Surely, you must be joking.
Aug. 9th, 2007 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenI'm not joking, and don't call me Shirley.
This is the part that made blood boil behind my eyes:
Of course, there are always those rare women who order what they want and to heck with what a man might think.
I am not comfortable enough with The New York Times' snark powers to assume that that was meant sarcastically. Not when the entire article has been rah-rah faux feminism about how the freedom to eat more than salad on a date at a restaurant is omigosh amazing!
Seriously, the women in that article make me really sad. Because through subtle encouragement all their lives, they've been told to basically have a lousy time on dates in order to have a better chance at being liked. Now, they're being told to eat meat for the same reason. Women are not garments. We are not video games. We are not avatars that you customize according to how you feel on the day you create your WoW character or the perfect out-on-the-town ensemble. There's no reason a steak-eating happy mama has to munch on leaves sprinkled with diet, no-trans-fat vinegar water dressing unless she wants to. Newsflash: anyone whose mere presence, let alone their specific command, decrees what you can or cannot eat lest you lose face? NOT WORTH SEEING PERIOD.
Another newsflash? Plenty of women go out to restaurants and order WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY FEEL LIKE. Because that's what autonomous human beings do. I know that's a SHOCK! to the Fashion section, which is too used to telling women they're too fat and poor to ever be really stylish, but it is actually the case. Stop pretending to "help" women by reassuring them that their diets, though less than the ideal 0 calorie model plan and therefore disgusting, might actually impress a man.
THE POINT OF FEMINISM IS NOT TO DEFINE WOMEN BY WHAT MEN WANT. Likewise, the point of feminism is not to encourage false masculinity defined only in the negative--i.e. everything that isn't feminine. Sheesh.
This is the part that made blood boil behind my eyes:
Of course, there are always those rare women who order what they want and to heck with what a man might think.
I am not comfortable enough with The New York Times' snark powers to assume that that was meant sarcastically. Not when the entire article has been rah-rah faux feminism about how the freedom to eat more than salad on a date at a restaurant is omigosh amazing!
Seriously, the women in that article make me really sad. Because through subtle encouragement all their lives, they've been told to basically have a lousy time on dates in order to have a better chance at being liked. Now, they're being told to eat meat for the same reason. Women are not garments. We are not video games. We are not avatars that you customize according to how you feel on the day you create your WoW character or the perfect out-on-the-town ensemble. There's no reason a steak-eating happy mama has to munch on leaves sprinkled with diet, no-trans-fat vinegar water dressing unless she wants to. Newsflash: anyone whose mere presence, let alone their specific command, decrees what you can or cannot eat lest you lose face? NOT WORTH SEEING PERIOD.
Another newsflash? Plenty of women go out to restaurants and order WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY FEEL LIKE. Because that's what autonomous human beings do. I know that's a SHOCK! to the Fashion section, which is too used to telling women they're too fat and poor to ever be really stylish, but it is actually the case. Stop pretending to "help" women by reassuring them that their diets, though less than the ideal 0 calorie model plan and therefore disgusting, might actually impress a man.
THE POINT OF FEMINISM IS NOT TO DEFINE WOMEN BY WHAT MEN WANT. Likewise, the point of feminism is not to encourage false masculinity defined only in the negative--i.e. everything that isn't feminine. Sheesh.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-09 07:39 pm (UTC)Dates are like job interviews, where candidates are often judged by all sorts of stupid, arbitrary criteria. This leads desperate people to look for ways to game the system, because they can't accept the fact that it's a game with ever-changing, unpredictable rules. (Those things that may change your chances -- getting a degree for a job, for example, or getting a boob job for a date -- are insanely costly relative to the benefits.)
It's sad that people worry about things like this, but what they do in a capricious universe. It's the foundation of self-help as a genre, which is just a step away from the superstitions of an earlier age.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-09 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-09 08:05 pm (UTC)I'll also note that men do the same thing. It's even noted in this article on this topic.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-09 08:48 pm (UTC)And there is a vast difference between trying to put forward your good qualities and covering up your bad. The one is healthy, the other is suppression. Nothing ever good comes from just smothering an emotion or a quality in yourself for too long. It will lead to stress-associated responses to the person who prompts the suppression--hardly an emotionally healthy balance to strike up in a long-term relationship.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-09 09:22 pm (UTC)I actually agree with your other point, which is probably why I had no success at dating for so long. People ASSUME you're going to not belch and scratch your ass and whatever else, so if you do, they assume you must be hiding even worse things. I hate it, but that's how it is. It's much more fun to sit back and watch other people go through the mating dance, I think. Unfortunately I don't think M agrees, even at this point in our relationship.