I have some great women friends, but many of them seem to have the same problems in common: with men. Sure, some are happily married, and I’m thrilled for them, but I know so many who have gone through multiple marriages or messy marriages and/or divorces, and I wonder if I lucked out by being a contender for the woman with the longest unlucky streak in the world when it comes to the opposite sex.
I think it might be better to join a convent than deal with some of the card-carrying members of the Testosterone League out there. Some of the best-dressed men I’ve encountered seem too full of themselves to consider as a potential date. Some of the casually dressed ones seem too obsessed with jobs and money earning to want to date, and those with the beer bellies the size of pregnancy bumps usually take themselves out of the running just be being disgusting (as if being fat is a license to belch, cuss and act barbaric).
Now before anybody writes in and take umbrage, let me make it clear that I am well aware that decent men of all three types I’ve described above are actually out there and likely looking for love, too. Unfortunately we are both in the wrong places, because I haven’t seen you yet.
On the season’s first episode of the CBS show “Undercover Boss,” Randy DeWitt, the CEO of a restaurant chain called Twin Peaks–another idea in line with the Hooters concept (and in partnership with that place’s former CEO Coby Brooks, who was also a former show participant)–heard directly from his staff that his concept of staying within the limits of decency in a sexy dress-up food joint didn’t always work as planned. For example, the patrons can sometimes cross the line when they come to see the slim, curvy and abundantly busty women in tight clothing serving them beer, and a performance ranking system designed to empower the women to do well and earn privileges such as the best tables to wait upon was actually abused by the male senior staff. The undercover CEO actually brought in his Hooters buddy to test the waters, shaving his head and arriving disguised as a patron to harass his bartender and see what would happen. Fortunately it did make the staff and other patrons uncomfortable, and the owner asked him to leave. What I don’t understand is why this whole concept of letting women be pretty in a customer service environment makes some men think that it’s permitting them to be jerks.
Men seem to like pretty women, but then they go about destroying what makes them pretty. They grab, they paw, they aim their hands and potty mouths for where it will do the most damage. As humans we stink in the way we destroy what we love, but this whole affair with denigrating women has to stop.
Some places go way overboard, shrouding women in head-to-toe cover-ups to lessen the urge. Some places have succeeded in allowing topless bathing without having a flood of newscasts about women being inappropriately handled while getting the best tan. Somewhere in the middle of it is the solution to the problem, and men need to take a step back and find out what it is. We women will thank them for it.
For one thing, we are more than two chest appendages, just as you men are actually more than the appendage further down the torso. Second, if you admire us for looking nice, leave it at that: don’t invade our space and put your grubby hands where they don’t belong (at least not until after the first date or so). Third, if we don’t look like that centerfold model, it’s probably because we didn’t have makeup artists and dressers and highly trained cameramen making us that way: besides, when those models go home, they wear tee shirts and jeans just like you do, and the smoky eyes and pouty lavender lips are smeared all over a cotton ball in the trashcan.
Let’s all look nice, be nice and get along. Appreciate what is good and suck it up when things aren’t going as planned. There is always something new coming up, but the kind of loyalty to what you already have is more valuable. We’re just too fickle a generation anymore. But that can be changed.
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 