I recently traveled to New Haven for a conference, and was lucky enough to spend a few hours in The Big Apple before I had to fly back to South Bend. As a woman from a small border town in Arizona, navigating the subway and bus system was daunting, scary, and made me absolutely paranoid that I would miss my flight, leaving me stranded in New York with no friends, no cash, and no idea how to get home. I eventually found my strategy: if you flirt with the man at an information desk, he will be more than eager to assist you in your travels and give you more information than you probably need on how to get around.
“Did you find where you needed to go? Was it hard trying to find your way around?” My mom asked when I called her at the airport. I now realize that I probably would not have been able to as easily navigate my way around should I had not indulged the otherwise unenthusiastic information worker.
Since my experience in New York, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the different ways that I “flirt through life”. This situation does not just happen in the city; it happens everywhere. “If you flirt with the bartender, he will always make sure to serve you first. Press your boobs up, show him your cleavage, and you’ll be set for the entire night,” was a piece of advice that was told to me by one of my friends. Of course, it always works, and I can usually get my drink fast and slightly less expensive than advertised.
However, there is something extremely unsettling about the “flirting” strategy that my friends and I partake in. Why do I feel like I owe these men (in whom I would otherwise be uninterested) validation of their manhood in order to get assistance? Shouldn’t someone working at an information kiosk offer me the same quality of attention as those who don’t flirt with them, simply because it is their job and a sign of human decency? Shouldn’t I be guaranteed proper customer service for a good and service I am spending my own money on? I am not asking people to go above and beyond for their jobs; I am arguing that there is something inherently sexist, disturbing, and inhumane that there are still parts of our society that require women to sexually objectify themselves and perform actions they wouldn’t usually feel comfortable doing in order to get the treatment they deserve to get.
In the future, I will only flirt with the bartender, the man at the kiosk, or the man interviewing me for a job because he’s cute or interesting, not because I feel like it is the only way to get what I want in life. I am a woman with talent, intelligence, and a good moral backbone, and I will not compromise those characteristics in this patriarchal society.
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Images: provided by author