This weekend I enjoyed what was probably the last patio night of season at my local watering hole. I witnessed something that has been bothering me for years. The bachelorette party. Frankly, it’s disgusting. What is it that drives otherwise dignified women to carry around giant dildos in public, wear strings of necklaces with little penises on them and tape suckers to their t-shirts declaring proudly that you can “Suck for a Buck.”?
“Last fling before the ring!” Bite me. Your fiancé must be so proud.
This isn’t intended to be an indictment of all bachelorette parties, or all women for that matter. But there is something unique to this event that stirs a particular class of women into a group of uninhibited, obnoxious, self absorbed, attention-seeking whores with a sense of entitlement the size of a small moon. I mean, aren’t there male strip clubs for this sort of thing? No. Because what they seek is not sexual in any real way. What they seek is attention—from everyone. I am trying to come up with the male equivalent here. Perhaps someone can help. Perhaps the male equivalent is pretty much how men act all the time without the need for an event to justify the behavior… but I don’t think so. I’ve never seen a group of men running around with vaginas and boobies taped to their shirts walking up to every woman in the bar demanding a dollar for some candy that’s duct-taped to their asses while throwing copies of Penthouse all over the table.
This isn’t limited to a specific age group either. I’ve seen this behavior in groups ranging in age from 20 to 50. What is the deal with demanding money or free drinks from strangers because you’re getting married? One group was in their 30’s. Most of these women were already married. The combined value of their wedding rings alone was probably on the order of $75,000. If they’re that hard up for cash maybe they shouldn’t have asked their husbands to fork over 3 months’ salary to buy those diamond monstrosities obtained from exploited South African laborers.
There were two such groups who entered the bar last Saturday night. They arrived in a party bus (one painted entirely pink) and invaded the bar like a barbarian horde--literally pillaging. Now I know what Iceland felt like when the Vikings arrived. I have news for you ladies. The reason men buy you drinks and generally spend money on you is because we are hoping you will have sex with us. Now, you’re getting married. The chances of me getting into your pants have gone from 1% to zero. You’ve now past the threshold of usefulness to the average male patron. Once you put that ring on, you’re about as welcome at the bar stool next to a guy as the old man who smells funny and wants to talk about how the Vietnam war was part of a larger conspiracy to fund the military industrial complex ultimately culminating in the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem in order to bring about the second-coming of Christ.
Not very welcome.
You’re not cute. You’re not funny and at this point you’re not even worth trying to sleep with. So please take your “suck for a buck” lollipop, shove it up your ass, get out of my face and let me drink my beer.
“Last fling before the ring!” Bite me. Your fiancé must be so proud.
This isn’t intended to be an indictment of all bachelorette parties, or all women for that matter. But there is something unique to this event that stirs a particular class of women into a group of uninhibited, obnoxious, self absorbed, attention-seeking whores with a sense of entitlement the size of a small moon. I mean, aren’t there male strip clubs for this sort of thing? No. Because what they seek is not sexual in any real way. What they seek is attention—from everyone. I am trying to come up with the male equivalent here. Perhaps someone can help. Perhaps the male equivalent is pretty much how men act all the time without the need for an event to justify the behavior… but I don’t think so. I’ve never seen a group of men running around with vaginas and boobies taped to their shirts walking up to every woman in the bar demanding a dollar for some candy that’s duct-taped to their asses while throwing copies of Penthouse all over the table.
This isn’t limited to a specific age group either. I’ve seen this behavior in groups ranging in age from 20 to 50. What is the deal with demanding money or free drinks from strangers because you’re getting married? One group was in their 30’s. Most of these women were already married. The combined value of their wedding rings alone was probably on the order of $75,000. If they’re that hard up for cash maybe they shouldn’t have asked their husbands to fork over 3 months’ salary to buy those diamond monstrosities obtained from exploited South African laborers.
There were two such groups who entered the bar last Saturday night. They arrived in a party bus (one painted entirely pink) and invaded the bar like a barbarian horde--literally pillaging. Now I know what Iceland felt like when the Vikings arrived. I have news for you ladies. The reason men buy you drinks and generally spend money on you is because we are hoping you will have sex with us. Now, you’re getting married. The chances of me getting into your pants have gone from 1% to zero. You’ve now past the threshold of usefulness to the average male patron. Once you put that ring on, you’re about as welcome at the bar stool next to a guy as the old man who smells funny and wants to talk about how the Vietnam war was part of a larger conspiracy to fund the military industrial complex ultimately culminating in the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem in order to bring about the second-coming of Christ.
Not very welcome.
You’re not cute. You’re not funny and at this point you’re not even worth trying to sleep with. So please take your “suck for a buck” lollipop, shove it up your ass, get out of my face and let me drink my beer.
10 comments:
Man. What I like about this blog and why I keep coming back to pester you with comments, is you have a marked ability to put into cogent thought exactly those strange cultural habits that I have remarked upon (as stranged) but hadn't cared enough or found the time to write down.
Yes. Girls' bachelorette parties are dumb exercises. I don't get them. Penis necklaces? What's up with that? And in public places? Where pictures may be taken and children scarred for life?
Sure. Freedom and democracy means freedom to make an ass of yourself. I get that. But I've really wondered about is when did the bachelorette thing become so god-awful tacky and obnoxious? It wasn't always the case. Tacky and obnoxious pre-wedding-rite ceremonies used to be the purview of the male. This was, in fact, the norm when I was in college, and believe me, I've been to dozens of these events.
Oops. I posted before I was ready...
What I was going to say to conclude is I think--and you'll have to check my dating on this--that the raising of female pre-marriage debauchery to the level of the male happened just about the time that Title IX began to have a serious effect on the culture of women in this country. I don't have an exact timeline (that would require too much research), but in my head I think I first noticed the female obnoxo-bachparty around the time I first heard of Title-IX-based lawsuits.
And, in a way, such a connection would make sense. As female athletes began to be treated with the same entitlements long relegated to the male athlete, it only follows that females would begin to act out just like male athletes long have--unable to conceive that anyone would regard their sexual selves as anything but charming and appealing.
What you have written about is precisely why my "bachelorette" party was held at a gay bar.
I once had the misfortune of being dragged to a male strip club. It was one of the most disgusting events I've ever witnessed, and I've been to S&M clubs. These women were lifting their shirts and jumping on stage and grabbing the dancers' dicks (and licking when given an opportunity). The worst part, the dancer would kiss the woman if she stuffed a big enough wad of cash in his g-string. And I'm talking a full mouth, obvious with tongue kiss. Really... I threw up in my mouth several times during the night.
I imagine that these women are the same women who had the type of bachelorette party that you witnessed this weekend.
For the reader who doesn't know her, Patina's comments elicited serious consideration for me. If she is disgusted by the level of debauchery then we truly have an issue... this woman knows a thing or two about debauchery... but in a classy way of course. :-)
Michael, thanks for the kind words. I am really glad you keep coming back. Your point about title IX is really an interesting perspective I haven't thought about before (not being a "sports guy"). It merits some consideration into the whole concept of general "misbehavin'". But part of my point here is that it manifests itself much more crassly than what I see men do. Last night I went to Canterbury Card Club to play poker and my table was full of a Bachelor party. They were well behaved and clearly novices. But the point here was that the groom didn't want to engage in the kind of spectacle that (I'll bet anything) his bride was doing for her "Last fling". Is it just that I find the female manifestation of this activity more overt? Is it that I can't see it when males do it because I am one? Title IX may be part of the relationship but I don't think it's causal. There's something else that I am missing. But interesting take. Maybe it's one of the factors. I must ponder this.
I don't think there's necessarily a cause-effect relationship between Title IX and bachelorette debauchery, but I do see them as parallel phenomena that have occurred over roughly the same time span. The excesses of both (the removal of almost all minor sports for males at the college level, the removal of almost all inhibitions and good taste from women who are getting married) are related to cultural push-back by women moving into the realms formerly occupied solely (or mainly) by men. It's almost as if they are seeking to out-male the male in these instances.
Oh, and by the way, I went to some terribly raunchy and debauched male bachelor parties back in the day (about 20 years ago, when my friends were all going through their first round of marriages). I don't know if this has changed (perhaps as a result of the push-back) or if we men are more or less inured to such behavior from men (and still see such behavior in women as novel).
Michael, I agree with everything you just said. We're still missing some nugget of correlation. There's a cause. That "cultural push back". Are women trying to out-man us or are they just no good at it? Could it be that simple? Chicks suck at partying?
Yes. I agree. Women are becoming the chauvinist pigs that we men once were.
And of course there's a popular work of nonfiction about this phenomenon.
It was written by a woman named Ariel Levy, and (from the Amazon blurb) is a "pirercing examination of how twenty-first century American society perceives sex and women. Writing vividly, [the author] brings her readers to places she visited to make her assessment; the elevator of Playboy Enterprises with women auditioning to be Playmates in the fiftieth anniversary edition, a Florida beach where sunbathers urge a woman to take off her bathing suit for the camera crew of Girls Gone Wild, a San Francisco Italian restaurant where a lesbian worries she’s not dressed up enough for her date, a CAKE party in New York, with women grinding each other’s pelvises in time to pulsating dance rhythms, and outside a juice bar in Oakland where a beautiful high school student shares disappointment at her experiences with sex."
Ah, women, welcome to manhood! Enjoy the fruits of what you have wrought for yourselves.
Actually, here's a better, more telling blurb about the book Female Chauvinist Pigs, from a Publisher's Weekly starred review:
"What does sexy mean today? Levy, smartly expanding on reporting for an article in New York magazine, argues that the term is defined by a pervasive raunch culture wherein women make sex objects of other women and of ourselves. The voracious search for what's sexy, she writes, has reincarnated a day when Playboy Bunnies (and airbrushed and surgically altered nudity) epitomized female beauty. It has elevated porn above sexual pleasure. Most insidiously, it has usurped the keywords of the women's movement (liberation, empowerment) to serve as buzzwords for a female sexuality that denies passion (in all its forms) and embraces consumerism. To understand how this happened, Levy examines the women's movement, identifying the residue of divisive, unresolved issues about women's relationship to men and sex. The resulting raunch feminism, she writes, is a garbled attempt at continuing the work of the women's movement and asks, how is resurrecting every stereotype of female sexuality that feminism endeavored to banish good for women? Why is laboring to look like Pamela Anderson empowering? Levy's insightful reporting and analysis chill the hype of what's hot. It will create many aha! moments for readers who have been wondering how porn got to be pop and why feminism is such a dirty word."
MF, that's intelligent, thoughtful and academic information. It enlightens and promotes a thorough understanding of the subject matter being discussed.
That sort of thing has no business on this site. :-)
Well, they're just blurbs I nabbed off the internet. That at least redeems my comments a little (in view of this site), right?
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