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Gender based rants...

Take a look at Ryan's rant. The guy has a point. Perhaps we shouldn't be ranting soley based on gender because, let's face it, there are jerks and flakes in all genders. The very things I complained about in my rants could easily go for women as well. Ryan's rant... easily relates right back to men at the same time.

Attraction. It's supposedly based on a bunch of chemical reactions. But I've found that as I get to know someone, they're appearance changes. Maybe they aren't so good looking after I find out they refuse to eat sushi. Maybe they get better looking when I find out they have a cat and spend every Christmas with their sick grandma at the old age home.

Life is a series of events that happen to make us who we are. The best we can hope for is to find someone else on this planet who can look at us and find meaning and beauty in what we do. Yet our society has become so brainwashed to believe certain ideals.

Let's take another look at pink. As I ate lunch today, I watched a group of kids being led down the street. I can only assume by the size of the group and the 3 women looking after them, it was a daycare outing of some kind. What struck me was the large amount of pink in the group. Someone somewhere decided that little girls should be denoted by the color pink and until they get to an age where they can buy their own clothes, mommy and daddy faithfully go dress their little sweethearts in pinks, yellows and purple. Pink jackets, pink skirts, pink t-shirts, pink dresses. Pink scrunchies in their hair. Little pink Barbie backpacks (don't get me started on Barbie). Pink running shoes. At what point do parents look at the wardrobe they've created for the little princesses and think it's lovely?

These are the same little girls who grow up believing that they must be like Jennifer, Courtney, Jessica and Britney. The sad thing is they even have names like Britney and Ashlyn, or my favorite, Brooklyn. Like the burough in New York. Cause that's something to name your child after. Maybe they were just going for the bridge. Kids grow up with Barbie and Ken. You watch Scooby Doo and Shaggy never gets a date. Heck, it wasn't even until the second movie that Velma got a love interest and he wasn't exactly Brad Pitt. Although, he is kinda cute...

There's an understanding in this world that your happiness is based on how others around you perceive you. A "friend" once told me he didn't ask an overweight girl out because although she was a wonderful girl and he liked talking to her, "fat chicks are like mopeds...fun to ride, but you don't want your friends to see you on one."

One must have potential partners rubber stamped by their friends. Does he/she make enough? Drive the right car? Why is he/she still single? Do they look just right? It seems that who we date becomes a reflection of ourselves and we don't want to be considered less because we dated a nice girl or guy who treated us great... but just didn't measure up in those wonderfully superficial ways.

Am I innocent of this? Heck no. I've dated guys who were great. Made me laugh, enjoyed spending time with them, but... when it came down to it the reactions of my friends made me reconsider getting too deeply involved. So, they became my friends. Much like I've been relegated to friendship by more guys than I can count because I'm sure I'm great to hang out with, but I won't pass the attractiveness test. So off we go, searching for what we may already have, we just want prettier packaging. Forgetting that as we grow old, youthful beauty fades and your left with whatever beauty that person had on the inside.

You want young, dumb and blond... in 20 years, you've just got dumb. Or a hell of a lawyer bill from the divorce and the cost of trying to find young, dumb and blonde looking for a sugar daddy.

posted by Erin @ 12:40 PM