"You're a pretty girl," is what I was told by a man with a physical disability in a wheelchair. I thought this comment was sweet, reminding me of the kiss on the hand and the promise that I was pretty by another young man a few years ago before a concert I was to perform in. That was sweet. The man in the wheelchair, however, went on to say, "No, you're a pretty woman, because that's what you are now," almost as if he had been an observer of my growth process since I got my first period in the summer after fifth grade. It was at this point that I smiled politely and promised myself he meant it in the best way.
Let me here state that I wasn't offended by his comments; it just made me think about what it meant to be a woman, if that's what I am, against what it meant, or means, to be a girl.
Maybe Ms. Spears was a good role model (for once) in sharing her confusion of those in-between years of mixed girl- and woman-hood. She let the world know that even though she had the body of a woman, she had the feelings of a girl. This is a communal feeling among girls-becoming-women everywhere. And it's okay.
It's funny, though, what society expects of women and girls. Even yesterday, a man commented to me, "You women are all the same, all of you." I smiled politely, hoping my real opinion wouldn't show through in hopes of supreme Regal customer service, but he continued on. "You expect the men to carry it all for you." It's so hard not to be offended, not only because he honestly believes that all women are the same, but also because he believes he carries everything.
Think about it. Women, quite literally, carry everything. They carry a full separate human being inside of them for almost a year. Why? To carry on the line of that man's family.
Women also carry the stresses of today's highly judgemental social group without ever showing it. The current style for women is careless grace. Models depict sexiness by making it all seem easy. If you saw the real stresses that the model is facing, the strives she endures for her lean body, the family see never sees because of her busy lifestyle, the agent who wants her to weigh 110 pounds, even though she's 5'11", you'd never think she was beautiful. A man, though, who carries and shows his stresses can be sexy. Remember Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca? Remember the handsome, yet saddened look he carries as he awaits Ingrid Bergman's return to his cafe? Even in 1942, men could be sexy while stressed. Keifer Sutherland depicts this today in every episode of 24.
The spectrum between guys and girls seems to grow ever wider. Recently, my boyfriend enlightened me as to a custom among guys, one involving what seems to be dominance code. It's subtle, yet present. It's a nod. If a guy is checking out your girl, depending on how he responds to you, he gets a nod or a dirty look. If his nod says something along the line of "Good job," he gets the nod back. Anything else, the dirty look comes on full force.
Umm, what?
It's essentially condoning, even reinforcing, the attitude of women and girls as equal to something nearing an impressive breed of dog. The bitch (literally) who won the Eukanuba Tournament of Champions probably gets more respect.
I'll admit it; I like taking time to dress myself, straighten my hair, paint my nails, and, just for the record, I will not stop shaving my legs or under my arms (Note to the feminists: It's not just for the social standard; those tiny hairs are irriating!). It's true too that I like the attention and the compliments I get. It's not true, though, that I do it because:
"This current generation of young women... believe they will find any sort of satisfaction, emotional or sexual, through allowing themselves to become the sex objects of young men's fantasies..." thus "fueling a sorry state of affairs." Daily Mail
It's not true I like how, right under our noses, our very own guys are, perhaps unintentionally, carrying on a form of oppression through our own attractiveness. And it's right out liar-liar-pants-on-fire that the girls are to blame for this.
"They want to be taken seriously, but, by behaving like this, no one can blame the young men who treat them like sex objects and little else. "
Can't win.
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