rant

I enjoy being a girl, most of the time. Like when I can wear frilly dresses and headbands with fabric flowers on them, and sew and knit and bake and watch Gilmore Girls and swoon over how tall Dean is. And when I get to smell like plumeria body lotion and paint my fingernails and sing Ingrid Michaelson songs on my guitar. These things, and many more, I enjoy about being a girl.

But sometimes I don't enjoy being a girl. Like when it's 90 degrees outside and my shirt is soaked with sweat while all the guys romp around half naked. Or when we're camping, and it's raining outside the adirondack, and it's 3 o'clock in the morning, and I have to pee. But mostly, I don't enjoy being a girl when I have to sit there and just wait for some guy to notice me and, even more importantly, do something about it.

I was thinking about this today before church and, I confess, continued to think about it during worship (even though I was helping lead...is that a sin?). My brother had just been telling me about the guy at church that he thinks would be good for me, and all I could do was sit there and say, "Well isn't that nice?" Because whether I agree with him or not, there's nothing I can do about it. Guys may complain that it's nerve racking to ask a girl out, but, in our defense, it's also awfully difficult to sit there and wait. And sometimes we wait for a long time.

I love gender roles. But if man's role is "the pursuer" and woman's is "the pursued" but the man isn't pursing, then the woman can't fulfill her role, and she's left sitting in a church pew sighing because there's nothing she can do about it. Pretty helpless, huh. At least when a guy decides he likes a girl, he can ask her out. When a girl likes a guy....

I came home from church and baked an apple pie. It looked perfect - till I dropped it on the floor. Then I sat in a slump in my frilly dress and painted fingernails next to the mass of apples and cinnamon and wanted to cry. Maybe I should become a feminist.