Neither a Steinem Nor a Cleaver Be

So I sit in this group I belong to, a group of women with whom I reproductive tendencies in common, and I am listening to a speaker. We often have a speaker and sometimes they are good and sometimes they are bad but what NEVER fails to blow my mind is how they don't seem to have any clue WHO we are or anything about WOMEN who exist in the year 2009.

This idiot, for instance.

He seems like a nice enough man - until he talks for a while. And he's talking about getting massages, and about the therapeutic/real world/medicinal benefits to your overall being blah blah blah. Yes, we get it - MASSAGES ARE GOOD FOR YOU.

This is when he trips up, because the question is posed to the group "Why don't you regularly get massages" and everyone giggles and mentions price.

I suppose we giggle because we're girls and girls are supposed to giggle. It's the herd mentality at work.

This is when he then goes astray........puts a foot wrong, as far as I'm concerned.

He starts telling us that OUR HUSBANDS ARE OUT SPENDING MONEY! Oh YES THEY ARE!


And that WE DESERVE something nice for our selves.

We deserve to get our hair and nails done! We deserve massages and shopping trips!

Because.......are you ready?



HE KNOWS THAT THIS IS IMPORTANT TO WOMEN.

Blink.


He keeps talking. (I had him a metaphorical shovel).



He goes on about how if we're going to have to make sure our men have pressed shirts, and that we get dinner on the table.........well then that we deserve some luxuries to. AGAIN........he goes BACK to the hair and nails analogy. Again he insists that our husbands are out WASTING money and we don't know it.

Now.........I'm no Gloria Steinem. I'm not burning my bra, cuz I need it to hold up my tits. I like girly things, I like getting my hair and nails done. But basically what I was being told was that these were things I needed.......TO FUNCTION. That for me, as a woman, I had to have these things for my own personal satisfaction.


I suppose so that I'd be less likely to bitch about making his dinner, ironing his shirts and getting him that blow job he needs right after the kids go to bed. "But honey, you got your nails and toes done today - now get to work!"


Cuz that's equality at work! I suppose if I get a massage it's an all anal Friday night then eh? Clearly it's all about quid pro quo at that point.


Which doesn't seem like much of a marriage to me. And no my husband isn't out "blowing money" and guess what NEITHER AM I. If we want things, we make room in the budget for them, we discuss them like grown ups.


So I sat there and stewed about what an a-hole this guy was, and how even though his prices were good I was really sooooo not impressed - that although his wife might be greeting him at the door with a drinkee - really even my barely feminist self was offended at this throwback attitude to women. Basically - I was sitting there hating him and wishing he'd just up and quit pandering to us like a group of females slobbering for male attention.



And then they did the door prize drawing for a one hour massage.

And I won.

So you know, how bad a guy can he really be?