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I’m all for women’s rights, a feminist, no doubt. Recently, I even got into a heated (drunken) debate with a guy friend when he tried to claim that girls can’t drive. After all, how many accidents had he gotten into as opposed to my one measly fender bender? I refused to let him get away with such a pompous statement.
I have a point.
Somewhere along the road, as intelligent ladies demanded equal rights to our male counterparts, (Which by the way we still don’t have. 77 cents to a fella’s dollar, ladies!) men consequently decided that equal rights meant the abolishment of chivalry. Either that, or they just got lazy. (Ahem, the latter. In my opinion.)
What makes matters so atrocious is not even the actual death of chivalry, but the fact that girls everywhere have accepted it, and don’t expect much anymore.
Nowadays, wined and dined makes less sense than that damn word that lost you the spelling bee in fifth grade. (Who knew pneumonia had a P?) Girls’ expectations have become so minimal that if a guy opens the door for you he’s a Casanova, if he pays for dinner he’s practically Romeo, and if he calls you again within three days, well it must be too good to be true.
Aside from my normal summer tactics (mortifying summer internships and a whole lot of Oprah), I recently returned from a fabulous week of vacation in
Well no, it is, but only in
These English boys were attentive, they asked questions, they wanted to get to know us, they didn’t seem to expect anything except a phone number or business card so they could see us again. One night stands seemed not an option for these guys. And I’m not even talking about a specific group of friends. I can firmly state that my sister and I did an adequate amount of field work to come to this conclusion (hehe). British boys were aggressive but in the RIGHT way, their pick-up lines were as innocent as ‘Have you seen the latest stats on
It’s like that Sex & the City episode where Carrie’s overwhelmed by the Russian’s decadent romanticism. He writes her songs, he takes her to the opera, he makes her pancakes. When she shares this with her friends, cynical Miranda points out that the extent of romance in
Forgive me for being so pessimistic, there are of course still those grand gestures every now and then that we can ooh and ah over, and I’m not saying past boyfriends haven’t done romantic things for me every now and then. After all I was asked to prom by a guy in a gorilla suit who sent me on a scavenger around town gathering red roses and bananas. (I wonder where he got the inspiration?) All I’m saying is yeah, girls want to be treated as equals. We don’t need to be protected or babied and we certainly don’t need a power and control imbalance, but at the same time, we wouldn’t mind a call now and then. Or having conversations that extend further than ‘What do you want to drink?’ Maybe some flowers, just because. Or, I don’t know, an actual date? One-on-one dinner together in the campus dining commons doesn’t count, but it’s a start. For a lot of girls, date standards have reached: anything sober.
If only guys knew how easy it really would be to get in our pants.
5 Comments
I live in England, and trust me - those sweet, innocent English boys you think you’ve met are only so nice because they’re on guest turf, and because American girls are sexy and exotic. (Remember Bridget Jones’s Diary: “Well you see the thing with Laura and me… She being American, someone with a bit of confidence…”)
Back home, they still just get drunk and grab your ass at the pub, expecting you to squeal in delight. As far as nationality goes, my money is on Australians (or maybe I’ve just seen one too many episodes of House).
But following on from all this, I lament the days when men not only opened doors, but actually *pursued* their objects of desire.
You began your little tirade by deriding a young man for making a generalization according to sex-based criteria (women can’t drive). Then you proceeded to base your entire “article” on a similar generalization, even admitting “I hate to generalize, but yeah”. This whole thing wreaks of hypocricy, that and the pennings of a high-maitenance woman who wants men to do everything for her, while at the same time demanding a certain level of “respect”. I use quotes here because often times this “chivalry” you speak of is the same type of activity that is blasted by women as “demeaning” and “disrespectful”. “I don’t need a man to open the door for me, I’m an independant woman!”. Pick one!
In closing, I would recommend not spending your opening lines to speak out against generalizations, stereotypes, and prejudice, when you entire article is predicated on such ignorance. It really makes you look unintelligent. Then again, after reading most of the material on this website, that is probably unavoidable.
ladies, i found a second reason why boys are dumb:
jake.
I’m an Aussie, and In response to Alice’s comment, no, Aussie guys are not like that(unfortunately). They’re just as perverted and lazy as anywhere else. Well, some of them..
I think that in all relationships you have to give to get. If you set upon a set of expectations towards someone without you yourself living up to their’s, then you will almost always be disappointed. Perhaps referring to sex as, “po na na” is why your date doesn’t feel like opening the door for you. You must not point fingers and make generalizations. What Jake said is perfectly valid and I tend to feel the same way about your writing. Women’s lib. was a tool created for the sole purpose of breaking apart the family unit and making it so that the women’s role of providing their child with a moral and sound upbringing was transfered to the institutional setting of the modern corrupt classroom.
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