Savvy Women

A little background: I have a huge music collection that I’ve put together over the years, mostly by downloading MP3 CDs from Amazon.com. My tastes are very eclectic.

Not long ago, while browsing Amazon’s music store, I discovered, completely by accident, a group called Dengue Fever, an up-and-coming rock band based in LA, California. I listened to some samples of their work online and immediately purchased two of their CDs.

Dengue Fever’s secret weapon is Chhom Nimol, a physically tiny Cambodian émigré who has a voice like none that I’ve ever heard before. As a matter of fact, she foregrounds herself as soon as she opens her mouth, and her fellow band members, the big American guys with their various instruments, fade into the background. Her vocalizations become the driving force, moving the music forward. The other members of DF are back there, somewhere, but I have to try hard to notice them because that voice is just so enthralling.

This first video is a recording of Dengue Fever performing my favor song, “Sleepwalking through the Mekong.” The sheer otherworldliness of Chhom’s voice comes through loud and clear in this one. The photo is one of Chhom, the one that appeared on the CD cover.

As you’ll see in this next clip, she also sings in English and occasionally shares the microphone with Zac Holtzman, the group’s lead guitarist and lyricist. What you’ll see is an unplugged rendition of “Tiger Phone Card” and was shot by an outfit called Balcony TV, as Dengue Fever prepped for a gig in Dublin, Ireland.

I found this CNN video that asks the age-old question: Why do women find “bad boys” so attractive? As you’ll see when you watch it, the three youngish women who appear early in the video are asked about Don Draper, the character in Mad Men, a new American TV drama series. Draper is supposed to represent the archetypical “Bad Boy,” and the three drool all over themselves as they talk about him. They refer to him as “mysterious,” “confident” and “magnetic.” One says (I’m paraphrasing) that he is the type you know you should avoid but can’t.

  So I did a little follow-up Googling and found tons and tons of articles that claim   that women love such men and find them irresistible. What I didn’t find, though,   are serious research pieces that attempted to quantify this phenomenon. For   example, I didn’t find anything–it may be out there but I just didn’t see it–that talks   about the percentage of women who find these sorts attractive. Is it all women?   Some women? A majority? A few?

  Even Dr. Gail Saltz, the psychiatrist who appears in the video, keeps talking about   ”women” when she discusses this issue. By saying it this way, she gives the   impression that this is a universal attraction, that ALL women feel this way about   ”bad boys.”

  OK, I’m not a psychiatrist (nor do I play one on TV) but my gut tells me that some   women find these types of men attractive. Some don’t. Some prefer “good boys” in   the same way some women prefer blonds to brunettes.

My instinct tells that there’s something very harmful about thinking of women in such broad-brush, simplistic ways because if there’s one thing I can be certain about, it’s that all women everywhere, are complex.