What the hell? I thought girls stopped acting crazy in front of guys after high school. Apparently not.

But why did we do it then, and why do some of us still do it now?

Growing up around a family of school teachers, I heard every possible theory about the best way kids learn, the one that struck me the most was how teenage boys tend to learn better in co-educational environments, while girls do better in single sex schools. The logic being that, boys feel like they need to show off how smart they are to the girls, while the girls will play dumb around the boys. I went to a single sex school, so I don’t know what it was actually like in the classroom, but if the way my friends and I acted around boys on the weekends is any indication, I would say that, this is probably a reasonable statement.

When the guys were around, girls who were normally intelligent and actually had some common sense, would lose all sense of direction, walk out in front of traffic, freak out if they saw a spider, not be able to open jars, forget how to spell or multiply, suddenly forget the President’s name (even though at school the day before, they had given a talk about him and his policies). You get the idea.

When you think about it, it’s not a new phenomenon, women have always been portrayed as the ‘fairer sex’, both in the media and by society as a whole. Just think about the often child-like, over sexualized, characters Marilyn Monroe played, alongside the handsome hero, or, the way women are viewed in childhood fairy tales, often silly and walking into danger, only to be rescued when the man saves the day. Little Red Riding Hood anybody? And, how many times have you and your friends joked about crying to get out of a speeding ticket? If a guy tried that, he would end up on ‘Cops’ as a laughing stock, and the video would have gone viral on YouTube within the hour.

I think that in high school everyone wants to be popular and fit in, which, along with liking the right music, wearing the right clothes and having the right friends, means (rightly or wrongly), having boyfriends. With all the stereotypes of women that we learn when we are young, being of sexy girls, who need help from a man to get through the day safely, it is really no wonder that when teenage girls try to impress guys, they act like that stereotype, and not the smart, independent girl they may be.

I know that males also act like idiots when they are young and trying to impress girls, by playing up the ‘G.I Joe’ macho man stereotype, but it seems that when they get older, the pressure on them to embody the stereotype, minimizes more than it does for females. For instance, a certain friend of mine once tried to impress a girl, by attempting to jump off a roof into a pool, Evel Knieval styles, but instead broke his leg. This same friend, only last year, wouldn’t enter his house for hours, because he saw a mouse, and waited outside while his girlfriend caught it. Go figure.

The stereotypes that we see in the media of females, doesn’t really get much better when we get older and we know (supposedly) that we don’t have to act like little girls to get attention from males. Instead, the idea that is promoted is still of the sexy, silly woman. Kim Kardashian for instance, has even said that people perceive her to be just a ‘pretty face’, and so she plays into the public persona instead of actually acting the way she wants to. Further, take any number of recent romantic comedies. The female we often see is either the straight laced wife, who is portrayed as boring and stifling to their carefree husband, or they are the fashion forward woman who uses sex to her advantage, with little other character traits in between. So who would you rather be, boring and ‘old’ or hot and interesting?

Richard Easton, a matchmaker said on Shine today, that men men actually do want intelligent women, not the barbie doll pampered princess, who speaks like a Hilton and needs help spelling. But he also said, that not being very feminine is often a turn off. So basically what we need to be is successful and intelligent, but not too intelligent to get the guys to like us. Um, how about no?

Women need to just need to act like themselves, and not a crazy stereotype, or ‘toned down’ version of themselves. And then, if the guy doesn’t like you, well he doesn’t like you, but when a guy does like you, then he actually likes you, not a made up, less intelligent version of you. And as an added bonus, you will stop driving all your friends mad with your ridiculous chipmunk voice!

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Over the years I’ve had my share of endless restaurant dinners with the former Mrs. Rake and the other former Mrs. Rake, and various dates of my youth. Out in public it seems these women never actually eat. They push their food around, pile it up in corners while they talk, try to get me to eat it for them, and every now and then put half a fork-full of peas into their mouths.

I keep thinking that by the time we leave the restaurant they’ll be so malnourished I’ll have to take them out to my car in a wheelchair. They worry me.

As I watch them not eating, two profound thoughts run through my mind: “I must be the world’s biggest pig, chowing down like I just escaped from Osama’s personal torture chamber,” and “How much am I paying for this meal she isn’t eating?”

After a while, we guys try to get used to it. We might suggest a nice soup or salad for their entre, but then we just come across looking cheap, which we are.  But I grew up on the “starving children in China” guilt trip my mother threw at me when I was a kid. I believed her! I still do, despite all that Olympics propaganda about the “New China.” New, like heck, the Chinese are just getting better at hiding those starving kids, probably in the mountains of Tibet somewhere.

I’ve decided that women only eat when they are alone, or when they gather in anonymous packs in dark kitchens solely for the purpose of “pigging out.” I mean, I NEVER see them eating, but some are way past the Orca stage of heaviness — not that I am throwing stones. So there has to be some explanation.

So today I found this photo. My heart lept with joy! — a woman who is willing to dive deep into the greasy ground beef of life, to risk ruining her makeup and looking like a pig, because she has a real appetite, a manly appetite.

I wouldn’t want to take her out to a restaurant or any place in public — I mean, what a pig! Who am I to tear down the walls of female stereotypes? Let Michelle Obama or Sarah Palin eat like that in public — or even Hillary Clinton, for that matter.

Now that’s a glass ceiling worth breaking!

Since I have told you how I failed to acknowledge the genius of a Pulitzer Price winner (“All the King’s Men”) last year it will not surprise you that it happened again with the winner of the National Book Award 2006: “The Echo Maker.

I am not sure if I have mentioned in November how bored I can get by stories that engage in describing the life of men. I will now. Since I read J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” (another book where I failed to see any sort of genius) I categorize certain books into the unreadable-male-life-story-narrative… okay, maybe they are not unreadable, but they are indescribable boring to me. I am not even sure why but men’s lives bore me to death probably because I see certain patterns repeated that I myself find unbelievable.

That said I come to “The Echo Maker” which has me plunged into a “Sinnkrise” – not because it was especially good but because I am especially vulnerable right now and feel the need to identify…  And I did with Powers’s character Dr. Weber or at least with his writing ambition. A failed poet / fiction writer he feels the need to put his academic research into narrative prose. While he is popular with the audience, he is not taken seriously by his colleagues. When his third book is being criticized for exploiting personal desaster for the sake of entertainment he is sunk into a crises… other factors play parts in this… then he cheats on his wife and finally sees how things unfolded and I guess he is sort of healed in the end…

The book is not Weber’s story per se, he is only one of three persons who tell their story not as I-narrators but close to one. (I forgot what it’s called, sorry). The other two are siblings and the main point of the story is that Mark who had an accident does not recognize his sister, Karin, any longer as his sister. He thinks she is an imposter of some sort. Karin is obsessed with the well-being of her brother (always has been) and she cannnot live with the fact that her brother does not accept her anymore and calls for help to an author of popular academic literature in the field of mental diseases, Dr. Weber. While they try to “cure” Mark it is obvious that the three fight individual fights with their identities.

This sounds not too bad, really, it isn’t. What irked me was a) the stereotypical description of female characters as hysteric, manipulative, and weak b) the description of male characters as lusty, sexually potent, boy-men c) latent homophobia. Maybe I should just succumb to the fact that some male writers cannot form believable female characters but it is annoying when one has to read them – and at college level, no less. Then we have to read stories that make men more interesting than they really are (maybe it is because I see men pretty two-dimensional even though I know they cannot be as shallow as they want to appear most of the time… I don’t know – then again, why should I care? I am a lesbian, men and their demons don’t really interest me at all…).

When I speak of homophobia in “The Echo Maker” I might be misinterpreting. Maybe it has become too normal to dump a (supporting character) lesbian into the collective readers’ lap to divert from the homoeroticism that goes on the life of the female lead. Maybe in order to have a truly straight female character you have to divert all potential same-sex attraction into a character that is not really a character. And maybe you have to play at the stereotypical gay encounter in the main character’s adolescence to make him straight. I don’t know. But the way Richard Powers puts homosexual stereotypes into his story suggests an overcompensated obsession with “the other” while at the same time wanting to abort it.

Some people are gay. Deal with it.

On the whole it was a tiresome read about man and bird, about the brain and the self, and about the madness in all of us. Hm, that description sounds almsot too positive when the book is really not worth the effort of its 500+ pages.

Then, an IKEA commercial came on. I don’t know about you, but I don’t run around the yard and down the street screaming about a furniture sale. Maybe that’s just me. My point is that there is NO way that commercial would air with a male acting in such a ridiculous manner over a sale. It’s just such a Lucille Ball 1950s dated stereotype.

Something took hold of me this morning because I decided to let my fingers do the talking and took my above message to Twitter: “Why is it that the woman in the 1800dentist commercial is made 2 look like such a ditz? If she were a man she would look smarter, u know it.” For IKEA I wrote: “Same w the IKEA commercials. Don’t know bout u but I don’t run around screaming bout a furniture sale. Wouldn’t hv a man doing that.”

So here’s the good part: I actually got a reply from 1800dentist! “hmmm interesting observation. What are your ideas on improving the commercial? Changes? etc. We’d love to hear your thoughts.”

Here’s what I wrote back: “yes! u listened! Make her more intelligent. Women r NOT dumb. Ur ads seem sexist, ergo offensive. The banter is ok, & the actress likable enuf if she didn’t hv 2 b so condescended 2 or deliver her lines like such an airhead. It’s annoying. K?”

I would love it if any of you strong, amazing women (or men) would join me in getting these horrible commercials CHANGED by sending your input to @1800DENTIST on Twitter. You can follow me at RachelintheOC and I promise to follow you back. If you’re not on Twitter, make a post on their Facebook page & reference or copy and paste this post and/or my blog, www.giltfree.blogspot.com.

Let’s make this change!!

Sometimes I get the opportunity to share my experiences as a woman and disspell myths, but far more often than I’d like, I just have to let it go.  That irks me.  So, for my own mental health, I’ve come here to outline one more example of a woman who doesn’t fit the female stereotype of this society.  You/We already know lots of women who don’t in one way or another, so just let me be one more on the list (and if you don’t have a list, let me be the first)…

~  I do not think I’m fat.  I have a healthy body and a healthy view of my body.

~  I do not gossip.  I take great care to only say things about a person, which I would feel comfortable saying in their presence.  If someone else is gossiping, I always try to defend the person they’re talking about.  Not in an abrasive, holier-than-thou way, but just subtly and kindly offering a different view point.

~  I’m more of a Thinker.  Forgive my Myers-Briggs speak… essentially what that means is that I make decisions more with logic than with my emotions.  I’m only moderately emotional anyway, and in regards to those emotions, I am self-regulatory.  (You may have noticed in my About Me page that I’m actually a Feeler on the Myers-Briggs, but that is because I choose in a logical way to let mine and others’ emotions influence my thought process and decision making.)

~  I don’t cry at sappy movies, or anywhere else for that matter.  (Gladiator is my favorite movie; Dan in Real Life is my second favorite.)  In fact, I rarely cry at all.  I think in the past five years I’ve cried a grand total of three times.  That’s sort of unfortunate I think, I actually like a good cry every so often.

~ I’m as comfortable without make-up as with it.

~ I’m as comfortable in shin-guards and cleats as I am in heels, although these days I’m mostly in heels.  In the same way, I’m as comfortable playing basketball as I am shopping at my favorite store (Maurices!).

~ I have self-control when I shop, and about how often I shop.  One time, with the exception of buying Christmas presents for my family, I went almost a whole year without shopping at all.  That’s not to say I don’t like to shop for clothes.  In that way, I fit the stereotype, but I only buy what I know I can afford.

~  No matter how you look at it, I am not needy.  I need very little to be happy.

~  I’ve never planned my wedding.

~  I’m not looking for a “white knight.”  Don’t need one and wouldn’t want one anyway.  I’d prefer an “equal.”

~  I like children as much as I like everyone else, not any more just because they’re kids.  Granted though, I like people, children included, mucho.

~  I am calm and even-keeled, especially in crisis situations.  The only freaking out I do is when I allow myself to, and even then it is confined to the space between my ears.  No one will know about it until I tell them, which is only ever after the fact.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just for the sake of balance, which I think is important in all areas of life, these are some ways which I DO fit the female stereotype…

~ I’m terrified of spiders (in addition to most six legged creatures for that matter).

~  I have comfort foods.  (ice cream, popcorn)

~  I’ve seen You’ve Got Mail more times than I care to count.  (It’s at the very least, 50.)

~  I am very empathic. I can easily put myself in other peoples’ shoes.

~  I am very, very relational.  They (relationships) are the most important thing to me, and are where the great majority of my thought/concern/energy goes.

~  I have a nurturing “instinct.” (I believe men also have it, but society just says it’s less acceptable in them.  Same thing goes for being “emotional.”)  On my Facebook ”Compare People” application, people seem to vote for me as “Best Potential Mother.”

~  Last but not least… I care.  Whatever it is that concerns you… I care.  Please…  Talk to me.

I started using the phrase “keep your jockeys dry” yesterday. It simply means this “don’t be so fucking horny all the time.” You ever realize that you can enjoy someone without sticking your dick in them? You don’t fuck your friends (maybe you do…I don’t know) that you hang out with/drink beer with/play music with…so why do you gotta fuck a girl to show her “whats up I like you”…try doing something nice. The trouble is…finding a girl who doesn’t have what they call “a healthy appetite for sex.”

Here is a list of things you can do to Keep Your Jockeys Dry:

1.) Get a hobby: Try playing a musical instrument instead of playing yours or others sexual instruments. I for example I play bass, guitar, and mandolin. Getting a hobby is a great way to bypass sex. The downside to some hobbies like playing instruments is that it can sometimes attract girls that want to bone an awesome musician…which may seem nice, but from my experience this never happens. Girls usually like the musicians that look like prissy bitches anyway…so be hardcore in your hobby and the wrong kind of girls will stay away. Playing non-mainstream instruments like the mandolin is sure to keep the shitty girls away! Works for me!

2.) Tell the girl that you have the runs: Now, I like this one…I have used this to get out of unwanted sex before. Nobody wants to fuck you if you tell them you had too much chili and might shit on their sheets. The downside of this tactic is that you will leave them wanting you…but if the person happens to not be your girlfriend then they will simply find someone else! BTW…one night stands are for chodes. This tactic, for guys, is like the girls tactic of saying “I’m on my period.” Now you too guys can have an excuse to not frolic in the garden!

3.) Find any reason to hit the old dusty trail: This one works pretty well…say you are at a party but you don’t feel much like drinking. A girl keeps flirting and hitting on you and you are like “She is drunk, she is not thinking straight, what the hell is wrong with this girl.” She then says something along the lines of “Lets go back to my room.” What do you do!? Take a quick glance around the room…find the nearest person to blacking out on the floor and go “Oh no! I gotta help my friend back home, I’m the DD tonight.” You don’t even have to know this person…just grab the dude about to pass out and walk out the door before someone gets engaged in a conversation with you. Perhaps drive the person to wherever they live and tell their friends to watch out for their fucked up friend, or just put them in another room to sleep it off. Thats when you hit the old dusty trail. Also you could just come up with excuses like you have a lot to do at work tomorrow…less elaborate and not as legendary. This usually is the tactic used at parties…and usually to keep ugly girls away from you…but I just use it to avoid getting my jockeys wet.

4.) Simply explain to the girl that you aren’t interested in sex: If you are dating someone and use this tactic…you will probably be dumped in the next few weeks maybe a month. I have used this many times and ended up being single again! I recommend this if you like to be honest, like I try to do. Maybe, just maybe you will be dating a girl thats perfectly alright with this…and thats the girl you keep. Don’t fuck that relationship up…such a situation has yet to arise in my experience…but its plausible.

So remember ladies and gents…you don’t need to be fucking all the time. In case you are able to break your animal aggressive instincts to bone…I provided you with several scenarios that can play out in order to avoid having unwanted/unneccesary sex. You may have noticed that I didn’t mention using religion as a tactic…thats just shallow…don’t do that. If you do have sex…make sure it means something both for YOU and the OTHER INVOLVED. Sex should be something you do to please someone you have deep feelings for, and never for your own personal ambitions and urges. Don’t EVER pressure people into it and never belittle anyone for anything related to it. Don’t do that shit. SHIT!

Ok…I lied…I will put in one more topic…Things that I hate at this moment in time:

Sarah Palin, flakey people, christian fundamentalists, whiney music, Toby Keith, naive people, politics, high blood pressure, my health, lack of anything to do, and my inability to keep from paranoia leading to insomnia.

Over the years I’ve had my share of endless restaurant dinners with the former Mrs. Frank and the other former Mrs. Frank, and various dates of my youth. Out in public it seems these women never actually eat. They push their food around, pile it up in corners while they talk, try to get me to eat it, and every now and then put half a fork-full of peas in their mouths.

I keep thinking that by the time we leave the restaurant they’ll be so malnourished I’ll have to take them out to my car in a wheelchair. They worry me.

As I watch them not eating, two profound thoughts run through my mind: “I must be the world’s biggest pig, chowing down like I just escaped from Osama’s personal torture chamber,” and “How much am I paying for this meal she isn’t eating?”

After a while, we guys try to get used to it. We might suggest a nice soup or salad for their entre, but then we just come across looking cheap, which we are.  But I grew up on the “starving children in China” guilt trip my mother threw at me when I was a kid. I believed her! I still do, despite all that Olympics propaganda about the “New China.” New, like heck, the Chinese are just getting better at hiding those starving kids, probably in the mountains of Tibet somewhere.

I’ve decided that women only eat when they are alone, or when they gather in anonymous packs in dark kitchens solely for the purpose of “pigging out.” I mean, I NEVER see them eating, but some are way past the Orca stage of heaviness — not that I am throwing stones. So there has to be some explanation.

So today I found this photo. My heart lept with joy! — a woman who is willing to dive deep into the greasy ground beef of life, to risk ruining her makeup and looking like a pig, because she has a real appetite, a manly appetite.

I wouldn’t want to take her out to a restaurant or any place in public — I mean, what a pig! Who am I to tear down the walls of female stereotypes? Let Michelle Obama or Sarah Palin eat like that in public — or even Hillary Clinton, for that matter.

Now that’s would be a glass ceiling worth breaking!

Lithwick is a senior editor and legal correspondent for Slate.com, and here is another excellent article from her on slate.com. This one is about one my favorite subjects, those adorable Hillary Holdouts. You know, those just can’t let it got Hillary supporters who seem to have problem with the democratic process when it does not serve their agenda to nominate a candidate that somehow serves to validate thier unrealized ambitions, or some such gobbldygook. blah blah blah.

What I really love, and very much appreciate, about this article is Lithwick’s argument that there is a large enough constiuency of PUMAs (Part Unity My Ass), which is a PAC for these people who still refuse to accept Obama as the Democratic Nominee and will stop and nothing less that overthrowing his nomination and installing thier very beloved Hillary, to scuttle Obama nomination.

It’s hardly clear that Team Hillary is as vast or as powerful as it claims. Polls suggest there isn’t a deep pool of Obama-hating women who could derail his election.

Whew! That’s good news. Still, I can only be so optimistic. Because, as Lithwick writes:

These disgruntled women—whether they plan to vote for John McCain, sit out the election, or simply gobble up airtime—are tacitly working toward electing McCain; a candidate who claimed last week at a presidential forum at Saddleback Church that life begins “at the moment of conception” and who voted against legislation ensuring equal pay for women. These women must be well aware that a vote for McCain is a vote to overturn Roe. I assume they don’t care. But my real problem with the Hillary Harridans—and the media’s relentless focus on them—is that they give new life to Paleozoic stereotypes about irrationally destructive older women.

So caught up in their fury as a result of their disappointment, these particular Hillary supports seem entirely oblivious to the damage they could be helping to inflict upon this country by helping, whether directly or indirectly, getting McCain elected.

Saying women have tendency to get hysterical may be a stereotype but it is a difficult one to refute in light of this kind of behavior.

As I’ve said before, I don’t know about other Obama supporters, but as for me, if Obama loses and it is clear that Hillary supports such as those mentioned in this article helped to make it happen, Mrs. Clinton and her clan can kiss my support good-bye. I’m a male and I too possess a serious capacity for hysterics and will exercise my God-given Amerian right to indulge in such idiotic behavior.

The modern day beauty needs to have the following stereotypes: slim, smooth skin, juicy lips, long silky hair, small nose, small chin, (as mentionned by Jane Ein her post Irvin Penn and Female Beauty), and busty round boobs, round booty (in Mauritius: be white). If a girl doesn’t have that, makeup, photoshop and plastic surgery will help.

Yet, going back to the paintings to the renaissance, paintings depicted women otherwise as shown below in the famous painting by Botticelli – The Birth of Venus

So when did this change in stereortypes occur? That should lead to an interesting discussion…

Back in junior high and high school, defining a girl by her sexuality seemed an accepted norm. Did she or didn’t she? Would she or wouldn’t she? Even today, hallways all over the world are lit up daily as the rumor mill chews and spits out women’s mangled reputations for an audience of her “peers.” These rumors–which can be derived from facts (she did it), fiction (she didn’t do it but folks say she did), or merely by how a girl carries herself (she exudes sexuality through her manner & dress so she MUST have done it)–unfortunately carry the grave potential of clouding a girl’s entire school experience. Or at least it seems that way at the time.

As women mature, we like to think we evolve to be defined less by our sexuality and more by our professional accomplishments, our roles as wives and mothers, or by our stunning intellect and graceful beauty. Yet, in Second Life and in real life, I hate to admit our sexuality seems to remain one of the co-stars in the storyline that defines who we are.

I recently experienced evidence of this predilection with a couple of male friends in SL. Each situation began with assumptions being made about my level of desire, followed by attempts to lead me down the path to intimacy. And only after very awkward conversations did the roots of these messy plotlines become clear: both men had—perhaps somewhat unwittingly or subconsciously—assigned me the role of hyper sexual seductress because of my blogs about sex and the tendency I have to flirt openly in world, and not because I had outwardly indicated I was interested in sex at that moment.

Is this an undeserved label? Probably not entirely as I admittedly wear my sensuality pretty close to my skin. Therefore I should not be surprised when men respond. Perhaps I should instead be flattered (which I am). However, it is also worth recognizing that we often make assumptions about others that influence how we feel about and interact with them. And many times these assumptions are not always right on target. Who we think they are is not necessarily who they really are.

As I explore this idea, I’m reminded of two movies that vividly capture the emergence of female sexual identity and the definitions assigned to girls who will and girls who won’t. The 1980 movie Little Darlings, and the more recent American Beauty, both explore the dichotomy of the vixen—who turns out to be all tease and all talk—and the more introverted, less overtly sexual virgin. In the end it is the virgin who goes all the way, while the vixen loses her nerve. And while this is hardly indicative of an overwhelming trend, it does speak to the propensity we have to mistakenly assign girls the role of slut or siren based on limited information.