Seriously. There are a lot of us who actually ENJOY meeting – and dating – this special breed of douche.

Okay. I might be EXTREMELY overgeneralizing here, but I have seen a wide range of chicks fall for guys who treat them like absolute sh*t. I’ve seen girls who stick with their sub-par lovers for years and can’t give you a straight answer as to why they put up with it.

I probably fall into this category as well; nice guys like me all the time, yet I constantly shy away from them in favor of their more dramatic/mysterious/douchebag-y counterparts.

This might be like flossing a dead horse – or watching a Tina Fey as Sarah Palin SNL skit (again, not that I’m complaining!), but seriously, why the hell do nice guys finish last? And whose fault is it, really?

A few of my theories :

1. Girl mistakes cockiness for confidence. Because we live in an individualistic society that stresses the importance of CONFIDENCE and SELF-ESTEEM and GOING FOR THE GOLD (no matter how you get there), it is totally possible to perceive straight-up cockiness as a public display of confidence. However, in the case of the A**hole, the guy isn’t just confident – he’s practically narcissistic. He basically feels NOTHING for any other human beside himself. So, by the time the Nice Girl realizes said dude will never care about anything other than his hair, his car and sticking his you-know-what into every willing hoo-ha in town, she’s already said the “L-word” and picked out future children’s names.

2. Girl thinks she can change the bad boy. Women are natural nurturers. We like to take care of stuff, like our best friends and our nails and our MAC makeup collection. We play therapist to most everyone in our lives. It makes us feel good to make other people feel good. So, when Nice Girl meets a guy who has some issues – like being unable to emotionally connect with other people, and/or maintain a solid relationship, or has cheated on past girlfriends – Nice Girl always thinks that SHE is obviously the one who can change the A**hole’s deviant ways. Realistically, she knows this isn’t true. But we all want to believe that we are that special girl.

Eventually though, Nice Girl learns that A**hole will never change, but she sticks around because she’s still in love with the concept of who A**hole COULD be, if he only stopped hanging out with that crowd/gave up drinking/got a new job…none of which will ever happen. Girl digs A**hole because she genuinely believes that underneath all the B.S. there is a knight in shining armor just BEGGING to be set free and show up on her doorstep with a bottle of red wine and a copy of “Baby Mama.” There’s not.

3. Girl lacks confidence. Of course, we can’t blame EVERYTHING on the A**hole. According to The Perks of Being a Wallflower, “we accept the love we think we deserve.” I don’t think I could have said it better. Sometimes, we find ourselves attached to the A**hole because we don’t believe that we can find anyone else, or perhaps we don’t even know anything better exists. It does.

4. Chivalry kinda sorta scares Girl. Although Girl doesn’t want to admit it, being treated well sometimes feels kind of awkward. When we go out with a Nice Guy, we know he’s going to do all the “typical” gentleman-ly stuff, like open our car doors and hold our hand while walking down the street. Sometimes, this is just plain weird and makes us feel kinda funny. Nice Guy virtually loses all unique points when he acts like this because Nice Guys all. act. the. same. way. They wait too long to make a move, they call too often and they are just too damn nice.

5. Girl likes the chase. Seriously, who doesn’t? Sometimes Nice Guys are just too easy. We like it when guys don’t give in to us right away. It’s exciting and it gives us something to daydream about when we’re bored in English Lit. Lame? Yes. Understandable? Definitely.

6. Finally, sometimes A**holes just really know how to play the game. They can thoroughly convince us that they are indeed a Nice Guy when the complete opposite is true. When our friends start to point out several signs of their douchebaggery, we have a “talk” with A**hole and he convinces us that our friends are batsh*t crazy and watch too much Sex & the City and that we have nothing to worry about. The A**hole will do anything he can to prevent Nice Girl from seeing his true colors….and he’s damn good at it, too.

That’s all I got. What do you lovely CC readers think – why do girls like assholes?

[Photo from kit haselden's flickr]

After dinner we kissed quickly and went our separate ways. Ugh.

I went back to our mutual friend for some back-up. “What the hell is going on? I thought Chuck liked me!”

“Do you like him?”

“Um. Of course I do! He is the nicest boy I’ve ever met, and he always treats me so well.”

“Maybe you only like him because he likes you.”

OK, fine, maybe part of the appeal was knowing I wouldn’t be rejected, but when I thought about it long and hard, I really cared about Chuck, and I wanted him to be happy.

“Do you think maybe you kissed him because you knew it meant so much to him?”

Hm. I’ve always been the kind of person who wants to make everyone happy, who is willing to bend over backwards if it meant I could make a friend smile. It seemed so unfair that Chuck was such a nice person, but never got any dates. He totally deserved a fantastic girlfriend…but he didn’t deserve a friend who dated him just because she felt like she should.

I realized our mutual friend was right…I didn’t actually like Chuck as a boyfriend, but since I knew dating him would make him happy, I did it.

I wish I could say that I sat him down, explained the whole situation and ended it before things got even worse. Alas, I was too scared to break his heart so soon after kissing him, so I kept it going, letting it slowly fade as the Summer came to a close. We attended different colleges anyway, so I figured Fall would be a natural ending point. I felt awful the whole time–it was like I was taking advantage of him every time he did something nice for me, or complimented me. It was torturous.

Several months after we had returned to our respective schools, a bit of info popped up on my news feed: Chuck was in a relationship. We usually sent emails back and forth, so in my next message I asked him about the new girl. She was great, he told me. They both loved graphic novels and crazy films. She was, according to those who met her, totally lovely.

It finally dawned on me that, although I felt like shit after kissing Chuck, I might have actually done him a small favor. I think going out with him for a little while helped him to realize that all crushes are not unobtainable, and that those girls you crush on are just normal people looking for love too (I, unlike Chuck, am still single).

That being said, I’m not advocating dating someone you don’t really have feelings for, but maybe give that shy guy friend of yours an ego boost. Tell him he looks good in his glasses. Introduce him to friends with similar interests. Most importantly, don’t treat him like just another friend! He’s a guy, he has feelings (maybe feelings for you!), and you need to respect that. Dumping all your dating problems on him is only going to make things worse–save that stuff for the girls.

And if you do wake up one day and realize you really truly have feelings for him, by all means, go for it. You can watch Win A Date With Tad Hamilton on your first date.

It’s no wonder that so many girls obsess over the contact and signals they receive from a guy they have recently met or started a sort of relationship with. After all, this is usually a guy’s chance to pull out every asshole card he has. And how the hell are girls supposed to read that?

Either you’re dealing with a genuine asshole… Or you’re dealing with a nice guy who’s playing his asshole cards to win his upper hand with you.

And lets face it, if you catch the nice guy who is playing the nice cards…well, we never want that guy, anyway.

So how do you get him to drop his horseshit facade and call you back when YOU want him to call back?

Well, there are actually some pretty basic things to keep in mind:

1. Guys want girls who they don’t think they fully have. So when he decides to text or call you; wait at least two hours to respond. I know. Rude. But believe me, at first, this kind of stuff seals your deal as the master of the upper hand.

2. When you finally do talk to him, be sure that you’re the one who cuts off the conversation. Don’t let it carry on too long…always leave him wanting more. Because he is a boy and this is all a game. I know, I know, it’s frustrating.

3. Keep your phone off sometimes. It is a flat out FACT that girls love to obsess. So prevent yourself from obsessing at least one hour out of the day by turning that tormenting device OFF. It will drive you crazy at first, but I SWEAR you’ll find it liberating later.

And if these tactics don’t make him call you back sooner than later…DROP IT. My philosophy has always been that if he’s screwing with you in the beginning, he’ll have you begging later on. No one likes a beggar, girls.

I’ve talked about American Apparel before. Those ads that look like porn with bad lighting? Those models who may or may not be underage but who are definitely bored and affected?Well, it gets better.

A contributor for Jezebel (one of the funniest gossip sites out there) recently wrote about her experience working at the enigma that is A. Apparel, proving that it’s not just their ads that are pretensions and strange.

“I thought cocaine was kind of scandalous when I started working at American Apparel. And so I naturally found it kind of scandalous that a major coke dealer actually served as a kind of informal HR chief for many of the American Apparel stores in New York.” The Jezebel story begins, going on to explain about the monstrosity that is Dov Charney—the Canadian founder of A.A.

Stories that Charney “masturbated in front of a reporter, berated girls for not finding him hot enough “pussy” with which to staff his stores, [and] took certain female retail employees as glorified concubines whom he would house in special American Apparel apartments and whose shitty retail wages he would subsidize with special allowances” were all apparently true, as well as his famously annoying voice, which was “shrill and weird and babyish.”

A sex addict with a baby voice who’s also an asshole? Sounds like he could be in the running for one of the worst bosses in the history of retail. Or the world.

When there’s a disgusting idiot helming a company who says things like “It is imperative that the people who wear our clothes are really attractive, vain hipsters, and any priority they exhibit that runs counter to looking really awesome should be a warning sign that maybe they should not work here”, it’s not hard to see why A. Apparel is so ridiculous.

I mean, how can a place have good energy if “vain hipsters” who don’t care about anything except “looking awesome” run things? Sure, the chain is successful, but someday (and someday soon) short shorts for guys and gold bodysuits for girls are going to go out of style.

And nobody will care. Except the people who have closets full of them. They might cry.

Oh, and PS? If you’re ever going to take a journey inside A.A (say perhaps, for Halloween? Which is the only reason I’ve ever gotten close to the Mecca of attitude), make sure to wear earplugs. Unless you really dig booming electropop by artists you’re not cool enough to know.

Like the people surrounding it, the music at American Apparel leaves much to be desired.

He’s more than a crybaby who had a panic attack in jail and was tied up in his own home. He’s more than an obnoxious frat boy in a designer suit.

Joe Francis is a good guy.

At least according to Joe Francis.

Meetjoefrancis.com is the Girls Gone Wild creator’s new online endeavor to show the world that his past behavior was all a misunderstanding…something he’s been plagued by his whole life.

“I’m excited to have this opportunity to introduce myself to you personally.” Francis writes on his homepage.

“Over the years, I’ve gotten used to being misunderstood.”

“From as early as the first grade, when a teacher’s aide took offense at my efforts to get her attention by putting a tack on her chair, to more recently, when a certain Southern judge took a relentless interest in putting me behind bars, it seems that I have been in a constant struggle just to be understood as a regular guy trying to get by in life.”

Putting a tack on someone’s chair to get attention? More like putting a tack on someone’s chair to watch them sit on a tack and laugh.

Francis attempts to continue to defend his ‘gosh darn regular joe’ persona by describing in vivid detail his first childhood crush.

“Miss Davis was a teacher’s assistant. I remember her as a tall, slender woman with great breasts, the face of an angel and the kind of eyes you can lose yourself in. What the hell am I talking about. I was 6. The point is, I was in love.”

6 years old and he’s already thinking about boobs.

You know, Joe? I don’t think you’re misunderstood at all.

You’re exactly what we’ve always thought you were: a self-absorbed ass who thinks he’s awesome.

A 5-foot tall, 42-year-old mother of five from Sussex, England was recently arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a 6-foot tall acquaintance.

Tanya Hutchinson claims that when she and her friend (who can’t be named for legal reasons…and the possibility that women all over the world might want to kill him) climbed into bed at 11 AM on a Thursday afternoon last June, the sex was completely consensual. The man she slept with claimed that Hutchinson dropped date-rape drugs into his wine and molested him.

After cops barged into her house and arrested her in front of her 7-year-old son, they took her back to the station and interrogated her for hours, asking mortifying questions about her sexual escapades with the man in question.

Hutchinson claimed that she had grown close to the man, an old business acquaintance of her husband’s, after her divorce, and a few dates into their relationship came to believe that even though the man was still married, he was separated from his wife.

“He told me that he thought ours would be a special, long-lasting relationship and he spoke of taking me on a trip to Portugal.” Hutchinson said, “I began to believe we had a future together.”

Which was why, when he appeared at her door at 11 AM on that June afternoon with two bottles of wine, she thought it was okay that it was “very clear he was there for sex.”

After the deed was done, the man “started talking about how much he loved his wife and how he would never leave her” Hutchinson explained. “His whole manner changed and he seemed very cold. He got dressed, walked into the kitchen and threw £60 on the table, saying, ‘Buy something for the kids.’ I was horrified that he seemed to be treating me like a prostitute.”

“In the heat of the moment” Hutchinson threatened to tell his wife about the affair.

That’s when the bastard ran to the police, claimed he had been raped, and threw Tanya’s life into a tailspin.

The worst part about the whole event?

A few days after being questioned for hours, having articles of her clothing taken in and tested, and looking like a criminal in front of her child, the police phoned and said that the man claiming rape had “admitted she was telling the truth.”

Crying rape when the accuser is sure it never happened is a despicable act no matter what gender a person is, but when a man falsely indicts a woman he becomes a special sort of vile—not to mention a complete and utter pansy-ass asshole.

Here’s hoping his wife dumped him.

Tucker Max is the author of his—fittingly narcissistic—self-titled website, where he has published over 80 very detailed stories about his ridiculous sex soirées. This guy is a true work of art. He published this disclaimer:

“If you are a reasonably intelligent female, it should be obvious that you don’t want to date me. I am shallow, narcissistic, self-absorbed, and insufferably arrogant. I have no desire to commit to anything beyond a cell phone contract. At any given time, I am fucking multiple women, and will not give up that sexual freedom for a partner.”

He writes the most grotesque (but addictively entertaining) stories about banging midgets, trying anal sex and dating (and getting sued by) Miss Vermont. Oh yea, there was also that story about a girl who tattooed “I fucked Tucker Max” on her vajayjay three hours after meeting him.

He is brutally honest about his offensive intentions, and still, girls make insane efforts to hook up with him. What’s the appeal?

I can’t say for sure. But I’d guess it has something to do with his I-don’t-give-a-f@#k attitude, accompanied by his blogosphere celebrity status.

I’ll admit, after a few days of reading TuckerMax—once my initial disgust subsided—I began to find him attractive. He’s an extremely witty writer who gets more famous each day, which has something to do with the attractiveness-factor. But, really, the fact that he nonchalantly gets more ass than any guy I know—and doesn’t even try—is a turn-on.

So, yea, I would totally hook up with Tucker Max. However, the night would not end with a tattoo…

Would you hook up with Tucker Max?

Are you kidding me? Ever hear of something called self-respect?

Absolutely, I want a story written about me!