Unpopular Opinion

     This is my opinion for what that is worth, and I have no desire to offend anyone in the sisterhood of...you know...women!
     I've been thinking, for awhile now, about this subject, due to a couple of books I have read and personal observation....
     Bad boys. I could write for days about the vampire craze and when in the world did "horror" figures become romanticized, and why? But I won't go there, as it is fairly obvious that I am mostly a "lone wolf" on the subject. For all of my dear friends and readers (if indeed I have any readers), who feel differently, that's fine. We can still be friends!! We maybe just can't discuss vampires.
     Or "50 Shades of Grey". I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I read it. All three books. I wasn't going to. I KNEW it would be a mistake, but there was all that HYPE, and so many people RAVING about it, and my curiosity got the best of me. After I was done hating the first one, I read the second, thinking that with all that raving going on, surely it would get better. Not, but I hung in there until the bitter end.
     Which brings us back to "bad boys". What is it with us girls and "bad boys"? I count myself in, btw, but after years of blood, sweat, and experience, I have an entirely different view.
     It seems like "we" like the "bad boys", but then we want them to be good boyfriends, partners, husbands. Reality is, a bad boy is going to be a bad boyfriend, partner, husband, and then we're  surprised by that!  The other side of the coin: "oh, he's too NICE." I know, right? How tragic would that be, to be with someone who is NICE to us?!
     I haven't always been a big fan of reality.  Isn't there a song that says something about, reality is a nice place to visit, but I don't want to live there? I dig fantasy and escapism myself, but it doesn't hurt to visit reality once in awhile. It is my own "lone wolf" opinion that all those "romance" novels (which I refuse to read anymore, although they were once my first choice for reading material) are a disservice. Honestly, the whole formula (that is wildly popular and obviously works) seems ridiculous to me. "I hate you, but I have to have you!" And i'm pretty sure that ordinary folks who aren't astoundingly attractive or unbelievably wealthy can have love and happy lives. I am almost always more interested in the side stories going on and want to know more about THEM. Besides all that, it perpetuates the whole myth of the "bad boy" guy who is secretly not so bad or is just misunderstood and eventually turns into this fabulous romantic husband. Sometimes i'm afraid that my eyes are going to stay stuck in the back of my head, I roll them so hard! 
   Make that a double for "50 shades". I KNOW I am going to get grief for this, as I have some VERY good friends who I love SO much who loved this story. (I see that it is being made into a "big screen" movie!!!!) ????  The idea that this man who is SOOO irreversibly damaged.....so much so that an entire childhood-into-adulthood with a wonderful stable family and ALLLLL those years of intensive, expensive therapy didn't help overcome the first four years of his life...is going to be changed by a not very interesting girl is so ludicrous to me!
     Honest injun, I don't know what planet I came from, but I just don't get it.
I do love the saying "follow your heart, but take your head with you". I wish we could actually believe that. Our "hearts" and "feelings" are unreliable and subject to being misled by hormones and brain chemistry blips.
     *end of rant