let my love open the door, as long as it isn’t for a woman
Old habits? New rules? Can I phone a friend?
Here’s your first warning. Like most of my writing, my blogs are likely to be laced with references to my younger days. I’m 46 years old. Today, as a matter of fact. So you can decide which era “my younger days” refers to. I’ll try to remember to include links to references you kids might find obscure, but just play along and have fun with it, okay?
I had a hard time deciding on a topic for this first blogpost. Football has certainly provided lots of material lately, but I had to set that idea aside after a conversation I had with a few members of my team yesterday. They took me to lunch for my birthday (insert shameless plug for Zoe’s Kitchen. I have no financial stake in Zoe’s, but I am a fan. So go there. Eat lunch. You’ll love it.) and someone mentioned how it’s now considered sexist to refer to a group of women as “ladies.” Worse yet, you can’t call them “girls” either. Apparently both of these terms send a poison dart right into the heart of gender equality in the workplace. But you can, as it turns out, call them “guys,” which flies in the face of everything I learned growing up.
So there I sat with James—I’ll call him James because that’s his name—the only other male at the table. I’ll have to say male here because apparently “guy” might leave some question. Confused? So were we.
We learned that it’s also potentially sexist to hold the door and let a woman enter a room first, or to open a car door for a woman. Those last two depend on the woman. Some don’t mind. Others still like it when a man does those things. Someone told me that a few years ago, but I cast it off as the ramblings of a crazy person.
James is considerably younger than I am, but we both learned how to be gentlemen at an early age. And now it seems everything we thought we knew is sabotaging women everywhere. We are even responsible for the wage gap. Of course women shouldn’t be paid as much as men—they can’t even open their own doors!
I know, I shouldn’t joke about something like that. I actually do believe the wage gap is real and I think it’s disgraceful that some highly qualified women aren’t paid as much as men in similar positions, especially since some of the men in those positions are buffoons. I’m not ready to place blame on a political party for that. I don’t really care whose fault it is, but I do think women deserve better than they often get.
That said, let me get back to my confusion. I was telling my wife the lunch story and it occurred to me that we may actually be seeing the realization of Bulworth—sort of. Bulworth envisioned a world of “voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin’ everybody ’til they’re all the same color.” I feel like on some level, that’s happening with gender confusion. No, I’m not talking about biology. I’m talking about language and fashion.
Now I’ll admit—I’m no Classy Freddie Blassie. Yes, that was a wrestling reference. All the way back to when WWE was still WWF—maybe even WWWF. It happens from time to time because, frankly it’s how my brain works. Suffice to say no one will ever accuse me of being on the forefront of the latest fashion. I just don’t care that much about it. But still, it seems that more than ever we’re merging.
It’s true that back in my high school days, many of us—boys and girls—had the same hairstyles. I played hockey, so of course I rocked a mullet. But I sometimes wore it in a ponytail. My baseball coach used to make me tuck it into my hat during games. I thought he was just jealous because he had no hair, but maybe he was as confused then as I am now.
So I guess the guys and girls did have similar hair in the eighties, but we didn’t so much dress alike—at least that’s not how I remember it. Today, the hairstyles are still similar. Women wear short, man-like hairstyles. And lately I’m seeing more and more men doing the “man bun.” It’s essentially a ponytail, but it’s on top of their head. It could just be some new Pebbles Flintstone cult, but between that and skinny jeans for men, I’m a little uneasy.
Let’s be honest. Men’s bodies are goofy. We weren’t built for skinny jeans, shorts that stop at mid-thigh or ultra slim-fitting shirts. Or spandex shorts at the gym. For the love of everything holy, please put regular shorts on over those! Women… Ladies… Girls… Guys. It doesn’t matter what you call them—no one wants to see that! And no. It doesn’t matter what kind of shape we’re in. Those things look stupid on us. Because, as I said, our bodies are goofy-looking. And don’t get me started on the gems who show up to the gym with the sides cut completely out of their t-shirts so they’re basically wearing a fabric sandwich board. I don’t know what message you think you’re sending, but it’s probably not the one we’re getting. Unless you want your sandwich board shirt to say, “Look at me. I’m a douchebag.”
But that’s another topic for another time. Let me get back to the main point. A cry for help for people like James and me. Everything we learned about being respectful to women is now offensive. We’re pissing people off without even realizing it, so someone please post the new rules.
There has to be a middle ground between opening a car door for a woman and shouting, “Why don’t you drive, bitch!” as you toss her the keys. Tell us what to call a group of women without inciting a riot. I’d like to just call them all by name, but it’s awkward to address them all in a long list. Take lunch yesterday, for instance. What if James had said, “Okay Kristin, Sandy, Sara, Laura and Shawna. Are you ready to go?” Awkward, right? But if he had said, “Okay ladies, are you ready to go?” he would’ve run the risk of some angry woman flying across Zoe’s Kitchen and tackling him like Terry Tate.
Final confession. I call my wife Lady. I have ever since we got too old for me to call her Kid anymore. But I consider both to be terms of affection. And so does she. I also sometimes refer to younger women friends as kids. Also out of affection. And respect. So if you’re one of them and you take that as disrespectful, condescending or in any way other than a term of friendship, please let me know. I’ll stop.
And don’t forget to share the rest of the rules with me (I promise to tell James). Maybe grab a Sharpie and write them on one of those sandwich board shirts at the gym. Some of those guys are pretty big, so they’ll have plenty of advertising space. That reminds me, I guess it’s time I go there. I have a feeling I have an ass-kicking waiting for me.
Ready… discuss.
Cheers!
