[Some] women making completely hysterical idiots of themselves seems to span cultures across the globe. Today I read a post that shows the negative effects of the widely held belief in India that women should get married and stay married in the lovely blog The Life and Times of an Indian Homemaker--and then I thought to myself, is it really all that different around the world? [Edit, NOTE: I am not implying or stating that the letter writer in the post is a hysterical idiot. I think this person is in a very unfortunate situation mostly due to cultural confines. The Hysterical idiots is aimed at the women in the below examples who are also in unfortunate situations due to cultural schemas, but these are confines that they have put themselves in].
Take the educated and liberal women of the Western world [when I say West, I generally mean North America and the UK], they’ve gone and decided that one should get married before one turns 30 to avoid being termed a loser who shows up at weddings alone. The wedding industry [which is just as lucrative as it is in India] and the media make tons of money out of these women as they sell completely idiotic messages along the lines of ‘wear the perfect dress…you never know you might meet Mr. Right’ ‘If you dress up yourself in these shoes, dresses, and sunglasses, you too can grab a man before it’s too late’ ‘6 tips to ensnaring that cool dude in the gym’ etc, etc, and so on. Seriously ladies, Mr. Right isn’t going to discover you based on the shoes you’re wearing. And if a dude does notice your shoes and that’s what tips the hat in your favour, then he’s probably really superficial and has the personality of a toad [not the kind that turns into a prince].
Something I find even more foolish is when women, especially neurotic women, try playing the ‘cool’ girlfriend. Remember that friend I wrote about, the one who bent over backwards to please a man and seemed to be caught in an eternal cycle of love and hate and thought I was her personal psychiatrist? [You can read about her lt;heregt;]. Well, before she decided to call that particular toad her soul mate, she was going out with another less-than-satisfactory guy who called her like once a month when he went on a three month vacation. When I asked if it bothered her so much, why she didn’t just ask him to call her more often, she replied that she wanted to be the ‘cool’ girlfriend who remained unnerved. I didn’t ask her anything further as her logic completely escaped me.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the last time I heard the ‘cool’ girlfriend logic. One other time, I was sitting with a bunch of women [the horribly blasé girls' night out], most of whom were in their early-mid 20s, discussing relationships. One woman shared that her boyfriend had a boys’ night out once a week [btw, I hate this word. It feels really stupid calling a grown man a ‘boyfriend’]. During this ‘night out,’ he didn’t call her, didn’t pick up her calls, and returned home somewhere around 5 in the morning. Once again, I, like an idiot, asked her why she couldn’t just tell him that his behaviour bothered her, only to receive the same kind of answer. This girl took it one step forward and added that if you act like you don’t care, then the boy will automatically want to be a better boyfriend and change his behaviour. Apparently, the one who doesn’t care the most holds the power in the relationship. Right. Forget sharing your life with someone…just act like you don’t care and you’re ‘cool’ with everything. That’s the perfect ticket to winning the perfect man.
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| As mentioned above--ticket to winning the man of your dreams. If you've never watched The Hills, then you're a far superior human being than I. |
This brings me to my other point: W T EFFFFF is a ‘girls' night out?’
Now I don’t want to trash Sex and the City…in fact, I really like the TV show [the movies sucked and the second one was racist and extremely culturally insensitive]. But a TV show isn’t real life; it’s fantasy. Carrie Bradshaw is a moron who spent a fortune on shoes and clothes while having no savings. See that financial crisis that the US is going through? Blame it on the Carrie Bradshaw mindset. Keep in mind that she gets rescued out of her financial crisis by an all-knowing, extremely rich man who she eventually marries. Samantha probably has syphilis and every kind of herpes imaginable. Miranda is just not likeable. And Charlotte seems naïve enough to be mentally retarded.
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| Girls' Night Out |
Getting together to complain about your boyfriends and drinking cosmos [a vile drink made from little kittens and cough syrup] isn’t going to change your life in any way. From what I’ve seen, a ‘girls' night out’ seems to be more of a ‘revenge’ tactic used on boyfriends like the example above—you can get drunk with your ‘boys’ then I can get drunk without calling you with my ‘girls.’ Whoever cares the least holds the most power in the relationship. Dream relationship I tell you.
The big picture
TV, written media, the wedding industry, retail chains, and pathetically written books which pass for modern day literature have made women into insecure little people pleasing puppets. This is also why I don’t understand it when women of Western cultures look down upon women in Eastern cultures, calling them doormats and pushovers. There are strong women both cultures as there are weak women in both cultures. Both cultures advocate subservience and conformity in women—in different ways.
