What kind of guy would a woman have been looking for about 10,000 years ago? I’m imagining a big, burly figure that also has an abundance of athletic prowess, such that he can climb a tall tree, leap out of it to ambush attack his prey like a leopard, and then wrestle a 700lb adult caribou to the ground and strangle it with his bare hands. Then, he has just enough brains to cut it up into three or four different pieces so as to turn it into a carriable load, and the strength and endurance left over to walk 10 miles with this massive kill on his back. There, his hungry tribe desperately awaits his return, and a dozen people hug and kiss him when he arrives.
Or, he’s just an average guy with a rifle and a truck. Let’s call this guy with the gun and the truck ‘Geeky Gary,’ and the first guy ‘Chiselled Chad.’ Gary gets the food on the table faster than Chad. He might only be gone for a couple hours, whereas Chad could be gone for days, if he even comes back at all. Like the peacock’s tail, human adaptations like a higher intellegence were not only important for survival, they were also necessary for mate selection and attraction.
In his book ‘Become Who You Are,’ Ryan A. Bush describes the evolution of the male peacock’s impressive tail. A big, beautiful tail is also heavy and inconvenient. It makes it more difficult for the bird to avoid and evade predators, and in no way does anything to assist in that individual male’s survival. The one thing it does do, though, is suggest to the females, “Hey. Look at me. I am fit and athletic enough to lug around this massive tail, and yet still steer clear of threatening carnivores.” And the females surmise, “Ah, ya that makes sense.” Although not a survival adaptation, chicks dig the heavy tail.
A few thousand years ago, Geeky Gary started to replace Chiselled Chad as the ‘go-to-guy’ for all the women. Not because Gary could just blow Chad’s head off (although he could). Simply because, with the badass combination of his gun and his truck, Gary can both protect the house (land, ground, hut, tribe, etc.) and all but ensure that the women and children have something to eat everyday. Somewhere along the way, all of the women just went ‘Sorry Chad. We appreciate everything you’ve done for us, but with Gary, I don’t have to worry about putting food in my baby’s tummy, or sleep with one eye open to make sure that a weasel doesn’t take her from her crib. (No they didn’t. They just ghosted him).
The truth is, both of these fine gentlemen are better than 90% of the men out there. And yet, in 2024, we’ve come to what seems to be a critical moment in human history. A crossroads, if you will. Most young women, aged 20-25, or 27, or, dare I say, even 30, when asked, “Hey Claire, who do you prefer, Chad or Gary? They are both single.” The typical response is, “Hmm.. is there anyway we can put Gary’s brain into Chad’s body?” “No. Sorry honey. I’m afraid we can’t do that.” Then, what’s even more disturbing, after hearing that we can’t magically turn Chad into Einstein, or give Gary the physique of a terminator, Claire usually says, “Oh, alright. I guess I’ll just wait then.”
What? Wait for what? The reason Claire has decided to ‘wait’ is because she heard that Chad has a cousin who lives four hours away who’s almost as smart as Gary. At least as far as she can tell from his Instagram page, he looks like he is. She’s never met him or even spoken with him before, but she knows he exists.
Let’s call Chad’s flawless cousin ‘Charismatic Clark.’ Imagine if Claire happened to bump into Clark one day in the grocery store (even if she went out of her way to make sure that happened), and Clark actually liked her? What a shame it would be if she had already married Chad or Gary. It could be the mistake of her life. Better to just keep waiting.
As men, we tend to envy Chad. Although not the sharpest tack in the box, he has the God given strength and athletic ability to get the job done. Moreoever, this particular Chad also has the generosity to use his powers for good, rather than evil, and provide for those who are not as physically endowed as he is. Any woman would be lucky to have him.
Gary, blessed with a beautiful brain, and an ability to make things, is also fully prepared to use his creative mind to provide for those who are less fortunate. Men like to build things, and figure out how they work, take them apart, and put them back together again. That’s how Gary was able to conjure up a gun and a truck long before anyone else had one. Most women would be lucky to have Gary, too, because their male offspring would likely inherit his genes that are suitable to survive and prosper, and their female offspring would be sharp and intuitive enough to smell out deceitful Instagram profiles of sneaky weasels that are posing as Charismatic Clarks, while at the same time, recognize the potential of other young, future Chads and Garys.
And lastly, this brings me to Clark. Of course everyone wants Clark. Clark is Superman. Clark is Michael Jordan. Clark is Arnold’s body with Brad Pitt’s head on his shoulder’s and Bill Gates’ brain inside his skull.
But here’s one thing I’ve learned from life, which is now about half over; you can do ALMOST anything you want, but not everything. If you want to go to the gym and have a ripped body, you can do that. If you want to earn lots of money, you can do that, too. You can also learn to play guitar, sing, ride a bike, and speak 5 languages.
But if you want to BE something, and that something is dependent on someone else’s subjective opinion, then you have to BE that which is worthy of qualifying you for that position. For instance, if I want to play in the NBA, I have to BE that which an NBA general manager thinks is worthy of having a spot on his roster. But I’m 42, 5’11”, and white. I don’t think any GMs are looking for that right now. This is how you know whether or not you can do something. You ask yourself; what is that person looking for, or what do I have to turn myself into to be worthy of holding that position, or filling that role? Then, you ask, is it at least a tiny bit possible for me to do that? Even if you feel the odds are slim, perhaps even 1% or less, you can say to yourself, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance.”
When John F. Kennedy asked Wernher von Braun what would be necessary to send a man to the moon, he replied, ‘The will to do it.” When the Wright Brothers were trying to get their first plane off the ground, they looked like a couple of clowns, and everybody in Kansas thought they were nuts. But that, too, turned out to be possible. But is ANYTHING possible? Sadly, no.
Clark isn’t looking for a woman with three kids, or someone who weighs more than he does. And if he is looking for you, he’s not looking for the 32-year old version of you that has dumped a bunch of Garys, and been bulldozed by a dozen Chads. He wants you when you’re young. He doesn’t want what’s left over after the trainwreck.
If I were going to compete on your team for some kind of physical competition, and my job was to run 10km as fast as I could, which version of me would you choose; 1) The one who had already swam 1.5km and cycled the 40km of a triathlon? Or, 2) The version of me that just got out of bed, and has to immediately put on his shoes and start running? That should be an easy question to answer.
This is why most men today are stuck in no man’s land. We are not just competing with Chad and Gary for the opportunity to have a family. We also have to deal with Clark, who is essentially a ghost, a figment of women’s imagition. This is why, unfortunately, lots of men have lost their will or desire to be honest and genuine when it comes to attracting women. Because this perfect genius that also happens to be carved out of Michelangelo stone represents the ideal that so many women seem to have frozen in their mind, and nothing less will due.
You’ll often hear women complain that ‘there are no good men out there,’ and this is partially true. We are fat, lazy, unmotivated, and we earn less money than our father’s did 30 years ago. It might be time for men to ‘grow’ up. But in order for something to grow or change, it needs a certain stimulus. Just the right stimulus. Not too much. For instance, if I can bench press 200 lbs and I want to become a man who can bench press 220, I need to gradually increase the weight, ideally by adding a 2.5lb plate to each side of the bar, and working with that until I can lift it five or six times. I can’t just add a 45-pound plate to each side of the bar and start benching 290 lbs.
Chad and Gary represent the stimulus we need to grow. We can compete with them. Or, at least we can try. They are the 205 lbs we can look at and try to become. Will there come a day when all the existing men on earth are Charismatic Clarks? I don’t know, but we won’t get there by trying to go from benching 200 to 290 without being allowed to put anything on the bar in between. (I guess technically you could keep benching 200 lbs until you could do that about 30 times, and then take a crack at 290, but nobody would ever do that.)
We can’t turn into Michael Jordan, at least not overnight. But sometimes it feels like anything less than that is not enough, because whether we’re on a date with a girl, or in a relationship, we all know that the next Chad is just a click or a swipe away. So it should come as no surprise to women that the men they typically meet lie about their height, age, income, family background, and ability to hit an effective ping pong serve. For most men, the most practical way to approach a woman is to take a deep breath, walk right up to her and say, “Hi. I’m Clark.”