(November 1, 2005) — In one of my daily struts around town, I suddenly hear from a third-floor balcony the triumphant cry of a man. “I finally understand women,” is all he says, although that is enough information for me to consider him a fool. So you think you understand us, huh? Keep your ambitions in check my friend for we are the quintessence of guile and unpredictability. If used in the wrong way, we become that annoying itch on the bridge of your nose—persistent on staying and a constant reminder of your inability to scratch it away. To understand us, you can try giving birth to seven children, but as that is biologically impossible for your specie and a good way to make you sew your own straightjacket, I suggest you abandon the attempt. My new suggestion, therefore, is to figure out what women want—I don’t mean the usual flower, chocolate and teddy bear that squeaks every time you squeeze its behind. It would probably amaze most men that the answer to this enigma boils down to a single eleven-letter word: recognition. Every woman wants recognition, and if this means posting a thirty-two by twenty-four portrait of her Botox-injected face on the billboard of some freeway, then by golly let it be! Everything she does bears witness to this instinctive desire. The new clothes she wears from her Saturday “discount hunts” in the bowels of smelly department stores feeds into this need to be praised. She does not consciously make the decision to surgically remove one of her toes so her feet can fit into a pair of Gucci stilettos just because mutilated feet are better for walking. She does not spend half of her life span in front of a mirror plucking away the eyebrows and getting hair roots ripped out of her legs just because she’s a masochist and enjoys the pain. The walking mannequins of the Armani catwalk don’t force food out of their mouths just because they want to mimic the behavior of owls. Even eighteenth-century women didn’t suffocate themselves with a corset just because it felt good to have their entrails piled on top of each other. All these women desired some kind of response—something to elevate them from the ordinary and stamp them as remarkable. They want to evoke some sort of reaction from the opposite sex, whether it be whistles on the street, the obsessive flashing of cameras or the proposal of a rich chap like Mr. Pontellier in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening . A flower is not beautiful just because it wants to be that way; why be beautiful if there’s no audience to impress? Apply the crosswalk tenet “Stop, Look and Listen” when dealing with the women in your life instead of just telling them to move aside ‘cause they’re blocking the TV. Someday, by some improbable stroke of luck, you might just be able to get them.