Wait, you mean some women can’t cook?

For many men, “women” are one of their strongest and deepest interests. That’s not only true for guys who have extensive experience interacting with the opposite sex, on a social or intimate level, either.

Unfortunately, when a guy’s image of women comes primarily from idle daydreams and active nighttime fantasies, that image might not really mesh with reality. Because of that, Internet portal My Navi Gakusei Madoguchi spent the first week of the new school year polling 200 female university students in Japan about misconceptions men often have about women, and in compiling the responses found the four biggest delusions, listed below in no particular order of severity.

1. Women have small appetites

Japan is filled with all manner of delicious food, and it’s not just men whose taste buds tingle at the prospect of digging in to an extra-large lunch set or indulgent dessert. “Even among girls, there are people who eat a lot,” pointed out one third-year college students, and as proof, we offer our encounters with female competitive eater Sachiyo Masubuchi.

2. Women don’t weigh much

This is likely a corollary to the first fantasy, since if you make the assumption that women don’t eat very much, then it’s only natural to believe they all have featherweight frames as a result. But while there are indeed women in Japan with such dainty builds that they’re below their “Cinderella weight” threshold, even in Japan they’re considered to be particularly slim. “I heard some guy saying that if a woman weighs 45 kilograms (99 pounds) then she’s a fatty. What an idiot,” scoffed one first-year college student.

3. Women can cook

In contrast to the ostensible connection between the first two fantasies, this third one seems a bit out of place. After all, if you’ve got the idea in your head that women don’t eat very much, it’s a little contradictory to imagine they have an extensive repertoire of dishes they can prepare. Nonetheless, the image persists, according to women like the second-year college student who told researchers “Guys will say things like, ‘You can cook, right?’ to me.”

4. Women don’t have body hair

Study participants who offered this response didn’t specify whether they were talking about men who don’t think hairs grows anywhere except on top of a woman’s head or men who expect women to completely shave or otherwise remove their body hair as a matter of course. Considering how common hair removal salons are in Japan, and how prevalent their advertising is (just about every train or subway car in Tokyo is has an ad for at least one such chain), it’s hard to imagine there are guys who don’t know that women aren’t naturally hairless below the scalp. Still, multiple respondents spoke of guys they knew being startled by the mention or sight of hair on a woman’s face or body, such as the one who said “I’ve had a guy react negatively to my peach fuzz.”

All of this isn’t to say that there are no women in Japan who know their way around a kitchen, eat like a bird, weigh very little, or have Olympic swimmer-levels of hairlessness. Still, understanding that there’s plenty of variety among the double X chromosome crowd will make everyone’s life a little happier, just like a basic working knowledge of women’s breasts will.

Follow Casey on Twitter, but please don’t expect him to be able to cook either.

Source: Netallica/Yahoo! Japan via Otakumu