Advice for women

In 1995 the book The Rules appeared. Columnist Maureen Dowd described it as a "dating bible" encouraging women to play "prefeminist mind games" such as "don't stay on the phone for more than 10 minutes" and "when you're with a man you like, be quiet and mysterious, act ladylike, cross your legs and smile" and to appear "busy and important." Women can return to "hunting their quarry" but women are advised to play elaborate games to make men think that the men are the hunters when they're not. British writer Kira Cochrane of The Guardian found the book The Rules to be confining since it urged women to "laugh at all their date's jokes", never ask a man to dance, and appear "challenging" since "men are born to respond to challenge." Cochrane's problems with rules were that they relied on "objectionable, outdated notions of masculinity and femininity" and urge people to suppress their gut instinct, and they "make a game and a chore out of something that should be natural and fun and overwhelming." But writer Bibi van der Zee, initially skeptical of the advice, tried it and found it made the men she dated "keener" to keep going out with her; she found herself to be "calm, unflappable" and, based on the advice, she would leave early on a date, appear busy, not phone him back. While she worried about appearing to be a "game-playing bitch", she was surprised that the strategy worked; she married and became known to her friends as The Rules Girl.

Christian Carter in Paris Woman Journal counsels women to avoid making mistakes with men, such as trying to convince him to love you, expecting a relationship to make you happy, misreading men, and sharing deep feelings too soon.