[Read day three HERE]

…Or maybe it’s the gender distinction of romance and love.

It’s been my understanding that the majority of guys do not watch rom-coms without mentally noting what things someone would obviously do if they loved you; that they in fact can listen to a John Legend song without awaiting a diamond ring; that they can even watch that sappy Hershey’s Kiss commercial (the one where the guy special orders all those Kisses with the little tags that say ‘I miss you’ for his lady) and never register that might be something you would actually do for the one you Love. Talk about a revelation.

Talk about a productive night’s sleep. I just woke up with this brain child.

It may not be the ‘solution’ to all this, but it is kind of brilliant in figuring this whole thing out; maybe I am not so unreasonable as a hopeless romantic, but rather just sh*t-out-of-luck as far as finding a guy who is on the same page to provide me with all the things I am waiting for, all the time. Read More »

I’ve always made a bad girl.

I don’t mean to say that I’m bad. I’m far too responsible for that. I listen to NPR. I vote in primaries. But when it comes to femininity, to the trappings of girlhood (the shoes, the makeup, the cooking, the arcane household crafts), I just do not get it. I am not good at it. I fail to perform “girl” correctly.

It’s not as if I haven’t been trained for the job. Throughout my childhood, several family members staged interventions and crash courses on femininity, from the grandmother who told me that I could be so pretty, if only I’d try a little, to the cousins who told me that ya cain’t use big words on a guy, or he won’t like ya. My father – a check-bouncing, hard-drinking, waitress-dating guy who rode motorcycles and used the word f*ck approximately eight times in any given conversation – despaired over my failure to become, in his words, “a real lady.”

I tried. I really did. Before I knew what feminism was, I studied gender, the assumptions and behaviors and roles that were assigned to the men and women around me. I didn’t have revolutionary aims. I just wanted to know what I was missing.

This is what I picked up:

Boys are strong. Girls are gentle. Boys are brave. Girls are patient. Boys want to have fun. Girls want to have babies. Boys are attractive because of what they do. Girls are attractive because of how they look. Boys smoke, drink, and screw. Girls cook, clean, and marry. Boys pick the girls they want. Girls take the boys who pick them. Boys can’t help themselves. Girls spend their time helping.

To borrow a phrase from my dear father: f*ck that sh*t. Read More »