A Single Look

Fair warning, this will be a rant and an ugly one at that.

I'm convinced there are three reason why I no longer have any close female friends (my sister doesn't count, because she's my frackin' sister).  Listed below are the reasons:

1.)  As I get older, the more women I meet are married and have kids.
2.)  I scare most women; my hobbies are that of the typical male, so most women do not understand me.
3.)  I dislike most women; I find most of their hobbies to be boring as shit, and their speech patterns annoy the hell out of me.

Number 3 has to be the biggest kicker here.  I've mentioned in the past how I know what it's like for a guy trying to find a cool girl.  It's difficult.  Of all the women I've met since moving to Minnesota, only a handful have been nice enough to continue to want to hang out with me.  And almost all of them are outside of the workplace.  The two women I do know in the work place that are pretty freakin' awesome have babies.  Not that that is a bad thing (I will join their ranks in a few years time).  Babies just take up all of your private life.  It's all about the baby once you have one.  Friends, you-time, spouse-time, it all takes a backseat once there's a baby in the picture.  And I'm okay with that.  I'm looking forward to it.  But it does make it difficult to find a close female friend, especially as I get older.

All that was a preamble to the point of this rant:  Women are mean.  Like I said, most I've met (except for a a handful and they know who they are because I still talk to them) fall in to group Number 3 (and have Number 2 as part of their problem too).

This all stems from an experience I had last week.  I have this dress.  It's got 3/4 sleeves, a high scoop neck, and a waist band.  It's primarily purple, with some black and white.  The pattern is vertical braids of each color by itself. (So it's a purple braid, black lining in between, and a white braid, black lining, repeat).  The waist band is a different shade of purple with a different pattern, as are the last two inches of the sleeves.  My aunt in California bought it for me.  It's one of a kind, made by a designer in a small boutique shop.  I've found a few pieces of clothing this way, and they're some of my favorites.

I really like this dress.  I usually wear it with black stockings and either knee-high boots (winter) or ballet "flats" that have about a one inch wedge heal.  It's funny, I'm talking about how I accessorize my dress and I claim to not be girly at all.  I really am, it's just not outwardly apparent.  I don't often wear make-up or do much with my hair.

So I'm wearing it last week and I decided to stop at Starbucks for a coffee and a fruit/yogurt parfait (tasty).  It's my staple order at Starbucks.  I was standing in line behind a young woman, maybe slightly younger than me, but no older.  She had very long (to her butt), soft black hair.  Looked like it was freshly washed (sort of wet, but mostly dry).  She was also very tan, naturally, not the fake n' bake orange look.  Sandals on her feet, white pants, a light tan colored top, and a thin white long-sleeve shirt on top.  She was very petite, about as tall as I am, but narrower hips, waist, bust, and shoulders (which was why I figured she was younger).  She looked fit.  I admired her appearance.  She looked well-groomed and also looked as though she cared about her appearance.  She didn't have on much make up, looked very natural.  Maybe some eye-liner but I didn't pay that much attention because when I looked at her face, she had this nasty single-eyebrow raised look when she saw my dress.

It was that face that asks "Really?  Are you really going out in public like that?"

That's when my opinion of her changed.  I thought her white pants were dumb, and that they were ridiculously skin tight.  I also felt she was too skinny to be healthy.  Her legs became twigs, her arms spindly branches and her body the narrow wisp of a birch tree.

I no longer admired her because she couldn't give me the common courtesy of anonymous respect that I had given her.

This is why I hate women.  They immediately judge other women on sight, and typically judge negatively.  I've had this look cast upon me in the past; that look of "Seriously?  You need help in the fashion department, girl.  Poor thing doesn't even know how to dress herself."

I give every woman I see or meet the benefit of the doubt, regardless of appearance (unless it's Snooki, then I just want to punch her).  I will assume they are intelligent, nice, and funny until they open their mouths and prove me wrong.  This one didn't even have to do that.  With a single look, she reduced me to a level of ugly, uncomfortable, immaturity I've not felt in a long time.

It was then that I figured she was also no older than 18 and had a high school mentality about others' appearances.

I bet she's a wonderful person.  But I lost the respect I initially gave her after she failed to give me any at all simply because she didn't like my outfit.  Maybe I give too much and expect too much in return.  Maybe what I'm thinking of isn't respect but just the common courtesy of mind-your-own-god-damn-business-I'll-dress-however-I-want.  Maybe I'm also still insecure and worried about recent weight gain.  Maybe I shouldn't give a fuck.

But I do.  If I didn't, I wouldn't care to dress nicely at all.  I do care about my appearance and when some snotty bitch doesn't approve, I immediately go on the defensive.  Who is she to disapprove of my choice, especially when I did nothing to her to deserve such judgement?  (While I might have "judged" her appearance, I made sure I did so in a neutral fashion without her noticing, and the end result was also a positive one, which I often do for almost all women I meet until they do something, like this woman did, to piss me off).

I've come to the conclusion that I will never have a super close female friend ever again.  Not unless I find someone who isn't stuck up, catty, absorbed in materialistic superficial bullshit, and can develop a fully thought-out opinion on some kind of social issue without using the word "like" once.

/rantoff

I apologize to any women who read this and felt bad about their hobbies of shopping and spending their s.o.'s money.  Truly, I hate you.  You give women a bad name, but I'm still giving you the decency of an apology for ranting about you because I feel sorry for you at the same time.  Just like how you feel sorry for me and my poor fashion habits, I feel sorry your lacking of the capacity to develop an opinion on anything outside of reality t.v. and the fashion industry.