The other day, I read an excerpt from Mindy Kaling's new book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? Mindy Kaling's hilarious, so of course the excerpt was good. In it, she talked about the importance of dating a man, rather than a boy.
Until I was 30, I dated only boys. I'll tell you why: Men scared the shit out of me. Men know what they want. Men own alarm clocks. Men sleep on a mattress that isn't on the floor. Men buy new shampoo instead of adding water to a nearly empty bottle of shampoo. Men make reservations. Men go in for a kiss without giving you some long preamble about how they're thinking of kissing you. Men wear clothes that have never been worn by anyone else before. ...Men know what they want, and that is scary.
What I was used to was boys.
Boys are adorable. Boys trail off their sentences in an appealing way. Boys get haircuts from their roommate, who "totally knows how to cut hair." Boys can pack up their whole life and move to Brooklyn for a gig if they need to. Boys have "gigs." Boys are broke. And when they do have money, they spend it on a trip to Colorado to see a music festival. Boys can talk for hours with you in a diner at three in the morning because they don't have regular work hours.
But they suck to date when you turn 30.
So the concept of differentiating men from boys has been in my mind a lot lately. Cue the latest post by The Frenemy, who is also hilarious and good.
There’s this guy standing in front of me right now-adult, able to buy his own toothpaste, knows his jeans size in inches. This guy has totally lost his shit somewhere on the corner of Metropolitan and ‘maybe we should have taken a left’, and it’s technically something I said but not my fault. I’m standing here, looking around frantically at the six-pack of the kinds of hipsters that say they’re hipsters, so are therefore just dudes wearing hats. I’m eyeing them like maybe I’m the one that should be embarrassed, because my friend is going LA LA LA I don’t want to HEAR you and I have to keep on moving, coaxing him out of the moment like a dog.
Okay! I won’t bring it up anymore. Can we just get our hands on some ‘artisan what the hell is artisan’ burgers now and you can stop singing?
All I had said was that I was on my period. This is around the time that he started acting like a child, and it’s not his fault. 9 times out of 10 idiots, it’s this: you tell any adult man that you’re on their period/he’s got the maturity level of Dave Coulier in Full House, he can react in the ‘nana nana poooopy’ kind of way and we just accept it. He’s a baby, we think! I better stop being such a lady and shut my mouth!
...For the men- if you want to be an adult about it, you nod when I say that I have my period. You nod like an adult and you move on. Once a month, blood is shed from my uterus because I am not pregnant and I’m not having a baby squeeze out of me any time soon. It does not pour out like the river.It does not shoot out of my vag like a squirt gun filled with Kool-Aid, and it A THING THAT HAPPENS and you shouldn’t be grossed out by... Do not look away at tampons, do not wince at the word uterus. If you’re a grown-ass man who wants to stick his grown-ass parts into any woman, you better be respectful enough to acknowledge that the things her body does are normal and fine and not gross. I know you’re not all like this, because I know some real cool guys. I tip my hat off to you and your uterus respect.
I mean, I don't want to hog all the good quotes here, so go read the whole thing. I have yet to read a Frenemy post where I didn't LOL at least once.
Personally, I remember one of the first times I told a guy I had my period. He was my boyfriend, and I'm pretty sure I told him straight up. He was like, "That is awesome! I couldn't even tell! This is one of the many reasons why I love you--you're exactly the same when you have your period! You're not even grouchy or anything! That's awesome!" Ahw. <3
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2 comments:
That's an awesome story (about your experience). The stigma around women who are on their periods is ridiculous. Even my own father, who has been married to my mother for over 30 years and has two grown daughters, still cringes or changes the channel when tampon commercials air on TV. I mean, really?
Any guy who doesn't have a good outlook regarding menstruation isn't worth dating. Us guys really need to be more mature about this sort of thing.
That was one good thing about my late father: he never changed the channel when feminin hygene commercials came on.
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