Bad boy (archetype)
Encyclopedia
The bad boy, cad or bounder is a cultural archetype of a male who behaves badly, especially towards women.

Being a promiscuous
Promiscuity
In humans, promiscuity refers to less discriminating casual sex with many sexual partners. The term carries a moral or religious judgement and is viewed in the context of the mainstream social ideal for sexual activity to take place within exclusive committed relationships...

 rogue
Rogue (vagrant)
A rogue is a vagrant person who wanders from place to place. Like a drifter, a rogue is an independent person who rejects conventional rules of society in favor of following their own personal goals and values....

 may be as successful a reproductive strategy as the strategy of being a reliable provider
Resource acquisition ability
Resource acquisition ability is a term in social psychology and the sexual opposite of the Reproductive value , introducing an unintentional mechanism used by women when selecting a male partner. The RAA is focused on some factors:...

. Evolutionary psychologist Professor Bill von Hippel claims that women are especially attracted to such bad boys when they are ovulating
Ovulation
Ovulation is the process in a female's menstrual cycle by which a mature ovarian follicle ruptures and discharges an ovum . Ovulation also occurs in the estrous cycle of other female mammals, which differs in many fundamental ways from the menstrual cycle...

. According to an article in The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

, there is a "dark triad
The Dark Triad
The Dark Triad is a group of three personality traits: narcissism; Machiavellianism; and psychopathy, all of which are interpersonally aversive.- Introduction :...

" of personality traits associated with naturally occurring 'bad boys', consisting of narcissism
Narcissism
Narcissism is a term with a wide range of meanings, depending on whether it is used to describe a central concept of psychoanalytic theory, a mental illness, a social or cultural problem, or simply a personality trait...

, thrill-seeking
Recklessness (psychology)
Recklessness is disregard for or indifference to the dangers of a situation or for the consequences of one's actions....

, and deceitfulness.

Postfeminism

Postfeminists
Postfeminism
Post-feminism is a reaction against some perceived contradictions and absences of second-wave feminism. The term post-feminism is ill-defined and is used in inconsistent ways...

 tend to acknowledge (part ruefully, part boastfully) the allure of the bad boy - of 'the irrestible rogue who has the dizzying ability to drive women wild' - and of their 'laissez-faire attitude about life and love'. Sex-positive feminism
Sex-positive feminism
Sex-positive feminism, also known as pro-sex feminism, sex-radical feminism, or sexually liberal feminism is a movement that began in the early 1980s...

, insisting that 'we [are] meant to take what we want from the twenty-first century's kinky candyshop of sex', still accept that at the end of the day many will 'prefer bad and debased over naughty but nice'.

Some have sought an explanation for such choices in the psychological mechanism of splitting
Splitting (psychology)
Splitting may mean two things: splitting of the mind, and splitting of mental concepts . The latter is thinking purely in extremes Splitting (also called all-or-nothing thinking in cognitive distortion) may mean two things: splitting of the mind, and splitting of mental concepts (or black and...

: 'Women tend to split off their detested parts like hate, envy, and bad-girl aspects', so that 'bad-girl parts stay behind closed doors, only to come out to play with bad-boy lovers'. There is then 'a split between love for men they see as good, dependable and reliable, and desire for men they see as exciting, reckless, and dangerous...bad boys'.

The choice of the cad may thus be linked to what Freud described as the way 'the curb put upon love by civilization involves a universal tendency to debase sexual objects'. The reason for what women experience as a tendency to 'split love and desire' is, in Lacanian
Lacan
Lacan is surname of:* Jacques Lacan , French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist** The Seminars of Jacques Lacan** From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power, a book on political philosophy by Saul Newman** Lacan at the Scene* Judith Miller, née Lacan...

 terms, 'to be sought rather in some impasse that is constitutive of desire itself'; and the fact that 'women often have bad taste in men (as men in women)' would seem rooted in a perennial facet of the human condition.

Romantic fiction

The bad boy is a common archetype in romance novel
Romance novel
The romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novels in this genre place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Through the late...

s.

The lure for the reader (as heroine) has been described as 'the challenge!....She has a chance to become a thrill seeker, but can maintain her "good girl" status by saving the hero from himself'.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK