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Girls will be Boys
We were in a reasonable restaurant having dinner the other night, when a young couple came in and sat at the table just across from us. A waiter came to take their drinks order, and the girl asked for a pint of cider. I must be getting old, but I found this really distasteful. It didn't look at all nice, a girl drinking pints.
What's the matter with young women nowadays? Don't they like being women? Why is there this need to be 'one of the lads', or to be seen as an equal to the boys with this 'anything a man can do, I can also do' attitude? Is it that society has put pressure on women to be as tough and competitive as men?
I think society as a whole has put an immense pressure on today's women and they are just plain confused. They are expected to be able to do all the things a man can do, and they also have to look glamorous like an A list celebrity, be a size zero, be perfect wives and mothers, have a spotless house and hold down a full time job as well. A bit of a conflict going on there I would say. I don't think women know where they stand.
There also seems to be a bit of a role reversal going on. Girls are drinking pints, getting drunk and falling over, or worse, fighting; and swearing farting and belching; whilst men are encouraged to show their softer side - if they have one.
They are told that it's okay for a man to cry, even in public; they are encouraged to take a more active role in childcare - I often see men carrying their baby in a sling or pushing their kids on the swings in the park, and lots of men even have their own beauty regimes.
In some cases, the woman goes out to work and the man has become the househusband and main child-carer.
Maybe both the sexes are confused and don't know what their roles are anymore. I wish things could go back to the times when women were women and men were men. It may have had its problems, but at least we all knew where we fitted in and people seemed happier.
I like to be treated as a woman. I enjoy having a door opened for me; a chair pulled out for me, being helped on with my coat, the man walking on the roadside of the pavement etc. I also don't think there is anything wrong with women staying at home looking after their children and keeping the house tidy. The children get more of their mother's time and attention and that's got to be beneficial for them both - I've known of so many working mothers who were upset because their child was closer to its childminder than to them, and they also wonder why the child has gone off the rails - and she can also cook a proper meal, instead of popping a processed bag of rubbish in the microwave when she comes home exhausted after a full day at work.Now obviously money is a big factor in this - some women cannot afford to stay at home with their kids, they have to work, but I feel that they should have thought about that before they had children. I don't believe you can successfully combine both. I know that there are lots of women out there who seem to combine work, home-life and childcare beautifully, and I take my hat off to them, but I believe that something or someone eventually suffers; we are not superwomen and cannot do it all.
I just think it is a shame that some women try too hard to do too much, and that if they relaxed a little, stopped trying to keep up with the blokes and spent a bit of time being girly again, they might discover that they actually like it. And I am sure that as much as they might protest that they don't mind girls drinking pints and throwing up on their shoes, men do actually like feminine women; it makes them feel protective and manly. Which in my mind, is how things should be; but then I'm just an old fashioned gal!
Earlier columns.
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