“You are so beautiful, my baby. Once you slim down boys will notice and you’ll get as many dates as you want,” my mother promised me in her kitchen when I was 16, her response to my crying to her how lonely I felt with no one asking me out. “I guarantee you, you’ll have your pick of boys if you just lose weight.” She assured me that afternoon that thin was in, and if I wanted to be I would have to capitulate to the social standards of Los Angeles in the late 20th century.
I mistakenly believed her that day.
Indeed, heroin thin was in in the 60s — 90s, when actresses like Audrey Hepburn and supermodels like Twiggy were the iconic images of feminine beauty. And thin still is in, even today. Especially in L.A. In fact, thin as a beauty standard goes back to the ancient Greeks, with marble statues of athletic but slender women. (Plump [not fat] was in for a very elite group and only for a short while in history as a display of wealth, in contrast to most of the starving population.)
Weeks after my mother’s guarantee I’d be popular and have all the dates I wanted with my pick of boys if I got thin, I was in the high school gym and a senior was giving out Black Beauties with promises it was a miracle drug for weight loss. She got the little black capsules from her mother’s medicine cabinet and was hoping the girls she turned on to the amphetamine would pay for more. She turned out to be right.
Took me about 6 months, on Beauties almost daily, until I lost the extra weight I’d carried since early childhood. I got pretty my senior year in high school. I was socially acceptably thin. My mother was so proud. I’d come into the kitchen in the afternoons after school and she’d gush over how ‘shapely’ I looked in those jeans or that cami or fitted T. She was clueless I was on pharms, stolen from a classmate’s mother.
Boys at school, men at my work, and when I was out and about started to notice me. And for a bit, it felt empowering finally being an object of desire. Flirting was fun on campus, especially with boys who’d ignored me before. And to my mother’s point, I did get asked out occasionally.
Even pudgy, I’d not considered dating high school boys since the 9th grade. Male puberty had most all of them thinking through their ‘little head’ 24/7, and I wanted so much more than being another notch on some teen boy’s bedpost. Grown men were more mature, I assured myself.
Turns out, most are not.
Not then. Not now.
Being objectified for my body got old quick. The more dates I had, the more I realized the ‘men’ had asked me out for one reason only — to get laid. During most ‘dates,’ I basically had to interview the guys as they never asked me anything, or even turned my questions around. It was all about them all the time. After the date, they expected to come back to my place, or go to theirs and fuck. ‘Make love.’ ‘Get intimate.’ These colloquialisms are lies. There is nothing ‘intimate’ about fucking a stranger. And to achieve our highest attainment — love — requires more like hundreds of dates.
By the time I turned 30 the canonical line among most single working women I knew or met was: “Men want a mother in the form of a whore.” And for the most part, I had to agree. It seemed most heterosexual men I went out with, or even ended up dating a while ultimately wanted a woman who would listen to them, admire them, adore them, and have sex at their will. They had little to no interest in my mind — what I thought about or what mattered to me. And none had any interest in learning from me, but were always happy to spout their knowledge and wisdom.
From fourteen till I married at 37, I literally dated hundreds of men, so my sample size is not tiny, especially if you add in the thousands of women I’ve listened to over the years recounting their dating history. And quite frankly, their marriages haven’t turned out much different.
I get it. I do. Men have been on top of the social order from our beginnings. Might equals right, so men made the rules, wrote the bibles, set up the laws, and subjugated women because, well, they could (and still do with the 6 male members of our Supreme Court). Move forward from bringing home the mastodon to bringing home a salary — men have also been burdened with being the providers, so I understand why most men felt it was their God-given right to rule the roost they provided for.
The problem is, the world I grew up in is changing, while most men are not. Women were given equal rights under the law with The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1972, but we were not, and are still not seen as social equals to men. Back in the 80s, if we worked, which most of us did by then, we were teachers, nurses, admin, therapists, or careers in the Arts, as was mine as a graphic designer. I, personally, made half the salary of the man in the cubical next to me. And even today, women make roughly 22% less than men doing the exact same job. And even worse, a quarter of the way into this new millennium, my 22 yr old daughter, and most all of her girlfriends still have the exact same issues with men I did when I was single.
At her college graduation in June, my beautiful baby bemoaned the fact that she didn’t have a boyfriend like most of her girlfriends had acquired during their years on campus.
“Do you like Del’s boyfriend?” I asked her.
“No. He’s a dick. He doesn’t listen to a word she says. All he wants her for is free sex.”
“What do you think of Jenny’s guy?”
“OMG. He’s so cringe! He spends more time with his guy friends than her, except when he comes over drunk to get laid.”
“And what about Nik’s boyfriend? She’s been dating him since her Sophomore year.”
“He’s Muslim, so he doesn’t want sex before marriage, though they do everything else. But he treats her like a possession — at his beck and call, and he’s all over her in public to make sure everyone knows she’s his.”
Like her female peers, my daughter dated guys she met on campus and online throughout her college years. None worked out beyond the first date, and most never even made it that far. A few text exchanges made it clear the guy was looking for a hookup. My daughter is not. Nor does she want to model her friends “just to have a boyfriend.”
“I’m a social pariah since I haven’t had sex yet, Mom,” my daughter assured me at her graduation dinner. “But I want so much more than what my friends have settled for.”
Ah, from the mouths of babes…
Dating, in a short or long-term relationship, or married, most women I know or have met along the way seemingly want more from most men than they’re getting. As men are no longer the sole provider for most households, some women, like my daughter, (and 60+ yr old wives driving the current divorce rate) are demanding more. Sadly, so many of her peers are still role-modeling ancient times to the early 1970s when there was no such thing as equal rights, accepting selfish, disrespectful behavior from their boyfriends so they can be in — show their peers to their parents that they are socially acceptably desired. Women are groomed from birth to be physically desirable.
Equal rights does not stop at equal pay. Money is not the end all that will move society to treat each other equitably. Truth is, it really is up to women to create a more equitable society.
- Women must learn to value our minds over our physicality.
- Women want equality — to get paid the same in the workplace, and treated equally in public and private relationships. WE want the change, not men who’ve sat on top of the social order for eons. Women have to create the change we want, beginning with our self-perception. We have to fight to be heard and recognized for our knowledge and achievements. We must demand compromise instead of simply giving [in]. It’s hard to do for most of us, often impossible for many women to put self before others. Women are groomed from birth to be maternal.
- Even today, most of childhood parenting is still done by the mom. Let’s teach our daughters, and even our sons out of the womb that humanity is one race, and we are better when we work together. Mom and Dad, reject the gender hierarchy established at the dawn of the human race that has been playing out through the generations like a genetic disease. Teach our kids to respect, consider, and communicate with each other regardless of race, age, or gender. Then perhaps our daughter’s daughter’s daughter will never know the oh so very lonely chasm inherent in the gender divide of yesteryear and today. Instead, our great-great-great-grandchildren will get to experience the deep intimate connection that can only be achieved with true equality.
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