This is probably a factor. It’s a common pattern seen in sexual selection all over the animal world; once something becomes established as a desirable trait for any reason, the simple fact that is is desirable makes it desirable, in a self-reinforcing loop. If women typically like “bad boys”, or tall men, or whatever then the fact that other women find those traits attractive makes them advantageous in Darwinian terms to a woman seeking a mate.
Wow, there’s some romanticised views of “bad boys” in this thread!
A “bad boy” seems to me to be one who treats you badly. Certainly this seems to be the case with the women I know who love them - it’s not a blue collar thing, or an unconvential lifestyle thing; you get suit-wearing corperate types who are “bad boys”. They are womanising, unreliable, likely to break hearts - and a certain kind of woman can’t get enough of them. They tend to either have a “heroine” complaex (“I can change him, I can save him from himself”), or crippingly low esteem which leads them to believe that they deserve such treatment.
I’ve never really got it myself. I’m far from perfect, but I know I deserve to be treated with love and respect, and never really wasted my time on men who didn’t agree.
[quote=“Polerius, post:19, topic:573715”]
[li]Sexual inhibition may not be a problem for you, and so you don’t need the guy to make you feel free to go crazy in bed, but I would assume there are women who do have some inhibitions about totally going wild, and being with a bad boy makes it easier on them to do so.[/li][/QUOTE]
I dislike bad boys, but part of the reason I do is that they’re likely to try to push me beyond where I want to go; another is that most of them scream “fake” to me. I’ve also had several experiences where guys who might have been classified as “bad boys” wanted me to do something and backpedaled when I spelled-out what seemed to me like a perfectly reasonable condition (“your condom or mine?”).
To push boundaries, I need to be with a guy who’s not trying to force me into any roles: that goes for “bad boys” and “saintly guys” both.
I think you nailed it with this explanation. My first husband was a nice guy and I was bored to tears with him within 6 months of our marriage. Not just sexually, but in every way. He was so eager to please me that he would not even voice an opinion about anything without first finding out how I felt about the issue so that he could agree with me. There was no challenge for me. It was like having a parrot.
I always thought women went for the BB type because of the BB’s self confidence. Its been mentioned in multiple threads by many different women here that self confidence is sexy.
I think part of the mindset that makes some women want so-called bad boys maybe is they’ve never really had a strong yet respectful male presence in their lives, and the dichotomy boils down to “guys who use me” vs. “guys I can use.”
E.g.,
That’s not a “nice guy,” that’s just a wimp.
You might as well be asking why do men like bad boys. Society celebrates men who are irreverent, wild, and promiscuous. Masculine “badness” is worshipped in our culture, even when its clearly self-destructive and juvenile. All you have to do is look at the types of movies that bring in the biggest dollars. Look at the following that Charlie Sheen keeps even after his disturbing melt downs (and his hair…seriously). A day after his children are taken away from him by the authorities, does he act remorseful, ashamed that his conduct has him branded as an unfit parent? No, of course not. The very next day he’s on the mic acting like a delusional, coked out buffoon, and the applause he receives is much greater than any condemnation. Only in a society which rewards bad bays could we expect this behavior.
I think Pookah is right, but I’ll go one further: Women who are attracted to bad boys are no different than the men who look up to bad boys. Both groups want to live vicariously through the bad boy by being included in his world. Bad boys are “cool”, as the movies lead us to believe. But it takes a little maturity and self-awareness to step outside of the program and see bad boys as they truly are.
Sex may have something to do with it, but only as a consequence of psychology. In pure mechanics, sex with bad boys is usually bad because they tend to be selfish, arrogant lovers. But when you’re high on infactuation, it’s easy to fool yourself into thinking its the greatest.
For my definition of women attracted to “bad boys,” I can’t help but think of some old, old SDMB history back in my lurking days. There was a poster named kellibelli who had some long drawn out drama with her on again, off again boyfriend (whom in off-again periods she named “shitboy”) who would do stuff like harass her at her trailer park, driving her to near hysterics (and driving her to this board for {{{{hugs}}}} and “you go, girl!” all around.) Just a few months later, she’s cooing over an inmate penpal site and saying she was going to “write to some of them.” And a couple of other female posters joined in to appreciate how some of them were cute or had “nice bods.”
Yeeeaah.
So your definition of a bad boy is basically “not a total tool”.
Really that’s not far off. Women don’t want a “bad boy”. They want someone who is confident, assertive, courageous, protective and maybe a bit creative and fun. A lot of men are total pussies. They give off an air of patheticness. Why would a woman want someone like that?
It’s funny; from my 44 year old perspective, “bad boys” are the ones who look like total tools. 
I think the OP’s hypothesis has some merit, but I also see the Nice Guy/Bad Boy thing as a false dichotomy, and one that gets a lot of women hurt.
Most men I know are a mix of the two. My man is like a bad boy in that he doesn’t talk to his family, isn’t a corporate drone, doesn’t “dress to impress”, doesn’t kowtow to me, doesn’t want all of the toys that he’s “supposed to”, and, well, in bed.
However, he’s a nice guy in that he’s fiscally responsible, honest, is respectful and loving to me, is respectful to friends, etc.
We allow and encourage nonconformists to be jerks, like they always have to go together. So women want a guy who’s willing to break the mold, and expect they have to put up with crap.
Huh?
Every woman who knows me would describe me as a “nice guy”. That despite the fact I will match her shot for shot, I will laugh when a woman swears like a sailor, I am happy to know she is not a prude, thrilled if I don’t have to explain everything (intelligent women are sexy) and happy she knows her rights.
You are describing guys with a pole up their ass. That is not the same thing as a “nice guy”.
Also, I have alternated between “bad boy” and “nice guy” so often my head is constantly spinning. To two recent girlfriends, I’ve been the unattainable don’t-give-a-shit-if-I-hear-from-you-or not bad boy, and they were besieging me with good wishes, how-are-you-feeling? e-mails, invitations to parties, cooked meals brought to my apartment, etc. all because I plainly wasn’t interested in them, and they took a VERY long time to get the message. But my previous GF, whom I was crazy about and couldn;t stop myself from showing it at every opportunity, saw that she could treat me like dirt, and ultimately did.
I think we need to be careful with this idea that every woman is looking for a healthy, balanced, committed, long term relationship and if she is not (as shown by dating “bad guys”) then she must be crazy/stupid/deluded/whatever.
Plenty of women, whether they admit it to themselves or not, are looking for a good-times man. I think if society had more ways to women to express their sexuality, they might be able to fulfill that without having to try to mould a non-committed relationship into something that looks like them. Anyway, it’s not rocket science to see who is and is not marriage material. I think women who choose guys that clearly are not marriage material know somewhere in their hearts what is up, and to some degree want that. Maybe they are scared of and avoiding settling down, and consciously or subconsciously choose guys that they know they aren’t gong to do that with.
I think it’s later in the process where they (or hell, both parties) may start to try to make it into something it’s not and bad feelings come about.
A lot of it probably also falls to the woman’s own expectations and projections onto the guy. In Taiwan, a lot of the more “countrified” girls would consider a foreigner – any foreigner – a “bad boy” by definition. Tee hee! I’m bucking societal norms and going craaaazy by being seen in public with this Westerner! Meanwhile, the tie wearing crewcut Western kindergarten teacher is like, "uh, OK . . . " Kind of like college girls who start dancing around and exclaiming “oooh, I’m so drunk!” after one Corona.
FWIW my only female friend who ever self-identified as having a thing for “bad boys” apparently meant muscular, tattooed, blue-collar types. (It occurs to me that she may have been looking for a man who was the opposite of her father, who was short, conservative, and an executive.) She dated some men with this look who were jerks and some who were nice enough. She is now happily married to a muscular, tattooed mechanic who is a thoroughly decent guy.
It’s interesting that you posted this. I remember a post by you (here it is), where you said that back in Spain you and the local girls used the foreign male tourists to try stuff in bed that you would never let the Spanish guys do with you (You said: “Those same girls would have made a local guy jump through enough loops to count as an Olympic sport”)
I guess one way to look at the OP is that it is the hypothesis that “bad boys” play, for some women, the role that those foreign tourists played for you, i.e. allow some women to try out some things for which those same women would have “made a non-bad boy jump through enough loops to count as an Olympic sport”.
I think that changes for a lot of people as they get older, too, possibly without them even realizing it. You can date all the bad boys you want in your twenties, but once you hit your thirties and clocks start ticking and marriage and settling down starts sounding like a good thing, it’s entirely possible for tastes to change.
EX-cuse ME!
I did NOT EVER use foreigners to try out sex tricks. I said other girls would.
And those girls were not looking for “bad boys”, they were looking for sex without compromise, which is a completely different animal. And a large part of their reasoning to try those tricks on a no-strings-attached guy was so they’d be able to do it well when they did it with their man; another part was being able to decide whether they liked a specific act which they were curious about or not without risking having their man like it, themselves not, and that causing a conflict.
Learn.
To.
Read.
Most bad boys aren’t worth half a fuck, much less a complete one.
In this very thread some people defined bad boys as foreigners who therefore don’t follow the rules of the culture. You may not define them as bad boys, but some people seem to.
I also think your linked post was unclear. You never said whether the group of girls who did this included yourself or not. Your disdain for those women implies it, but many people have disdain for how they were previously.
IOW, I don’t think he was trying to insult you. He just didn’t understand. And I hope I’m not overstepping my bounds by pointing this out.