7 Things Women Don’t Need to Do Because Men Ask Them To

Lineisy Montero during New York Fashion Week

Ladies: Have you ever wondered how a guy who has never walked in your sneakers and hasn’t a clue about what it feels like to be you thinks you should act? Of course not. Because men offer us their hot takes all of the time. The latest in this long line of unsolicited advice comes from a self-anointed dating guru at the guy site The Modern Man.

“These days, many women walk around playing with a smartphone or tablet device and are often wearing headphones and listening to music at the same time,” he wrote. “Yet, that doesn’t mean you can’t talk to them.” Actually, more often than not, that is precisely what it means. But that doesn’t stop the author from filling an entire article with tips for pursuing women in headphones. Especially if she is single (read: pitiful), he notes, “she will usually be happy to take off her headphones to give you an opportunity to create a spark with her.” To start, simply “wave your hand in her direct line of vision so she can see it,” and “confidently ask, ‘Can you take off your headphones for a minute?’ ” he advises. Should she not “understand”—either because the female brain is feeble or, let’s be honest, she’s ignoring you—“gesture that you want to talk to her by pointing back and forth from you to her and say, ‘I want to talk to you for a minute.’ ”

This is just the latest piece of bad advice—dispatched by men—on how women should act in public. Here, a handy list of seven things women don’t have to do simply because men are asking them to:

1. Remove their headphones. You are under no obligation whatsoever to stop whatever you’re listening to—2 Dope Queens or Fresh Air or The Underground Railroad book on tape—and instantly take out your Beats By Dre to indulge the whims of the stranger before you. (If we are sitting in the same coffee shop and you look like a young Leo DiCaprio, don’t worry: An interested woman will pre-emptively remove her earbuds to make herself available to you.) Otherwise, we can’t hear you, or the catcallers on the corner.

2. “Smile!” The fastest way to make a woman snarl at you? Demand she “smile.” Have you ever considered that she may have resting bitch face and is actually smiling on the inside? Or that her cat may be dying or she just re-watchedBeaches? Or, most likely, she’s having a shitty day? Women do not have to walk around in public with the prettiest, most pleasing facial expression, according to men.

3. Be quiet. Lest she be deemed “shrill.” Go ahead, be as loud as Bernie Sanders on any given night of the primary season!

4. “Cover up.” Because women who wear latex bandage dresses or who free the nipple are asking for attention—or far worse. Showing skin, to quote Clueless, is not an “unequivocal sex invite.”

5. “Take it off.” Your burkini is obviously an unspecified security threat, or per former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, a “provocation.” As J. K. Rowling tweeted this week: “Whether women cover or uncover their bodies, seems we’re always, always ‘asking for it.’ ”

6. Stop at two drinks. Because when women drink too much, men can take advantage of them. See: the Stanford rape case; the school’s “Female Bodies and Alcohol” page (since taken down), which said, “women who are seen drinking alcohol are perceived to be more sexually available than they may actually be,” while men who have been drinking “feel sexually aroused and are more responsive to erotic stimuli, including rape scenarios.” So, stop drinking, ladies. But, men, by all means, never change!

7. Tolerate manspreading. One person, one subway (or bus or train) seat. No extras for guys, or their gym bags.