Last week iatg sponsored its first major event: The Man Panel. Five seriously sexy boys took the stage and leveled with the female audience about what guys are really looking for.

However, we’re not so cruel as to strip them down and string them up without so much as a cocktail first. So, to get the blood pumping our favorite cover band, Unusually Suspect (featuring the dreamy sportscaster-turned-lead-singer Brent Biedel), sang us all our favorite tunes including a rousing rendition of “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” Folks were pouring into our cozy upstairs bar space at Westwood Brew Co, where we had our own private bar and rockin’ bartender who spent the night serving up the oh-so-affordable $3 pints. Things were off to a good start as highly fashionable young ladies were getting their grooves on to the delight of a surprisingly large number of men who were smart enough to come out and support our Ladies’ Night.

After everyone was sufficiently loosened up, we brought out the Man Panel: Pro-surfer Bron Heussentstamm, Dirty, Sexy Money star Seth Gable, Survivor: Exile Island winner Aras Baskauskas, Amazing Race All Stars champ Eric Sanchez, and the simply adorable Yogi Roth, aka USC quarterback coach, aka DREAM BOAT. Alexis and Emily, armed with pages of questions compiled by our online readers and the stacks of multi-colored post-it notes written by our live audience, made no bones about what we girls have been dying to know.

I’ll be frank and say that many of their answers didn’t exactly surprise me: don’t be clingy, say what you mean, a bit of “don’t play the game, but here’s how you play the game” stuff. The good parts came when they touted how girls with a purpose and confidence are the sexiest kinds (that’s what makes us iatg-ers such total knockouts), and how we girls forget that guys have feelings, too. (When girls get into the “men are dogs” vein and claim “you just can’t trust ‘em,” how is that supposed to make them feel?) Hearing that men can sincerely value trust and see it as a sacred bond was heartwarming, indeed.

What was really AMAZING about the Man Panel, though, was not necessarily hearing what five guys had to say (let’s face it, they’re limited to their own experiences), but what happened afterwards. As the boys and girls of the audience went back for another round of cocktails, they started talking, really talking, about what mattered to them in relationships. Can you imagine mingling at a bar and instead of flirtatious BS nonsequiturs, having real conversations about what you really want??

And even though at the end, I still managed to get propositioned for sex from a married man (some guys just never get it), I did see a few other phones exchanging numbers that looked very promising. So while many men still remain utterly mysterious to me, our Man Panel did decode the sex at least enough to let me see that the good ones are not only out there, but they’re looking for girls just like us.

alexis jones, amazing race, aras baskauskas, brent biedel, bron heussentstamm, eric sanchez, iatg, man panel, men, relationship, seth gable, survivor, unusually suspect, USC, westwood brewing company, women, yogi roth Hide

We held our first event on Sunday night at the Westwood Brew Co and, despite the lack of sleep building up to the event, the butterflies in my stomach the morning of and the insanity of hosting in general, it simply could not have gone better. Our whole concept of the Man Panel originated out of a simple yet candid conversation I had with one of my closest guy friends over (pathetic to admit) why I haven’t dated in over a year. Naturally I have my personal excuses “I’m so busy” and my “high standards,” but the reality is that guys typically don’t ask me out.

My guy friend, who calls me “Jonsey,” had incredible insight on what messages I was sending, how I was coming across and the immediate walls I put up when first being introduced to a guy. And I’ll be honest, ladies, things I’ve NEVER thought of before were the very things I was doing that supposedly put guys in the friend zone before they even had a chance to dip their toe in the dating water.

After a sobering two hour conversation, incredible insight and revelations into my dating life, I realized that there really is a massive miscommunication going on between men and women. We say one thing and mean another; they do one thing and we think they mean another. We speak with subtle nuances and body language; they respond in ambiguous grunts and “huhs.” Regardless, the current men/women issue is not that we don’t love each other, that we don’t both want to have incredible relationships, or aren’t willing to work for them, it’s that they speak Mandarin Chinese and we speak Russian. Worse, we’re surprised when our miscommunication ends in yet another fight, argument or frustrating spat over why he did or didn’t do something that was really important to us.

The divorce rate is over 60% folks! I’m really not a fan of those odds. I think we seriously need to bridge the communication Grand Canyon gap that has chicks on one side and guys on the other. At the end of the day, we know that some 90% (a randomly made up, but you get the point statistic) fights are merely a miscommunication so let’s start translating and learning each other’s native tongues.

I think it’s JUST as important that guys learn to read and write girl talk as ladies need to fluently speak boy talk. Thus, the MAN PANEL was born. However, keep in mind that i am that girl is chick empowerment with an EDGE so naturally we weren’t going to do a dry, stale seminar/workshop in some boring classroom with desks and spirals to jot down notes. No, we’d much rather do it at a bad @#% local bar, bring in a great live band, have good food, strong drinks and a panel of hotties up on stage answering all the intimate questions girls always wanted to know and never get the chance to ask. We wanted to recreate the conversation that guys have when no girls are around… and we did just that!

The most compelling part of the night was the fact that our panel of young men unanimously confessed that the most beautiful thing about a woman is her confidence, that if you’re comfortable in your own skin, there is nothing more sexy. It’s not about what you wear or what you look like as much as just being you that the most attractive. While there were certainly some other issues touched on: leaving baggage at the door, advice for the bedroom, and a mini lesson on honesty, the girls left with a mini cheat sheet into the world that is MAN.

Overall, the event was incredible. The turnout surpassed our expectations, the panel of guys was both hysterical and endearing, the band rocked, the audience was stoked and I think every guy and every girl in that room walked away with a kernel of insight into better understanding his or her counterpart. At the end of the day, men and women are different species with different languages and ways of communicating but, my goodness, what an incredible challenge it is to find that co-pilot for life, your adventure buddy and best friend who’s going to love you and all of your flaws.

So if you missed our first Man Panel, don’t worry, by the overwhelming responses we’ve gotten and the hoards of new questions already submitted, looks like there will be another soon on the horizon. In the meantime, next time you have the chance, ask the guys in your life, “What are some things you wish girls really understood about guys?” and, trust me, you’ll be teleported into a world you never knew existed.

communication, divorce, event, i am that girl, iatg, iatg event, man panel, relationship, westwood brewing company Hide