Shelf girls (n) – from the Latin meaning girls who inhabit a space most commonly used to store things (i.e. books, games)
The first term was dropped over yesterday’s sushi lunch with my friend Andrea. We were talking about some relationship-related issue when Andrea let me in on her shelf girl theory. There’s nothing I love more than a succinct categorization for a frustrating interpersonal phenomenon (see: quarter life crisis), so I was all ears slash mental notepad.
According to Andrea (and this write-up on a blog she later sent me) there is a type of girl that a guy keeps around because he thinks there’s a chance that when he’s ready to settle down, she’ll be a good pick. This could be a girl he meets out at a bar and gets to know over a couple dates. This could be a girl he’s known his entire life. Either way, the guy generally won’t get into any form of legitimate relationship with the girl because he’s not looking to complicate things with her – yet.
And so he quasi strings her along – a hang-out here, a hook-up there, a dinner date from time-to-time – keeping her close enough for comfort but far enough from what he knows he’s not ready for – so, on the shelf, if you will.
Andrea thinks certain girls are prone to being shelf girls. They’re friendly, agreeable, easy-going girls who enjoy attention but don’t demand more right off the bat. They’re the girls you know your Mom would love – stable jobs, stable lives. It’s not that they’re not exciting, it’s just that they don’t exude that X-factor that makes your average bachelor go wild. They’re the girls you settle down with.
I can definitely see it. There’s a chance I’ve technically been it, and the whole thing makes a lot of sense. My question is: do the guys placing these girls on their mental shelves do it knowingly? Or it is more of a unconscious act of relationship self-defense?
Man-children (n) also from the Latin? meaning men who are very much like children
This one came via the bi-weekly assignments e-mail my editor at MyDaily.com sends us freelance writers. “Looking for A short post on Why a Good Man Is Hard to Find: Do You know a Man-Child? With a write up on what exactly a man-child is, and how to spot one, based on this new book.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the term, but it was the first time I was challenged to define it.
What, exactly, is a man-child? How do they act differently than either man or children? And what about them makes them so wildly up-datable.
I think the easiest place to start is to say that a man-child is a child who never grew up and yet is physically grown up. A 40-year-old who still plays video games for hours a day. A guy in his mid-thirties who doesn’t know how to take a woman on a legitimate date. A 25-year-old who bring his laundry home for his Mom to handle.
But these are Judd Apatow movie examples – evidence of what a man-child would do, not the definition of who a man-child is as a person. In reality there’s a range of man-child just like any other developmental stereo-type (angsty teen, wild 20-something, menopausal woman). In my mind a man-child is a man who is electing against or blind to the possibility of reaching the major milestones of adulthood. Some people struggle to get there for various, legitimate reasons. Other people avoid getting there because it’s not fun to deal with certain elements of adulthood. I think a true man-child either doesn’t think it’s necessary to be an adult man or doesn’t know the difference between man and child. He’s irresponsible. He’s impulse driven. He doesn’t have a wild sense of what the future should/can/will hold. He behaves either recklessly or with a total lack of motivation.
Regarding what makes him so wildly un-datable – where do I start… I wrote about the differences between boys, guys and men awhile back. That should provide some insight. But to keep it simple, my rule of thumb: if a guy is still hanging posters on his wall with a device similar to thumb tacks things aren’t looking good. If that poster is the one of Bob Marley smoking week, run for the hills.
Post your own ideas for what makes up a man-child in comments. I need to file the article by Monday AM, and I’d love some feedback slash stories from you all.
Same goes for your thoughts on the shelf-girl phenomenon. Have you been one? Are you currently being one? And are you the kind of guy who puts them there? Perhaps there’s another article in that.
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Oh, I don’t think you need to limit man-child behavior solely to the obviously-not-grown-up can-barely-do-own-laundry types. I know lots of functioning adult men in their 30s who still pull man-child behavior (and god knows women too, but that’s a whole different issue). I think it’s a guy who, for whatever reason, hasn’t had to make hard choices. His current lifestyle (whatever that might be – weed and video games, sure, but really anything) suits him just fine, he has a tendency to get out of personal jams just fine, and he’s so used to that that it’s actually difficult for him to make choices that might limit or affect some of that life. He wants to get married, but can’t commit to pursue it in a way that means he WILL get married, because that would mean hard choices. He has enough money and time to live comfortably, act somewhat irresponsibly and get away with it, and could be a good guy – but you have to be prepared to call him on his bullshit. Constantly. And ready to walk away.
I also think a man child will do anything to avoid picking a career. School is like a latent form of his mother’s womb. And he is doing whatever he can to stay there.
I dated a guy who was finishing up his 2nd masters degree – a Full Time MBA (read: not working anywhere, living in his grandparents house, and sucking off student loans to live), and suddenly decided to apply for flight school because after all that schooling he thought being a pilot sounded fun…at age 27.
I am all for career changes and risks…but you sort of need to enter the real world at some point for it to technically be considered a career change.
“if a guy is still hanging posters on his wall with a device similar to thumb tacks things aren’t looking good. If that poster is the one of Bob Marley smoking week, run for the hills.”
LOVE IT!
I agree with Hautemess, I know several “men-children” who are 26/27 and haven’t finished their undergrad yet because they took several breaks during the college years to travel, “rest”, or party full-time. I also know another man-child who quit his lucrative engineering job after 2 years of full-time work so that he could travel, live on communes, and bike the country for the past 3 years. I would say that a good defintion of men-children are men that avoid routine at all costs. Any kind of routine, be it relationship, job-related or school. A man-child also has no concerns about his future and is perpetually living “day by day,” usually on someone else’s (read: parents’) dime.
Wow, a lot of man-child-hate here. Just from a guy’s perspective, I cringe when I see stuff like this that criticizes guys for stuff like playing videogames. How is a guy who plays an hour of videogames at night worse than a girl who watches an hour of reality TV? I just think there is too much of this surface-level type analysis that goes on. At the end of the day, I know plenty of guys who play videogames and have Star Wars posters who also have good jobs and would make / are great boyfriends. Similarly, there are plenty of guys with swanky apartments and who are intensely career-driven who are assholes.
About the shelf-girl thing, again, this is the guy perspective, but I think the problem tends to be that these girls often send very mixed signals. Look, I’ve had “shelf-girl” friends who I would have loved to have gone out with, but I could never tell if they wanted that or if they were just content to be friends. At some point, you get sick of the ambiguity and move on to a girl who very clearly wants to be MORE than friends. I think that women tend to hold 90% of the power in these situations, even if they don’t realize it, because a guy making an unwanted move can really be frowned upon, whereas let’s face it, is there such a thing as a girl making an unwanted move? Not really.
You should tell Andrea nottt to act psycho – if a man isn’t calling her he certainly doesn’t want to have a serious chat with her about why he chose not to call. Men are not like women! I can basically guarantee he would have turned up within 2 weeks had she not acted crazy texting AND leaving voicemails. I actually wished I was her friend and could’ve advised her against that behavior.
Good points all around. Staying in school is indeed an overlooked sign of manchild-ness. I suspect that, even though people often use video games or Star Wars as signs of manchild-ness, most girls don’t write a guy off for liking those things, as that would be silly.
Many don’t seem to realize just how inoffensive video games and Star Wars are. Perhaps a guy who plays chess or a sport may appear a little less nerdy, but he does it for the same reason that other guys play video games or like sci-fi. A guy who doesn’t have something to occupy his time probably sits there thinking about you all the time, which is something you REALLY don’t want.
Shelf girls can end up there because the guy wants to “mess around” before settling with a girl like her, but the last poster also had it right. It’s a really tough world out there for a man, no matter how you cut it. When a girl doesn’t make her attraction apparent, she leaves us with tons of opportunities to offend her. Those of us who are desperate and/or extremely hopeful will stick around, but most of us have had many experiences where things got bad and would rather just not deal with a girl who leaves us feeling so confused.
Another thing that leads to “shelf girlhood” is that we get the feeling that “shelf girl” will like us more when we’re more mature or have more money. So we’re holding out until then, because we don’t want to lose her respect now.
One other thing I’ll add as a guy who has had female friends where, frustratingly, things were kept in that ambiguous friend zone. I don’t think guys tend to try to string girls along. With very few exceptions, if a single guy asks a single girl to hang out, HE WANTS IT TO BE A DATE! I always hear girls wonder about the guy who asked them to go to a movie or a concert and whether or not it is a date. The answer is YES! And yet, my guy friends and I have all had experiences where we set things up to be a date, but then the night ends with the girl acting like it was a completely platonic affair. If the guy takes you somewhere and offers to pay, then it’s definitely a date, and for the girls out there, if you’re not interested, then don’t go!
I apologize for the length of this. I try to avoid co-opting a blogger’s comment section to rant, and I hope there’s no hard feelings.
I don’t know that “shelf-girls” are necessarily a real phenomenon.
Still, if you are doing this to someone, if you’re effectively treating someone as frozen goods that can be saved for later, you opinion of women can’t be very high. And anyway, anyone arrogant enough to just assume someone’s going to be there for them while they screw around to their heart’s content must be a moron who never heard about the tortoise and the hare.
The “man-child” is a term I’ve always taken as a little insulting, no matter what its use. It used to be primarily employed to describe grown men who were suffering from a developmental disability, particularly retardation. It was cast off because it was considered insulting, I find using it for something like this in terrible taste.
Still, looking at the behavior denoted to a “man-child,” I’ve seen one commentator say that this is a person who has never had to make a hard decision in life. I find those most likely to avoid hardship or pain are those who have experienced it before. If you cut yourself shaving, the next time you put a razor to your face, you’re going to wince – or, you might opt out, and decide to grow a beard.
Beard’s used to be pretty adult.
Is it truly reckless to avoid pain? Is it less mature to handle one obstacle at a time? And it’s important to remember that those not thinking about the future aren’t always doing so just as an act to avoid it. In many cases, the present is all we can manage to handle. I think there’s a very valid argument to not wanting to get into a relationship with someone unable to handle their past, present, and future together, but being able to do that equaling adulthood seems a step too far. There are redeemable qualities to those who take life one thing at a time.
And we have some people suggesting men staying in school is an aspect of a person who lacks maturity. I find it… maddening that these days school is looked on as some place to hide [and a very expensive place to hide… though, if someone is paying for it themselves, that makes them less of a man-child, yes? Where do scholarships fall in this?], as though in our culture choosing to better yourself and actually learn is somehow something a lazy person does. It’s insulting to those pursuing higher education, and testing the waters to find that career that seems so valued to a man’s maturity.
I quite like your blog, of course, and I think naturally for your article you’re going to have to stick with the hard-and-fast Marley poster, video games all day rules. But I just think these judgments too often equate maturity and stability in superficial ways. I will say your “man-child” believes in things like the “shelf-girl.” The immature male doesn’t respect women, or anyone else, for that matter. The immature male is rigid, and uses tantrums or force to get what they want. They are entitled. In a pinch, they will always put their own needs first.
Them having a guitar, and X-Box, or a comic book collection probably has nothing to do with this. Apologies for the length.
@Randall (et al) – just wanted to come on to say a. no apologies necessary for a long comment. It’s welcome slash encouraged here, and I really appreciate the thought you/others put into commenting. And b. definitely no apologies necessary for dissenting with my opinion. That’s the whole point. Keep the arguments coming!
-J
Jesse, here’s a question for you: would you prefer to go out with a guy who gets home from work and spends time with videogames, books, movies, TV, or other hobbies, or a guy who gets home and is then on his blackberry or laptop working? Is the latter really any more “adult” …?
See, I see man-children as something different entirely. I dated a dude who was unbelievably successful, very articulate, completely loaded, and functioning as a highly successful adult… except he had the emotional maturity of an 18 year old. He spent his young adulthood and early 30s chasing everything he thought would make him a “grown up” but in the process didn’t actually grow up. He doesn’t see it because his apartment/car/clothes tell him he’s made it, but I see it because he had a complete inability to communicate past asking me what I thought of the Zinfandel he ordered at whichever trendy restaurant he found on Yelp last week.
Make sense?
Have been a shelf girl in the past, and definitely was one very recently. Never even realized I was one until your post. Interesting to relate and finally define this place in life.
I think from now on whenever I hear a guy say, “I care a lot about you, I’m just not ready for a relationship…” but he still calls/wants to hang out/hook up, I’ll know that 1 of 2 things is happening: (1) He’s seeing another person/other people or (2) I’m more than likely just a shelf girl, on the back burner until he’s ready or finds someone else that’s better.
Sucks, but at least I have a term for this disease now.
I think that all men, when comfortable in a life situation, want their “mommy” to take care of them, and thus the man-child is born. Do not get me wrong, women suffer from a very similar syndrome, it’s called whining. I used to pride myself on not being a “girly-girl” or a whiner, but now that I’m in a comfortable relationship, I whine all the time. I bitch about everything. And my boyfriend leaves his socks all over the floor and when he has a bad day, he needs to be fawned over. We all have our faults, it’s comfort that allows them to shine through.
It’s all a question of maturity and responsibility. If someone hasn’t had to be responsible for their actions for very long, they will behave as if they resent that responsibility until they become acclimated to it.
Does that make any sense?
I’ve never heard of the term shelf-girl before, but I can definately see that I am a prime candidate to be one. I’m not sure what’s worse – guys thinking it’s ok to ‘shelve’ someone, or girls who agree to it. For the record, I’m the pathetic sort to let myself be shelved… It’s not fair. Let the shelf-girls go free!!
shelf-girl, also-known-as a backburner girl. i was just having this conversation with my co-worker yesterday.
@Randall – I want to make it clear that I don’t see staying in school as a universal sign of childishness. I’ve just met many people who appear to be serious about school… but once you get to know them, you realize taht they’ve got someone bankrolling what they’re doing, or they don’t appreciate the value of the money they’re borrowing, and you realize that, smart as they are, they’re using it more as a hiding place than a tool for advancement. I also agree with what you said about how most people who hide from pain have actually experienced it and understand it… that’s another overlooked aspect of personalities. I’d wager that many mature men get overlooked due to appearing to be too content or peaceful.
@Jessie – Thank you. Sincerely
@Adria – There’s a lot to what you said about resenting responsibility until you become acclimated to it. A lot of people are very adversarial in nature, and sometimes identifying something as unfair or against you is a first step in conquering.
But there’s also a lot more to what you’re saying too. Liked it quite a bit.
@YUA – I don’t disagree there are some people “hiding” in academia, and think you make a good point about not properly appreciating the magnitude of what they’re doing. I have a certain amount of flippancy about my own debt that I’m not exactly proud of. I will say though, if people are going to hide somewhere, and if folks with the money available have to pour it into something, there are worse things than more school. Still, fair point.
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