It comes to no surprise I don't quite understand women. This goes for little girls like my youngest daughter, young adults the age of my oldest daughter, or even the students in my class. I'm reminded of the phenomenon described as girls behavior every Monday when I take Milly (my youngest) to dancing class.
Let me set the scene. Imagine walking into a dance studio which is more like a large apartment building where 2 rooms are designated for dancing, one for the office (where on any given night, three or four mom-owners fold clothes, jabber and eat their dinners as patrons walk by), and one a waiting room. In the waiting room there are 3 neon green sofas, with one of them being a love seat. Although the sofas could sit about 8 people altogether comfortably, there is usually only one person at each sofa. The rest of the seats are piled with laptop cords, discarded jackets, shoes, kids in diapers who trampoline the cushions and the awkwardness of having to sit in a plush seat next to someone you really don't know. As a man, and one of the few males ever in the place (I'm not counting the hipster guy who sits next to his pregnant girlfriend who always seems to be genuinely amused when random children walk by handing him their toys), it is especially awkward sitting next to any mom. Not that I don't want to talk to anyone, it's just that the look of me, all 300 pounds of me, the seriousness of myself coming off from school (where I have already been in a crowded room full of kids for 8 hours) of what it must seem as I converse (and when I converse I converse, all talk with my hands kind of guy), act charming, nod my head in that almost condescending you-know-what-I-mean-because-we're-both-parents-kind-of-way way.
So typically I walk in with Milly with some kind of book, papers to grade and my headphones to drown out the noise. In any place there are 90% women, like say a Panera, the place is loud. Not even really kid loud, because there are plenty of them, but just the type of talk that women do when they are trying to one-up one another.
Oh, my daughter does that too.
That's all my husband does nowadays.
Well, at my school....
By the time Milly twirls herself to class, the room is overrun with several little girls stretching, running around the sofas, and planning their routine before their class starts. Girls are either amazingly self-promoting divas or they have so little self-esteem that they must make sure everyone in the room looks at them. Perhaps it's the culture as well on display. How many girls watch X-Factor and American Idol and hope that all their twirls and bends will magically enhance their popularity?
There has been a liberal agenda of late, before the election especially, titled the "war on women." And anytime some old Republican answers a question about abortion or defunding Planned Parenthood, news organizations like the Huffington Post blare headlines about how men are trying to wrangle women back into the stone ages. (Ironically, Jay-Z was performing for Obama before the election. What does he think of women? He pours champagne on them and calls them "hoes") But to me, the real war is with women amongst themselves. Does anyone realize the magnitude of insults and bullying that goes on among fifth grade girls? What about junior high girls (and this goes way beyond bullying girls who are homosexual)? What about adult women? For every 100 commercials that promote sex and women's curves, there might be one special on the View about loving the large woman, or being yourself where the audience (who are always moms with nice hairdos like the ones who nod approvingly in Milly's dance class) claps and cries and vows to change the culture. Then they go out and order salads and diet cokes because they have to fit in the smaller sized jeans for a party on Saturday.
I shouldn't put the burden entirely on the culture. In truth, the culture is defined by us, the consumers, and are primarily organized by the men who own them. Husbands like me are to blame as well. We rescue the beauty, we win her heart only to revert to pornography, our no-women-allowed activities and not helping out at home. I'm to blame too. I say nothing here that I haven't done before, or that I'm noticing to change.
In the book Boys Adrift, Dr. Sax details the criminally large amount of single guys who have this failure to launch. They are stuck in adolescence--their video games, their porn, their joblessness. They are outnumbered almost 4-1 in american colleges. We sure have closed the gender gap, but has this been at the disadvantage of young men? The boys today shirk from responsibility, from manhood and from a woman who is demanding (and this is not demanding in a nagging sense, but demanding as a wanted and valued member of a home) more of them. These are the type of young men seeking the companionship of my oldest daughter in college. These are the young men who have not been taught to open doors, or to ask a father for permission to date. They have not been taught simply because many men have twisted the responsibility of what being a man is in exchange for something quicker and less demanding. Why work on a marriage when the pretty girl on the computer gives you anything you want for free?
Take this statement from another book: Every woman needs to know that she is exquisite, and exotic and chosen. Is this why Eve was tempted in the garden? Is this why she was tempted first, because she wanted control of her surroundings? Did she long for Adam to pay attention to her instead of plowing the fields? Again, back to fathers. The same fathers who have wounded their young sons can also do irreparable harm to their daughters as well. Not having a father is just as worse to an impressionable young girl. Or what about the abusive father, the uncles who went a little to far during the holiday over-night? Or the fathers who loved their daughters with silence.
So we now have a world full of broken men and women all trying to outwit and determine what the other one wants. Women can sure arouse our masculinity, but no matter how much or how many we pour our lives into, nothing can ever fulfill the emptiness of a broken heart.
Back to my little girls at home.
Dance class is about over. Just before the next round of classes begin, another onslaught of girls enters to stretch, dance and text. Almost all of them are thin, petite or gymnastic-tiny. Again, in our world, only the beautiful can dance. I stand to look at my daughter through the parent-view two-way mirror. When she twirls she rotates an extra 90 degrees too much. She bends too low at times, falls over when she should keep her balance. I love every bit of her awkward dances, the routine of her beauty. She's the only one I want to dance with. The one for which I'm willing to fight.
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