanding piano progression during the first bar of the ballad hits their ears. Leading them like rats following the pied piper, the sultry notes bring all the women in attendance to the center of the party, usually the living room. Its there that they quickly grab their friends, preparing themselves to croon along with Steve Perry to the all important opening lines…

“Just a small town girl living in a lonely world,” the song beckons. Women of all ages, colors, and creeds come together as one. All differences aside, “Don’t Stop Believing” sends them into a world of utopian splendor and unequivocal rapture. The chanting and dancing ensues. The party is saved. (But at what cost?)

If you intend to pick up a girl at a party, it is recommended that you wait until this moment to make your move. Study the song’s lyrics carefully, as to show them, should they look in your direction, that you are no stranger to the passion and magnitude of the words and the emotions they evoke. This will grant you loads of brownie points. But USE CAUTION! Remember: this is their time. Just like you wouldn’t dare wake a bear from its hibernation, you should NEVER attempt to interrupt a girl from singing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” If impatience is one of the many flaws of your personality, at least wait until the halfway through the guitar solo to say something. Usually, just simply stating “Oh my god, i love this song” is more than enough.

“Don’t Stop Believing” is more than an epic 1980’s arena rock ballad, it is a universal call to all women and a message of unity and strength; an anthem of immeasurable significance that the female community in general holds very high and very dear to them. The song is in their very essence and definition of what it means to be a woman. It is their declaration of independence; their national anthem (especially when they are drunk). And we must never take that away from them.

Don’t stop believing, girls. Hold on to the feeling.

#2 Babysitting

It is often said that the strongest and most powerful human relationship is that between a mother and child. This is because all women, genetically, have a natural inclination to take care of children. While most feminist critical theorists, throughout the pages of history, have spoken out against the stereotypical atrocities and subordinate roles contributing to the general oppression that women face in most all of the world’s religions, societies, and civilizations, many would argue that this concept is a factual and even biological truth of human nature.

Under the assumption of the “scientific” and “factual” logic of this idea, girls often find that, in their adolescence, the motherly roles that they inexplicably long to satisfy can be found in the divine art of babysitting.

Babysitting is indeed an art form. For some reason, usually determined by the clairvoyant guidance and foresight of the family matriarch, the professional opportunity to become a babysitter is almost always offered to young women, often in their teens. For many girls, this small task which they intrinsically and subconsciously crave to fulfill can become almost a steady form of income as they enter college. Babysitting is a gratification that most men are never able to experience.

It is because of this that girls boast so righteously and sometimes arrogantly about their duties as a babysitter. In many ways, the concept of babysitting is a way to react against the variety of sociological and cultural issues they have with the male-dominated western world.

While the actual chore of “babysitting” requires, fundamentally, the basic duties of preparing food (the diet of most children under the age of 12 being very limited and simple) and entertaining (ranging from watching a movie to perhaps the grueling charge of playing video games), girls can sometimes find themselves caught up in the idea of babysitting rather than acknowledging the luxury of sustaining it as their source of income; as their job.

Babysitters are an elite community of young women who unknowingly receive not only monetary satisfaction, but also a (Freudian) subconscious gratification of their genetic needs to assume their essential function, in the western society in which they were brought up, as nurturers before they themselves become active reproducers of humanity.

You would be hard-pressed to find a female over the age of 16 who has never been a babysitter. For this reason, you would most likely get on girl’s good side by asking about her assortment of “professional” babysitting experiences and mentioning that you love children. Chicks love talking about babysitting. Moreover, chicks love a “guy who loves kids”.

#1 Diet Coke

If you ask a girl why she is drinking Diet Coke, you most likely will not get a definitive answer. However, this is not her fault, as most women do not even understand why they innately must drink the curious, and arguably flavorless, brown liquid. For women, Diet Coke is symbolic of the very essence of womanhood. It represents a sociological phenomenon which equates femininity with diet cola in general.

Perhaps it stems from a constant yearning to feel, psychologically, like they are on a “diet”, as the word is right there in the name of the product. Dieting is an extremely valuable concept to women. More importantly, it is vital for them to express to other women that they believe in taking care of themselves; that they believe their body is a “temple”.

Questioning a woman on why she drinks Diet Coke is like questioning a Muslim on why they worship Allah. They quite simply just do. It is their religion; a cultural and spiritual experience that they have maintained to be true as early as they came kicking and screaming out of the womb (from another woman who probably pumped them full of Diet Coke for 9 months via placenta).

Aside from the popular, multifarious, and endless stream of print ads for the product, and even the more visually seductive television ads depicting shirtless male construction workers and the haunting and inescapable drone of the musical stylings of Paul Okenfold, Diet Coke transcends the common skepticisms of social hegemony and androcentric dominance. It symbolizes an entire community of women who find liberation and identity in the product, and ultimately define their very existence on the principles they believe it represents.