I believe that all women and men should be equal in all respects. There is nothing men can do which women can’t and visa versa and apart from different biological makeup, there is nothing greatly different between men and women. Women are no more suited to certain roles than men are. However there are things which mostly only women will truly understand and there have been lots of occasions when guys I know have failed to understand ‘girl stuff’.
For example: shopping. I’m not going to indulge in a horrible feminine stereotype and suggest that with the right pair of shoes I can take on the world or any such nonsense- I have my brain, thank you very much. But shopping is sort of a military operation, an important system of selection and elimination by which I find exactly what I’m looking for. It’s strategic. My boyfriend however fails to understand why I’ve been thundering around Topshop for half an hour trying to find the right pair of jeans. Whilst I’m closely examining two pairs of boyfriend jeans, my own boyfriend has fallen behind muttering,
‘They’re all the same colour, if you want boyfriend jeans, borrow a pair of mine.’
But obviously his jeans would never go with any of my shoes, despite how many pairs I have.
A few of the guys I know have very unique concepts of a balanced diet. One of my male friends thinks that chicken dippers are a good source of protein and my boyfriend finds that a glass of water is enough to counter balance a meal at TGI Friday’s. Like a lot of girls, I too am striving for my ‘beach body’ I don’t know why, England’s beaches aren’t so great and nor is the weather. But still, I diet and exercise- most of the time. Whilst I’m eating a diet of steamed veg and lean chicken my male buddies are scoffing pizza, guzzling beer and haven’t got a pound of fat to show for it. Guys have higher metabolisms than girls which means that they can eat a bit more bad stuff than us and still burn it off. Consequently they don’t understand why we sometimes opt for salad rather than burgers and they try convincing us that pizza is, in fact, very nutritional.
PMS isn’t made up, it does exist. But, just like guys, we girls also get pretty annoyed about certain things. Are we acting mad at you because we’re on our period and we just can’t handle the hormonal change? No, we’re annoyed at you because you keep leaving your mess everywhere or doing other annoying things that you should just stop doing. Do we need chocolates and lots of care because we’re so fragile during this time of month? No, we need you to stop doing the annoying things. Our time of month does not somehow justify what you did to annoy us, period.
I’m not fond of generalisations but how many of us girls have been told to smile by a male passer-by? I don’t know about you but a girl has never told me to smile and there have been many blokes who have. Personally I don’t understand the concept: guys are never told to smile, their bad moods are passed off as ‘hot-headedness’. But women must always smile and be in the best of moods or risk nicknames such as ‘bossy boots’ or ‘dragon lady’ or worse.
Apparently if a woman looks anything short of ecstatic then there is something wrong: women are supposed to be picturesque and smiley, right? Wrong. If your day starts with your car breaking down and ends with several new deadlines and a coffee stain on your new shirt: it’s fine to have a face like thunder. In fact if your day starts with a free latte (courtesy of handsome barista) and ends with a thank-you email from your boss: you also deserve to wear whichever facial expression you like! The image of the modern women is far from that of the idealistic, cheery 50’s housewife: we have careers now and control over our sexuality, don’t you know? So I think telling women to ‘smile’ is a little bit old fashioned, don’t you?