Samantha Scholfield’s “Screw Cupid: The Sassy Girl’s Guide to Picking up Hot Guys” is yet another drop in the bucket of useless relationship-advice books targeted at young Cosmopolitan-reading women.
While the undercurrent of the book is a positive message — that every girl has worth and deserves a good relationship — all of the “tactics” featured in it are aimed at disguising said girl and turning her into some fictitious character who no male in his right mind would ever take seriously.
Scholfield categorically dehumanizes the readers of her how-to book with the intention of turning each of them into automatons who pretend to like rugby, Clint Eastwood and other stereotypical “manly” subjects so they can infiltrate male society and instantly pick up “hot guys.”
And herein lies the most belittling side of this book: the fact that Scholfield, who in the introduction admits to not being the cream of the crop and says that this book is for the women who are constantly picked over by the men they want to date, tells these women that they can and should be dating “hot guys.”
Opening her book with a rant about how she never had “killer cleavage” and didn’t win the “genetic lottery,” she promises that: “By the last page [of the book] you will have no doubt how to pick up any Hot Guy of your choosing in any situation.”
Telling women who are not conventionally attractive that they need and deserve relationships with “hot guys” undermines the entire project of letting them know that it’s OK to not fit society’s standards for “hotness.”
The entire situation seems very hypocritical.
More anti-man sentiment comes through later in the book, where Scholfield has a series of play-by-play scripts for her readers to use in different situations, like trying to pick up a hottie at a rugby match, a bar, a rock concert, etc. In almost every single one of the conversations, she writes “blah blah blah” in lieu of actual words coming from the guy.
The message Scholfield is sending is simple — the female readers are obviously too dumb to figure out anything to say on their own, and their male targets are pretty meaningless, aside from their rock-hard, hot bodies.
One “conversation opener” that Scholfield suggests is her “Clint Eastwood opener,” in which females are supposed to ask their desired Hot Guys, “Can you explain something to me? How come all guys think Clint Eastwood is so great? ... Western[s] are so dull ...
Everyone thinks he is so cool, why is that?”
You know, because no woman in her right mind could ever enjoy a Clint Eastwood film.
In short, “Screw Cupid” is stupid. It instructs women to act annoying and seem dumb, uninformed and incapable of forming a personal opinion.
Relationship-advice book gives ‘hypocritical’ how-to
Published: Thursday, October 29, 2009
Updated: Thursday, October 29, 2009
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Scholfield's book is satire. It isn't meant to be taken seriously. Please note that every person, not just every "girl", has worth and deserves a good relationship.
