I wish I had your e-mail. I'd give you an earful.

My daughter is now twenty-six. Yes, she is still beautiful. However, despite 5 AP placements and being in honor society and the gifted program in high school, she has not gone to college.

I cannot begin to tell you how disappointed I am or how, in the current economy, I am so frightened for her future. Being beautiful can take over everything for a girl. It can take all the air out of the room. It can delay her maturity. It is NOT the gift that people think it is.

My daughter is employed, but she is a semi-Goth chick, a denizen of raves, acquainted with band members whose names you would know, an aging club kid. She is obsessed with youth and wonders if she should get botox at some point in her twenties.

She is also one the best informed, scientifically-well read, smartest people I know of her age and she is doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING with her gifts.

Don't let this happen to your daughter. Start now making her work for what she gets and emphasizing in every possible way the importance of her education. Stop letting her watch those trash shows.

She wants to be an actor? Actors WORK! Is she taking theater in school? Voice and diction lessons? Movement classes? Get her involved in dance and exercise classes. Make it clear to her that, while you support her goals, she has to work to attain them. Also, make it clear that doing well in school is her FIRST job.

Take your friends aside and tell them this: She is getting vain. Please DON'T compliment her on her looks. Keep her away from older guys who show a sexual interest in her -- and they will. Make sure the guys she dates in high school are within a year or two of her her age.

You're the parent. So parent.

I love my daughter dearly, but I do wish I had done some things differently. Some of those things I wish I had done, I just described to you.

One last thought. If she is not doing well in school, do get her tested for things like ADD to make sure she doesn't have a learning problem. Sometimes a learning problem can look like a laziness problem.

Good luck.

They don't know what BS to spout to get in a girl's pants anymore.

She wants to be an actor? Actors WORK! Is she taking theater in school? Voice and diction lessons? Movement classes? Get her involved in dance and exercise classes. Make it clear to her that, while you support her goals, she has to work to attain them. Also, make it clear that doing well in school is her FIRST job.

I know you mean well and I get what you are saying, but acting is so spotty a career.

LA is stuffed with wannabe actresses doing the waitressing thing and occasionally getting a small part in a commercial or holding up perfume bottles at events.

Nothing to me is more beautiful than an attractive girl (with glasses) who has a REAL career-- say a doctor, engineer, assistant D.A., independent business owner, computer programmer. Forget the bubbleheads, girls who think are fucking sexy to any guy with more than a 90 I.Q.

I really do not know how this message continually fails to get through to moms and daughters.

I'm curious about one thing, Dick: How would you answer the questions you keep posing? If I understand it correctly, your main points are:

(a) men and women are different (in particular with respect to their interest in sex, and thus in each other), and we should discuss how to make the best of it rather than trying to change one into the other;

(b) because of (a), (straight) women don't really want men the way (straight) men want women, so men suffer more than women in the 'war of the sexes' (i.e. they're in a less favored position).

Would that represent your position accurately?

Of course there are problems with this position (maturity questions, what people are looking for, civilized/decent behavior when dealing with others, etc.), but let's brush them aside, because I'm actually really interested in your opinion.

Let's say, for the sake of the argument, that (a) and (b) (in case they do represent your position well) are indeed right. What would you suggest be done about it? If taken at face value, (a) and (b) seem to suggest that, no matter what the circumstances are, either men will be unhappy with the situation, or then women will be--no other possibility. Or am I wrong?

On page four you asked: "why on god's green earth do guys only listen to other GUYS about girls???"

While on the one hand your query is predicated on a generalization, I can say the the flip side is a valid question as well. I don't think I could begin to tell you how many times I've been around two female friends of mine "dissecting" emails, texts, calls and other "signals" from the men in their respective lives. I keep my mouth shut for the most part, only daring to interject when I believe their analysis is so dangerously off point that they're compromising what I believe to be their stated goals. Ahh, the looks and verbal rebukes I get time and again....only to then have them regale me with tales of woe after a misunderstanding of some sort.

While I wholeheartedly endorse both genders looking to friends of the opposite for dating advice, I'm compelled to point out another flawed implication in your post....namely that men and women are homogeneous. We're surprisingly diverse and complex despite the similar wounds we share from our dating experiences.

they told me to be nice and to be myself.

let's leave it at that.

Poor, poor Dudes!

They don't know what BS to spout to get in a girl's pants anymore.

Yet, girls don't even need to spout or know ANYTHING to get in a guy's pants.

Let's call it what it is, EQUALITY, when guys KNOW how to get in girls' pants. After all, last I heard girls like sex too, and really, if a girl is that easy, she is probably hanging out with the guy for the same reason he is hanging out with her.