Barbie and Ken - Gone With The Wind Edition (1)

I live in the South. Not the gap-toothed, pig-brain eatin', squirrel-huntin', marry-your-cousin South (been out of Mississippi for four years and ain't lookin back!!!!), but Southern enough that I am surrounded by Southern Belles, cluttering up the social scene with their giant hats, skirts, and attitudes.

Southern.
FUCKING.
Belles.

Okay, they might not have the hats and skirts, and women everywhere can be bitches. You don't have to be a Southern Belle to be a giant pain the ass. In the South, there are quite a few "Neo-Belles" that have modernized exactly parallel to Reconstruction.

Take a drive through anywhere that's NOT Atlanta, GA and see how well "reconstruction" pulled shit together for the South.

ANYWHOO... The new Southern Belles are comprised of a hint of Stepford Wife, a dash of Southern Charm, several pounds of pageant-level makeup, a sprinkling of acrylic nail-tips, and a bitchy helping of pure cunning. They're prepared by baking them in a tanning bed to a delicate beige (or the spray-on, no bake version), and are usually presented with garnishings from high-name fashion labels, mainly purses and shoes, that individually cost more per item than most people pay monthly for auto insurance.

Where I live, there are things a lady doesn't do. Preferably, she doesn't swear, smoke, go out of the house without full makeup, fail to accessorize, laugh too loudly, understand adult-themed jokes, have anything other than a conservative political viewpoint, talk about (or understand) that political viewpoint very often, have hair colored too brightly, have tattoos, have piercings anywhere but her earlobes, initiate conversations, have anything unpleasant to talk about, eat til they are full, or drink ANYTHING but wine, and lots of it.

After all, it's WINE. It's fuckin' classy.

What a CATCH for you guys! What a charming little lily she must be! How feminine! How strong in that femininity, yet delicate and in need of protection! YOUR protection! Just having a little slice of Georgia Peach pie on your arm like her, your life will be set! You can take THIS one home to Mom, Dad, and your Pastor!

Of course, with all that "fiddle dee dee" and such, comes a few side effects. Despite the grooming and manners that leave this woman a visually appealing, seemingly inoffensive cyborg, at heart she's still human. Imperfections are going to seep through and build up in the seams. When the Maybelline-reinforced dam breaks, the facade will crumble, fully and irreparably tarnished in a flood of chardonnay, mascara, and foundation. Much like how you'd envision a wet fart escaping both a corset and a hoop-skirt...

See, this is not a way to live. This is a mode of female behavior that is positively reinforced by men. I'm not saying that women are blameless in this, but come on y'all.. IT WORKS. EVERY GODDAMN TIME. This milkshake brings all the boys to the yard! DAMN RIGHT, it's better than yours! What's the harm, right? Life is about compromise and balance, so isn't it great to have a partner that compliments and reinforces the gender role you idealize?

Well, not really... because it's not real.  We are living in a postmodern world, so no one does any of the work that used to come along with these gender roles. If they did, we wouldn't have so many deadbeat dads, take-out or instant "meals", or kids getting each other pregnant in middle schools. The man who is supposedly the head of the household and the stronger of the couple isn't actually in charge of anything at all, and he knows it. As far as I can see, he never actually has been, which is why it DIDN'T WORK and we all were supposed to take more responsibility for being whole people after the women's movement.

This is a dated ideal of femininity that we can see in our previous generations, like our mothers and grandmothers. Think back.. your dad or your grandfather probably got away with running his mouth a hell of a lot more often than a man would be able to do in today's world, and that's not a trend that anyone really wants to return. Even those guys of you out there who will complain about the "feminization" of society will have to agree.. no one enjoyed having to endure dad's hissyfit about the dishes (that was about everything in his life BUT the dishes) while mom waited it out, only to leap to action the second he left the room in an effort to restore the tone of the household after he got done being a blowhard. That scenario is perhaps a bit specific, but I'm sure that most of you, male or female, could relate with a similar recollection of inappropriate aggressive behavior from your dad.

Mom may have worked too, but of your two parents, she was probably the most likely to remember all of your allergies, food preferences, phobias, interests, and how much it ACTUALLY cost to feed, clothe, house, and medicate you. If you want to delve a little deeper, she was probably in charge of the household finances, food, schedule, and social events. Yet, despite being at the reins in all of these important aspects of family life, she never did the one thing that you would have given up all your birthday money for.. No matter how out of touch, incorrect, or unreasonable your dad's outbursts might have been, somehow there were never any real consequences in place to make that guy shut the FUCK up and knock it off. There was an APPEARANCE, perhaps, that Dad ran the show.. what with Mom listening to whatever crazy shit flew out of his mouth and making an effort to treat it as though it were somehow relevant to something on this planet.. but maybe that's what she put up with in order to keep him working and making more money that she could delegate to the household.  In retrospect, I don't think either one of them looked particularly happy with the arrangement, but they sure as hell kept it going..

All of that being said, recalled, and cringed at.. I'm not here to vilify men and fathers. Not at all. It's not entirely their fault. While your mom sat there and took it, she was storing up currency in her emotional-blackmail savings account, which (instead of demanding his ass to cash the check that his smart mouth wrote), she would spend at a later time of her choosing to admonish him into doing something or other that she wanted him to do. Meanwhile, there are kids living under terrorism in the middle of this ongoing war, never sure where their loyalties should lie or what the hell is going to happen in the next five minutes.

All because Scarlett would rather be a painted doll who could blame all the bad decisions on Rhett, because he's always been in charge, and Rhett didn't want anyone around who could challenge his fragile ego or tell him how to behave.. even if he really needed to hear it. For some reason, people are under the delusion that it's far easier to absolve yourself of responsibility for your life and what you bring or allow into it, rather than to take the risk that Rhett really WON'T give a damn and go off into the sunset, piss-poor attitude in tow. God forbid, Rhett go out and meet someone who tells him he's totally full of shit and he can behave or move on. Sheesh.. it's like you expect someone to mature or something..

WHAT WOULD BE SO BAD ABOUT THAT?

Oh yeah.. a woman alone is incomplete. If, as a woman, you render yourself helpless to stand up for yourself or go get your own drink, then I guess you are incomplete without a stronger personality around who can cover your ass. It's also a lot easier to pretend to be a strong personality when you have someone next to you who both builds you a fan club and seems to enjoy disappearing into your shadow.

It's not specifically anyone's fault. As much as I'm grateful for the feminist movement, we've still got a long way to go. Making men the enemy doesn't really help anyone out, and making women perpetual victims and martyrs has lead to nothing but self-esteem issues in both genders. Men need to have their own movement, and it really doesn't need to be about dominance, aggression, or anger. It also doesn't need to be a big self-stroking religious organization like the "Promise Keepers", where you have the ego security of a whole lot of men patting themselves and each other on the ass for not fucking around on their wives, like it's some huge freaking effort to keep your dick in your pants.

Guys, we know you have feelings. If you didn't care about things, you wouldn't get so pissed off about them. It's kind of a human being thing. Don't sweat it. There's nothing wrong with you if you want to hug the baby a little longer or keep a cat. There's nothing wrong with you if you don't, either. The problem isn't feeling something, its in getting angry because you feel something. Then you're just being a dick, and who the hell wants that around? A lot of you are trying to figure out exactly what you're supposed to be doing in a relationship these days, since it's plain to see from any sitcom, news story, or magazine article that you sure as FUCK shouldn't be model yourself after your dad. You probably didn't need to read or watch anything to figure out that you didn't really want to repeat a lot of what he did, anyway.


Feminism is a political ideal that demanded equal pay for equal work, a woman's control over her own body, and various other equalizing measures that were and are needed so that a woman has the same ability to support herself and her family as a man does. Time has proven that women can do the things outside the home that men can do. One of the most well-known activists of the feminist movement, Gloria Steinem, has been making the media rounds lately, promoting gender equality. Her message is that society recognizes that women can do what men can do, what we DON'T recognize is that men can also do what women can do. They can be just as nurturing and loving and sensitive as women have a reputation to be.

It takes a lot of balls to admit it if you have issues with anger or expressing yourself. It takes a lot of balls to get help and to say you were wrong. I'm sorry that a lot of us girls are using that against you, too. Because, yeah.. it's definitely happening and its a widespread problem.

I don't think there's a woman out there who wants society to regress back to a point that restricts her freedom, but there's an awful lot of you bitches running around, pretending that you're Scarlett O'Hara to snag a man. Like I said, it works. Scarlett doesn't have to bring much beyond her makeup bag and her acting skills to the table, and Rhett can sit comfortably by without direct challenge and with a pretty belle on his arm. Only now, Rhett Butler doesn't dare tell you he doesn't give a damn and leave, because he knows that he hasn't been paying you enough attention and that he was probably mean and scary. He doesn't walk out of your life and let you get along alone, because he knows he was probably insensitive. It's easier to just pay for your cellphone and shut your ass up, because at the end of the day, he was probably MORE wrong than you were. After all, look how upset you are.. how helpless you are. You're not like the other women out there.. you're.. delicate. You don't even swear! However will you hail a cab by yourself?! How will you get out and meet anyone else when you've spent so much time on him, the schmuck who was so lucky to find a real LADY in these complicated times! You only drink wine, not liquor, like those other rough girls out there.

PS: Girls, the label says "Arbor Mist", not "Arbor Monsoon". A drunk bitch is not a class act, no matter what she drank to get there.

So why won't we just freakin' stop already? We're playing games that aren't any fun and, over time, leave everyone miserable. What results from this bullshit are unreasonable expectations and dishonesty. No one's getting anything that they want, because they don't KNOW what they want and because no one is who they seem to be. What's worse is that we are probably closer than we've ever been to equality and understanding between the sexes, and for every step forward we take, someone finds a way to glamorize the concept of kicking us all back into the dark ages.

Ladies, give a man a noble purpose with you.. not an outdated, bullshit one. Let him meet your ACTUAL needs, not the ones you pretend to have to boost his ego. Southern Belles treat men like rabid possum that they need to lure into traps.. traps with merciless steel teeth that are hidden cleverly beneath those fucking hoop skirts. Once they trap him, they have to break him down with steady conditioning until he either snaps or shuts the hell down, soullessly compliant to commands. At that point, she deems him insensitive and boring.. which he is, because she's declared herself victimized by every feeling he's ever expressed, to the extent that life just became easier and he had less reason to hate himself if he just did what he was told, when he was told to do it.

Now, men who are cheering at this and doing chest bumps or whatever... what the hell were you doing to prevent this from happening to you? Did you go out there and meet an attractive, intellectually stimulating woman who can bring something to your life, or did you go find a pretty little thing that made you feel needed? I know there are women reading this who think I'm the most self-hating woman alive, but I'm not. Thank you, I like me very much. What I don't like is watching women treat men like animals, handle them like animals, and then run around all shocked and appalled when they end up acting like animals. I don't like watching men chase after women who don't have anything worthwhile to talk about, for the simple reason that they don't ever have to feel like anything less than her superior. Worse still, none of these behaviors are going to change until everyone accepts the fact that there's a difference between the desire for a romantic relationship and its actual necessity.

I don't know anyone who intentionally seeks out unhealthy relationships like these. No one has a plan to fuck up a partnership, for themselves or anyone else. After you've bounced in and out of a few, it might be worth a serious look at exactly what mistakes you're repeating. It's not rocket science to figure out that if there are elements to the relationship that make you uncomfortable early on, they're only going to get worse if they go unchecked. Humans are like any other mammal, and us mammals are ALL about the path of least resistance. If there's no reason to change, why should we?

So, Scarlett.. if Rhett has committed some unforgivable slight against your honor, either ditch Rhett's ass or shut up. If you don't want to be treated like a whore, quit letting him buy your forgiveness with actual money or goods (like jewelry). What you call "forgiveness", he sees as "right to tap that". Speaking of which, Rhett.. you need to quit buying her shit to solve your relationship problems. You dumb bastard. The interest rate goes nowhere but up, and she's been depreciating since you drove her ass off the lot. One day you're going to wake up and be pissed about it, and by that point, it's your own goddamn fault for not putting the screws to it early on before she'd invested enough of her time in you that she has the right to demand retribution for your outburst.

And so the cycle of anger-prone fathers and passive-aggressive mothers continues...