The abstraction that is the “bad boy,” perhaps both helmed and perfected by James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, has long been romanticized, fetishized and all the other positive “-izeds” a woman can give to a “man” parading around as too moody and emotional beneath the veneer of “badness” for this life. Something of an embryonic form of the “fuckboy,” a bad “boy” is possibly an even worse entity to contend with, because he’s usually impossibly good looking, has a motorcycle and offers the promise of taking you to the freedom of the open road with him. As a young female, this sounds endlessly alluring, and you’ve got a lot more time to waste on the fantasy of running away with someone who proves “the world was built for two,” which eventually includes the naive thought that the bad “boy” will grow restless with his wandering life and want to “calm down” a little bit. But the only definition of calming down a bad “boy” knows is giving up on any musical aspirations he might have had.

This unique ability to dupe women for long periods of time is what makes the bad “boy” such a powerful force. What also makes him far more dangerous than a fuck”boy” is how much easier it is to fall down the rabbit hole for him, because the signs of his fuckery remain shrouded in his aura of arcaneness and his intoxicating good looks that seem to easily make up for not having much in the way of anything intellectual to say (but everything he says sounds so profound specifically because it’s so sparse). And while someone like Michelle Pfeiffer as Stephanie in Grease 2 might be able to forgive away every flaw of the bad “boy” with the justification that he’s “just like super sensitive underneath it all,” the truth is, dear dick seeker, he’s a bad person, not a bad “boy.” Because bad people exhibit this sort of detached, dissociated behavior all the time. Often become world leaders, in fact.