"There's none of this 'Ooh, I'm wearing your jacket' stuff," says Julie Nemirovsky, a freshman at Emory University in Atlanta who has a boyfriend on campus. Over winter break at home, she went out for coffee with a guy she has known for years and it didn't occur to her to tell her boyfriend. Why should she? "He's not my keeper," she says. The Bowling Green researchers were surprised by how secure girls were about their relationships. Girls expressed significantly more confidence than guys that they could refuse a date, for example, or break up with someone they no longer wanted to go out with, or control what a couple did together. Boys were more likely to say they would change themselves for a girl than the other way around. (Teen girl magazines encourage these makeovers. "Find a look he -- and you -- will love," gushes Seventeen's current prom issue, suggesting a guy wear black Euro pants, a Ben Sherman shirt and hair gel that will match the color of the girl's dress.)
And then they wonder why guys aren't jumping at he chance to marry them or why there are no "nice" guys out there.