In honor of mating season, I would like to rant at you about a trend in our society that I've noticed and have been thinking a lot about. I haven't come up with a catchy term for it so maybe after you read this you can toss some ideas at me.
I've noticed a role reversal in the male/female mating ritual. In nearly every other species men are the ones who have to win over women. Males perform the dance, males flash their pretty colors, males spar over the females.
One of my favorite videos depicting this is from the BBC's Planet Earth. check it out:
If you're super impatient skip to 2:15 to see the best part.
So how did it come to be that women and girls are now poking and prodding and painting and tucking and pinching and sucking and cutting and folding and lasering and chemical peeling and anti-wrinkling and implanting and generally performing all kinds of modifications and/or preening to get the attention of men?
Ladies, where did we go wrong? When did we allow this shift to happen?
Go ahead and google the words "college girl". Now click on images and see what comes up.
Fake hair, fake skin tone, tons of make up, and posed in a sexual stance. A mating dance. These girls are today's human equivalent of that Bird of Paradise in the video above.
I feel like this image says it all.
There's a bar in West Hollywood (one of the few straight bars) called Crown Bar. I went there once with a friend and was dismayed and appalled at what I saw. Not only were the gender roles reversed, but the women were acting like such childish animals I could hardly believe it. They were talking loudly and giggling even louder. They were getting hammered, or at least pretending to get hammered and dancing around like morons, all the while glancing around the room to see which guy was noticing them. They're clothing hardly covered they're bits and pieces and they were slathered with makeup and fake nails and fake hair. And the worst part was that they all looked the same! All these women were trying to out-do each other with the same technique and the men stood around and drooled and bought the women drinks.
I think what I'm trying to say here, the reason I'm writing this, is because all of this makes me sad. I see so many woman playing this game, doing this mating dance, and it only serves to make us all look shallow.
Ladies, let's let the men go back to trying to impress us, shall we? After all, there are more of them than us so it serves that they should be fighting for our attention and not the other way around.
Oh and the "aren't I so adorably clueless?" technique is most definitely not cute. Cut it out.
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Women acting clueless and stupid is always a turn off for me. I want a woman to have some intelligence who can challenge me and be my best friend as well as my lover. But I see so many women in bars, dancing around like idiots, making out with one another, all in the hopes that some douchebag notice them. Shit like this makes me weep for the human race.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure these women are acting clueless. I agree that it could be problematic that women are designing their behavior to fit the sexual desires of men, but I also think we should be careful to not misrepresent the situation. Clearly, we live in a patriarchal society where most things are dominated by men but under this oppression, independence has been known to sprout sporadically. For example, although many women define their sexuality through the desires of men, their is also individual expression...fine line? Yes. But by defining ALL customs and sexual displays as male chauvinism could be little irresponsible.
ReplyDeleteGdep - SGs
Gdep,
ReplyDeleteDon't misunderstand my beef here. I'm not at all blaming this problem on male domination or male chauvinism. This is post is purely a rant about female stupidity and their desperate desire to capture a mate. I wouldn't even say that these girls are designing their behavior to fit the sexual desires of men, necessarily. I think both men and women have been trained to desire and emulate these behaviors, respectively.
Also, I am not defining all customs and sexual displays as anything at all. I'm calling out a single type of girl with a specific set of sexual displays. I wear makeup, I wear heels when I feel like looking sexy. I'm not condemning these behaviors, I'm condemning the desperation in these women that leads them to degrade themselves (ei, purposefully act dumb, get hammered, kiss each other in the hopes of getting male attention) and/or alter their appearance drastically as to try to all look the same and fit in to a supposedly desired stereotype.
Alex
P.S. Thanks for commenting! And thanks for making me think even harder about what I wrote. I could debate all day! This is fun!
I think the saddest part is that the girls who participate in this type of display don't even know why they're doing it, or how it effects their life. They don't think about the fact that falling into this trend is not an intelligent way to find a proper mate....I can't tell you how many girls I know who parade around like over-sexualized peacocks at nightclubs and then complain that they can't seem to find the "right" guy. They then base their self-worth on not being able to attract said guy, and blame/alter their appearance as a result. It is, in a word, clueless!
ReplyDeleteBtw, I'm a fan and former member of Suicidegirls, and really enjoy ur blog.:)
Thanks for stopping by and taking a read! I really appreciate it!
ReplyDeleteI guess I misunderstood what you were referring to specifically. I agree that it's sad if women are degrading themselves by desperately trying to pursue a male partner -- but only if they are degrading themselves. In other words, how can one draw the line between self-degradation and fun? Your examples (e.g., kissing, getting hammered etc.), could all be acts of generally young, immature behavior where experimentation is the norm in socially accepting environments (Spring Break). Don't get me wrong, there is a difference, I think, between girls exploring their sexuality and doing it for some dumb guy b/c he says something like "show your tits and make out!". The latter is definitely sad and disappointing for many obvious reasons but the other cases...I wonder.
ReplyDeleteThere was an interesting article in the NYTimes a few years back on this exact subject. The article discussed female expressions of sexuality using Halloween as the case study. Different scholars opined on whether girls that dress ultra-sexy on Halloween are just capitalizing on their ability to be free or if it was the exact opposite and they were doing exactly what society expected of them. But, I think you're right in that both men and women do this to a great degree. I find that sometimes I fall into that trap as well when I go shopping or get dressed for a party so you're definitely right about that. Good point.
GDep