One man's night out with a pack of Manhattan mantrappers
By MARK McCLUSKY
NEW YORK CITY --I have seen the heart of darkness, folks, and it's filled with well-dressed women, packing themselves like Chanel-soaked sardines into a Barnes & Noble on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. They suffer the crowds and the scrutiny of television cameras from "Dateline NBC" and "20/20" for an audience with their gurus Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, the authors of "The Rules," a best-selling guide to "Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right."
The basic premise of this bizarre combination of Pavlovian psychology and Danielle Steel romance is this: Men are driven by a biological necessity to chase women, to respond to the challenge of the hunt. "In a relationship," Fein and Schneider write, "the man must take charge. We are not making this up -- biologically, he's the aggressor."
A Rules girl makes this easy for the man by never initiating anything. She doesn't make the first move, she doesn't pay on dates, she ends all phone calls after ten minutes. This behavior "trains" the man to call for dates early in the week and to dote on their companion. After several months, the Rules leave him "conditioned" to feel that the only way to have access to her is to marry her, which is, after all, the big goal.
The crowd, the largest ever for a book signing at this branch, is filled with women who looked like television news anchors--just so in appearance and demeanor. Of course, this is part of the Rules. "Don't leave the house without wearing makeup," Fein and Schneider write. "Put lipstick on even when you go jogging!" But after a moment of sizing up the crowd, one begins to sense a desperation about these women. They look accomplished; I imagine that many are successful professionals. But they aren't married, and they obviously view that as a failure. Thankfully for them, Fein and Schneider's book guarantees success. "What we are promising you," they write, "is 'happily ever after.'"
Launching into a brief presentation, Fein and Schneider drill the crowd on how to go about their manhunt. When they start to take questions, a woman asks if she is failing when she doesn't do the Rules, like when she calls a man back promptly. "We're not being judgmental," Fein says. "We're just saying that chasing men and calling them doesn't work."
Most of the crowd nods enthusiastically. I start to feel increasingly uncomfortable as I notice many of the women in the room looking at me. Some look askance at me, clearly intruding on their club. But others make eye contact, hold it a moment, and then smile. It's disconcerting to have women flirt with you at a signing of a book which claims to teach them how to land a husband. I wonder how the authors would feel about this, as looking at a man is strictly against the Rules (Rule #3: Don't Stare at Men or Talk Too Much).
"It's usually the New York City-type -- smart, tough, successful -- that breaks the Rules," Fein continues. Here is a roomful of that type of woman, looking for step-by-step instruction in an area of life where there are no Rules, no hard and fast formula for happiness. Love isn't accounting or computer programming, no matter how much we would all like it to be. Fein and Schneider have merely managed to convince a lot of women that there is a set of behaviors that always works. Who wouldn't find that seductive? I just find it sad that Fein and Schneider play on their hopes and insecurity to the tune of $250 an hour for phone consultation.
As the authors start to sign books, many disgusted women leave. "It's 1996 and I'm a girl?" says one woman of the authors' habit of using the juvenile noun. But the true believers are still inside, getting their books inscribed and asking Fein and Schneider for answers to questions such as, "If he doesn't call me after a date, can I call him?" The answer is, of course, no.
A man challenges Fein, calling the Rules cynical and manipulative. He is asked if he's married, and, after he says no, he's dismissed by a woman from the crowd who says, "Men want to blame the Rules for their own inadequacies."
The crowd mills around. A baby is introduced to the authors as a product of the Rules. Perfume stings my eyes. Then, a reporter asks Schneider why their book has been so successful.
"The Rules work," she says. "It's the truth, like the laws of physics or gravity."
It's a neat trick to sell 400,000 copies of a book revealing the revolutionary dating philosophy of Playing Hard to Get. But if the Rules are like gravity, it seems to me that Fein and Schneider have been hit on the head with a few too many apples.
Mark McClusky is the associate editor of New Media at Sports Illustrated.
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