Should be followed by "in men's wildest dreams."

 Fear not, Gentle Readers, I had to type that out very carefully, and I never studied Middle English beyond a parallel text of Chaucer, so this poor, feeble homage to the Wyf of Bathe will be in my very own 21st-century words (with maybe just a little smidgen more Chaucer).

What do women want indeed?  What the knight-rapist (seriously, the whole quest is a punishment for rape) learns is that women want self-determination.  So you read that, and you think Chaucer was mighty progressive for a relatively well-off chap in the fourteenth century.  But then you keep reading, and the payoff is that the old crone who teaches the knight-rapist this lesson presents him with a choice at the end--she can either be ugly and faithful or beautiful and cheat on him with every guy who comes down the pike. 

Having learned his lesson and kept his head on his shoulders, the knight rapist leaves it up to her choice--so far so good.  But then she chooses to be both beautiful and faithful.  Right.  The narrator is a female, but oh, in case we somehow forgot, the writer is male.  Now the Wyf of Bathe goes on to conclude in a seemingly proto-feminist vein: "and Jesu Crist us sende / Housbondes meke, yonge, and fresshe a-bedde, / And grace t'overbyde hem that we wedde. / And eek I preye Jesu shorte hir lyves / That wol nat be governed by hir wyves."

But the older I get, the more the Wyf of Bathe's Tale strikes me as accidental(?) chauvinism in the guise of feminsim.  For example, we've all read the news and commentary articles that look at different statistics and sociological trends and conclude that what the Pill and Roe vs. Wade have actually done is to make life easier and sex stringless for men because sex no longer includes the ever-present possibility of having to man up and support a family, and it's seen as the woman's fault if a pregnancy does happen, and it's almost socially acceptable for a man who doesn't want the responsibility to pressure a woman into an abortion.

And by the way, if you want to debate that whole issue, go elsewhere.  There are plenty of good interpretations of various social consequences of Roe vs. Wade and the Pill out there; the above happens to be one that I agree with and one that works well within this non-anorexic woman's riff on Chaucer.   Also, I don't like abortion, but you won't see me second guessing it in cases of rape, incest, and medical necessity. 

So . . .

Back in the 14th century, birth control was a lot more creative and a lot less reliable, and men had even more social control than they do today (at least as a non-anorexic, unmarriageable woman today, I can own my own house rather than enter a nunnery, live on the charity of relatives, or beg by a roadside). 

In that world, while seeming to give us a brave, proto-feminist plotline, Chaucer gives us a thoroughly despicable male who (a) rapes one woman; (b) gets spared the death penalty he's earned for that rape at the behest of another woman; and (c) ends up with the love, devotion, and eternal beauty of another woman who is fantastically wise and apparently possesses magical powers . . . remind me again what gender the narrator of this story is supposed to be? (Wyf of Bathe as female misogynist . . . hmmmm . . . wanders off to library)

Anyway, if I had access to the kind of powerful magic that the woman who turns herself from crone to faithful beauty apparently possesses, I would dismember (pun intended) the knight-rapist with laser beams from my eyeballs and then turn him over to the original king and queen for execution.  Pre-execution, in the immortal words of Florence King, I'd insist that his victim be allowed to flog him "until . . . her arm gets tired."  Then I'd magic myself healthy and strong and use some of my other powers to find a man who would always find me beautiful and who would always be faithful to me.  Mr. Chaucer, wherever you are, you do not know what women want.   In fact, as I suspect below, I think it's men who don't know what they want.

And yes, I am bitter.  A few years ago, after a lifetime of non-anorexia (though nothing near obesity; women two times my size and more get married every day, do. not. GET. ME. STARTED!) and the resultant invisibility to men, I was able to get myself into a size 4.  My ribs were visible.  When my hand brushed my neck, like when I was putting my hair up, I could feel individual vertebrae.  Now this involved eating probably less than 1,000 calories a day and neglecting my real work (I no longer cared about grad school) in order to do more exercise, so of course it wasn't sustainable. 

I also ended up with an ulcer--trust me, you have not lived until you've had to go lie down in spectacular pain for two hours after eating a bite of tomato--which necessitated returning to eating more normal food, and sapped the energy needed for excessive workouts . . . so yeah, you can't see my ribs anymore.  And I need to eat normally in order to have the energy to maintain my life and career.  And when you live alone, and appliances need fixing, you can't head off for a run around the neighborhood.  You have to sit very still for hours at a time fiddling with tools and fixing said appliances.  And then you are tired, and then you go to bed.  Sometimes you even eat--wait for it--a whole bowl of soup first.  None of this contributes to rib visibility.  And yes, I spend at least five minutes of every day feeling angry and sad at myself for not still being a size 4 with visible ribs.  Then, usually, something in my GI tract starts burning, and I have to eat some bread and butter, drink some ginger ale, lie down, and pray that the pain will stop. 

It's also hard to feel motivated to manage the reallocation of time and resources and ignoring of pain (yes, I am that person who once jogged on a blister until I bled all the way through the outside of my shoe) that it would necessitate to make my ribs starkly visible once again because I have a considerable amount of evidence that even visible ribs don't ultimately get the male attention that they're supposed to be necessary for. 

In the days when I was getting into a size 4, The First (see "Opposite of Seven-Year Itch" post) and I were still occasionally hooking up, as neither of us had yet found a serious relationship, so he was best qualified to assess my physical changes.  One night I basically hounded him for an opinion, and he was in favor of the new me, but he finished up with an all-too-enthusiastic-for-my-liking, "You looked good the first time I saw  you."  In the moment, I shoved my tongue back down his throat, but inside my mind I was screaming, "Then why the hell have I been eating so little I get dizzy and going to bed hungry every night in a first world country, you, you, you . . . man?"

Around this time, I was also interested in another guy.  In my eyes, he was going to be The One (not to be confused with the actual One, referenced elsewhere).  So I was walking around in a size 4 with visible ribs, being intelligent, being a woman who actually likes sports, being a woman who can use power tools and mix an excellent martini, being a woman who could discuss careers, religion, history, philosophy, and politics, wearing An Outfit every time I left the house and keeping my hair and makeup just so (with ribs always visible), and . . . nothing.  I've told The One (the actual One) that I would live on broth and have visible ribs or die trying, but this whole experience made me believe that even that might never be enough.  That nothing can ever be enough for men.  Maybe Chaucer, as a man wondering what women want, really couldn't see that side of it. 

But really now--what do women want, mon oeil.  This woman gave men everything they're supposed to want; I haven't the energy left to try it again. 

I've been out of both high school and college long enough that people I know are marrying and having children--the kind of existence-validating human partnerships that happen to fictional knight-rapists, but not to lovely non-anorexic women (who still happen to wear a single-digit clothing size for gosh sakes) who can both discuss sports and do very complicated laundry. 

I look at these people who are getting married and having families, especially the women, and yes, there are the anorexically thin and properly feminine among them, so at least I can look at that and say, "Right.  I was never competing in your league anyway.  You are the Damn Y****** and I am the Durham Bulls." 

But then there are the other women, some of whom put me in the shade in other ways (talent, kindness, bravery, creativity), but most of whom don't necessarily zip up smaller jeans than I do (and some of whom would need a month in a sweat lodge to get into my jeans), and don't necessarily have any special qualities that I don't . . . and yet they're marrying and having kids.  They're being legitimized.  They're being made real.  I'm frickin' Pinocchio, home with my laptop writing under the name of a fictional, androgynous female whose own marriage and child-rearing take place outside the covers of her book and are destined to end unhappily. 

Much of the previous paragraph, by the way, is why there will never be worldwide feminist revolution.  From the day we're born, we're in competition with every other female to be the thinnest one in the room.  If I hadn't gotten sick, I'd still be all the way in that competition, enjoying every piece of power visible ribs got me over other women; I'm no saint.  Trust me, in a social situation, some empty-headed girl wearing a size 2 would have more power over the other women in the room than, say, Secretary of State Clinton.

So, Mr. Chaucer, "What thing is it that wommen most desyren?" 

For me, it's a man who will go along with the "makes her own choices" part of Chaucer, and love me just as unconditionally as I will love him, and from that love will spring the faithfulness, and the belief that the lover is beautiful, and the invisibility to his eyes of every other woman in the world, anorexic or no . . . the man who will make me know, once and for all, that I am loved.

Hark, I hear a rustling at one of my upstairs windows.  I'll have to let my flying pet pig in for the night.  What?  It's about as likely as both the Wyf of Bathe's Tale and what this woman wants.

***Yes, I know that real anorexia is a terrible disease.  This is creative writing, not social policy.***