The Real Reason Not to Date a Literate Girl: This Post.

In response to Charles Warnke's awesome diatribe-story entitled You Should Date an Illiterate Girl.

Nothing's worse than a girl who reads, you say? It's true. We, and I say we in the most confessional of ways (yes I read, men of the world, run far far away), are more than you, the male, can handle. And it doesn't matter if you're a reader or a non-reader, my penis-laden friend, because the reader has idealized us and the non-reader isn't truly aware of our existence. We lie in the unfathomable world between reality and pages—which is reality, to us. A reality that ends up tenuous and easily confused and in need of a hand to remind us where the pages stop and skin begins.

We are Woolf and Plath and Austen and Bender. We are Bronte and Rich and Alcott and Rand. And we think we're Dagny Taggert and Elizabeth Bennett and Dolores Hayes and Franny Glass. Or Calpernica and Psyche and Holly Golightly and always Alice in her Wonderland.

We are by turns neurotic, crazy, peaceful, loving, angry, and completely fucking inside our own heads.

The main issue is that the opposite of illiterate isn't actually literate—the opposite of illiterate is being able to read. Being literate is a whole other monster that rears up both terrible and beautiful in the most awkward of moments. Being literate is looking for the novel in reality, rather than the other way around. But it's exactly why we're the least dateable women, yet the most desirable. We are unsatisfied and grasping and joyless, but in the best possible way—we know there's a reality out that's better and will always look for it. And we want to take you with us.

Seriously. We want a man who will come with us into the world we'll oft describe to you in overly excited tones with glassy, crazed eyes that will both scare you and turn you on. Because you've never seen anyone that passionate about anything, ever. Because you know that passion can be transferred and all you have to do to receive it is stick around.

So men, suck it up, and BE men and learn how to take a leap and come along with us—you've got not excuses. You don't even have to read—just sit quietly as we do.

Images courtesy of Rosa.