Attention, inculpable former English majors who dutifully cherish their libraries. We have a frightening announcement about men, women, and things they whisper to get you between their sinful sheets!
They lie. About the books that they (don’t) read. To get you to bone them! Zut allors!
Populus for the National Year of Reading campaign polled 1,500 people to find, shockingly, that half of men and one-third of women spin deceitful falsehoods about what they’ve read to impress “friends or potential partners.” One in five do it right before a date — so you see that signifier dangling, and think, “Oh, he likes Nine Stories, he must be so wounded and wise, and self-analytical, and will maybe hold my sweaty hand lovingly at the movies.” It’s a scam, we tell ya! A damned scam!
Honor Wilson-Fletcher, director of the National Year of Reading
campaign, said: “Reading is a brilliant tool for self-expression.“I love the fact that every generation seems to know that it
can help us all increase our potential appeal in the search for love
and romance.“For all the talk of our superficial obsession with beauty, it
looks like underneath it all we know that brains contribute to sex
appeal too.”
People exaggerate brains the same way they, like, put on make-up or buy expensive clothes or take MySpace pictures from their “good” angle?! It’s only 2008. We don’t know if we’re ready for this. We blame it all, naturally, on Tina Fey.
[BBC News]