Girls are so lame

If someone had killed me yesterday like I asked, I wouldn’t have been subjected to this paper this morning. I hope you’re happy.

One of my young men decided to write about his pink water bottle and highlighter. Some excerpts:

“[In addition to being pink,] my water bottle is completely plastered with pink, girly, sparkly stickers. These little details have raised many concerns pertaining to my pink water bottle and my pink highlighter. People laugh when they spot these objects, probably due to the fact that I carry around property only a female should own.”

“A guy that can sport pink is a man who is confident and comfortable with himself. Traditionally, pink represents the stereotypical, ditzy females. If a man can overcome this preconception, he is a man of self confidence.”

I don’t even know where to begin. Maybe with how much I hate this new trend of calling women “females”? And how this teenaged boy seems to think that grownup “females” look any more mature and sane carrying around glittery Strawberry Shortcake paraphernalia than a “male” would?

Of course that critique doesn’t even address the more staggering catastrophes of thought represented by the essay, like the idea that there’s nothing more terrifying and hideous than girl cooties, and only the Realest of Real Men could survive the stigma of being associated with girlness. A Man must have a surfeit of Manly strength to offset the pussifying power of pink sparkles and retain his testicles; thus, this writer demonstrates his godlike hetero studliness by facing the sparkles head on. He dares the sparkles to try to emasculate him. He welcomes their attempt. Go ahead, sparkles. Make his day.

I am trying to see the humor—he’s just a kid, a nice one at that, and he’s going to be mortified when he finds out he offended me—but it’s so damn depressing. Many of the perceptions he takes completely for granted here contribute to our worst social problems. He’s practically written a primer for homophobia, which is an offshoot of misogyny as much as it is anything else. His whole concept is that people can’t understand why someone who has everything right—a Man—would lower Himself to the status of the feminine. His answer? I am so confident in my superiority that I can slum it without fear of taint.

I could just cry.