Guy: What a pain in the ass, huh?
Me: Yeah.
Guy: How much is parking down here anyway?
Me: It's $1/hour.
Guy: Wow! Well, that's a lot cheaper than Seattle.
Me (and here was my fatal mistake): Yeah, isn't it like $3.50 in Seattle?
Guy: Umm, I thought it was more than that...
Me: Oh, well I guess I haven't been there for a while.
Guy: Wow, you should really get out more. (in a very suggestive and sarcastic way)
Me: Yeah, well *begins walking away* I don't like Seattle, too much traffic.
Guy: Gotta go to class?
Me: Nah, *starts walking away quicker* I'm gonna go get some food.
Does that kind of stuff actually work on girls?! Here's how I see it, he knows absolutely nothing about me except how I look. Now, I thought about putting out a Facebook status, asking if that kind of stuff actually worked on girls, but I realized that someone somewhere would probably say, "Well, was he cute/hot/attractive?" Girls get all up in a fit if a guy calls them hot or sexy or whatever, saying that the man is totally objectifying them and not wanting them for who they are as people but for the pretty face they sport. So what's the difference when a girl does it to a guy? How is it socially acceptable for a girl to have 15 boards on Pinterest called "Eye Candy," "Sexy Men," "Big Muscles," "Shirts Off, Hot Bods," and yet if a guy has one photo of a scantily clad woman he's a pig? I'm not saying that it should be socially acceptable both ways, but I am saying that there shouldn't be such a huge double standard. Gender equality has been a huge issue in recent years, tons of women's rights movements and people all over being labeled as feminists. I'm not saying any of these things are bad. In fact, I think that men and women should have equal rights as human beings and that there should only be a wage gap in cases where experience/job performance are the deciding factors, not gender. But here's where I get confused/frustrated: there's so much contradiction in what women are saying they want! [And I use the term women very broadly and I'm probably grossly over-generalizing, but this is just what I see.]
We (women) say we want equal rights, that we want to be treated the same way, and yet, "Chivalry is dead!" We complain that men aren't stepping up and being men. It's sexist and we feel like we're being put in a box if we're expected to make dinner every night, do the laundry, and keep the house clean, but if you go out and your man doesn't pay or hold open the door for you, it's the end of the world. We don't want to be belittled for being women, we don't want to be treated as the weaker sex, and yet, "Babe, can you move the couch to the other side of the room for me?" We don't want to be objectified, it's disgusting that men look at us and only see our bodies, but if I don't turn some heads in this new mini-dress then all the men here must be totally blind. And again, the Pinterest thing, women can talk about men's bodies all they want and it's acceptable, nay, encouraged, but if a man mentions anything about a woman's body then all bets are off.
Every girl seems to want a fairy tale life: man comes and sweeps me off my feet, waits on me hand and foot, and sets me up with a giant castle (full of good books) to live in. BUT he'd better not ask me to give up my career to follow him and he'd better not expect me to do any house work if he's not willing to go 50/50 with me, but all the repairs and stuff are up to him (that's man's work). We want to be looking at both sides of the coin at the same time. We want all the good stuff that comes with equal rights, but we also want to keep all the good stuff about being women. We don't want to be put in a box, but we want men to stay in their man box. How do we not see this huge double standard?! I just think it's pretty ridiculous.
