I Don’t Know How to Woman

There’s something that became clear to me around puberty, and it really hasn’t changed: I don’t feel like a woman. To clarify, I didn’t feel like a woman before puberty and then suddenly stop feeling like a woman; I’ve never felt particularly woman-y.

I should probably clarify that I don’t feel like a man, either. That’s especially important to note since I’m still technically a newlywed and don’t want to freak out my in-laws who might read this.

The unfortunate truth is that I just feel like a person, and that’s been a huge frustration in my life. I don’t believe that I’m alone in feeling this way, either. With the exception of when I’m looking in a mirror (“Yep, still look like a lady.”) and when someone is assuming I have a proclivity for receptionist duties, despite what my actual job title might be at the time, I usually forget altogether that I have a gender. It takes me by surprise sometimes, and when that sudden awareness dawns on me, I always end up feeling like a monster.

I acknowledge that there are biological differences between males and females. What must it be like, I sometimes wonder, to have your emotions flow in a straight line, rather than riding a tilt-a-whirl of progesterone and estrogen? What if I could focus more on developing an iron-clad daily routine and less on taking daily iron supplements and hoping that it’s not one of those days where every smell makes me nauseated?

But outside of the hormones, there really isn’t that much to being a woman, so I have a few bones to pick with people who view me as a woman rather than a person:

It’s hard to remember to be a woman

For example:

No one is that. That model is not even that. People have to try to be that. Maybe they can convince themselves that they are that for a few minutes, and if the photographer is good, they can immortalize that moment. Like, what thoughts could even accompany that pose? All I can think of is, “Mmm… men. I sure love men. I hope they adore me. I need to find a husband.”

But seriously, full disclosure: I did a shoot sort of like this one once. It was just for fun with a girlfriend.

What went through my mind with each photo was that I looked like a complete buffoon and that I hoped my friend was really talented with Photoshop. We got five good photos from it, and it took all night. And there’s the takeaway: For each sexy photo of a woman, there are at least two people who spent a night’s worth of productivity on taking one stupid photo. Think of all the crappy things that could have been improved even slightly during that time instead. Women: Do you really want to spend your time this way? Men: Do you really care that much about looking at a picture of a woman?

Not looking feminine makes women a subtle disappointment to everyone

It’s easy to fall into the trap of viewing people by their gender, even if you don’t view yourself that way, because you see them. Some of them have breasts (most of those are women), and some of them don’t (some of those are women, too). Some put on makeup (most of those are women), some roll out of bed and show up at work that way (some of those are women, too). Of the above distinctions, women are the ones who are normally expected to have breasts and put on makeup. Men do not need to have breasts or wear makeup. As a woman whose breasts are 90% brought to you by Victoria’s Secret and who only wears whatever makeup can be applied at red lights on the commute (assuming I’m not already occupied with eating breakfast off of a paper towel on my lap), I’m a huge disappointment to everyone’s gender stereotypes. If I’m going to disappoint everyone, I want it to be from doing something I love, not from being busy and flat chested.

Managing body hair can be a part-time job

I saw an article the other day that explained proper daily eyebrow care for women. I’m supposed to be plucking and shading in my eyebrows before I leave the house, apparently. And don’t even get me started on contouring. When I read about the myriad things I should be doing to my face on a daily basis, all I could think was, “Guess I won’t have time to keep learning Spanish now.” I haven’t taken official measurements, but I feel safe saying that 80% of my 5’10” stature is made up of legs, so I’m pretty sure if I actually shaved them as often as the public would like, I would lose something like six days out of every year. Here are some things that can be accomplished in six days:

Fly to Paris, view every exhibit at the Louvre, hold a seance at Pere Lachaise Cemetery wherein I summon the spirit of Oscar Wilde and he reads me his complete works, then I fly back to the States.
Watch every episode of all eight seasons of 24 and then decide that it’s not even worth it to watch the 9th season, even though I’ve come this far already.
Do the same thing but for Scrubs.
Build a well for Africans or whatever.

But no, I’ll be shaving my legs instead.

Getting dressed in the morning uses up all my decision making for the day

Question: What do Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Mark Cuban have in common besides too much money, male parts, and no sense of ethics? Answer: The laziest wardrobes of all times. I imagine organizing their closets is fairly simple.

Taking a page out of the Doug Funnie book.

Those who see me on a somewhat regular basis know I am not the best at putting together outfits (see selfies). More often than not, I end up in costume. But do you know what would happen if I wore the same thing to work every day for just one week?

“Hey, girl. If you need to talk, I’m always here for you.”

“I was wondering if you could help with… um, never mind. I can do it myself.”

The second example is actually not helping my argument, because it’s a desirable outcome. But the point is that for years, instead of getting out of bed when my alarm went off to get some writing done first thing in the morning, I slept in because facing the decision of what to wear is just that exhausting. I don’t think guys even realize that if a woman changes her mind on what shirt she’s wearing, that often requires changing her bra, too. Samesies for pants and underwear. You know what has to happen when a guy decides to change his shirt? From all my empirical data, I conclude that he sniffs the pits. Good? Put it on. “Dress for the job you want, not the one you have.” Fine, I’m dressing like a man from now on. I want to be a man in the workplace and get paid more.

Watching sports is the last frontier for shouting and blind hatred

Where besides driving does a person get to shout horrible things at another person? Sometimes we all just need to shout horrific wishes at each other, even if you don’t really hope they crash their freaking truck into a pole. Sometimes shouting that just makes life easier and no harm done because the thought was contained in a fairly soundproof box, and that person really needs to wake the hell up if they’re going to drive that unnecessarily big truck around and ride on your ass when you’re already going 85mph in the left lane.

Anyway, the answer to the original question is that watching sports is the only other place where that sort of horrible stuff can be shouted. Now think back to the last time you just got to tell someone that their preference was not only wrong, but made them a stupid person. (Now think of when you weren’t just being an asshole on Facebook.) And I mean, you just looked them in the eyes and said, “My preference is better than yours. Yours sucks.” Doing that feels amazing. This is where watching sports comes in handy.

But watching sports is still mostly a “guy thing.” So the NFL and Papa John’s have thrown a couple women into their commercials. Doesn’t mean the battle is won. Dads are still teaching their sons about football rather than their daughters. That leaves female sports fans a bit lonely.

Here’s what happens almost every week between September and January. There I am, happily watching the Cowboys lose in stunning fashion, when I look around the full room and realize I am one of the only females, if not the only one. I’m also probably shouting the most obscenities of anyone in the room, but that’s beside the point. This all-too-common situation is a classic case of women being left out from something good. No, something great. Under the veil of sports, I have told multiple people from New York and Philadelphia that they’re “f***ing dead to me,” something which I know most Texans have wanted to say to New Yorkers and Philadelphians for a whole slew of reasons, but which only sports fandom makes socially acceptable.

I don’t know how not to curse when I watch this.

Getting pregnant is too hard/not hard enough

This one varies from woman to woman, but it’s never not a thing. If your circumstance is that you really, really don’t want to have a baby in your life, then your problem is that it’s really hard to keep from having a baby. If your situation is perfect for introducing a baby and now all you need is a baby, oh look! No baby!

I don’t actually know how this works, but the point is that it’s up to the woman to figure it all out. And this is not a simple equation. Would you like a heaping dose of hormones that will put you in a haze you don’t even notice until you’re out of it years down the road, or would you like a device inserted into you that may or may not cause complications (if your body even keeps it in), or would you like to take your temperature every morning for months to chart your ovulation? If your sex life involves an Excel sheet, things have officially gotten too complicated. You think men are using Excel for their sex life? The main sexual responsibility assigned to them by society is pondering the not-so-many not-so-subtleties of consent, and for that, I’ve created a handy flow chart that could be printed out and put in one’s pocket for reference purposes:

This chart does not require Excel. It is a fairly simple chart that gives the immediate false impression that only one out of four possible outcomes will be consensual sex. But in fact, if you men play your cards right, you could have consensual sex every time! Meanwhile, I’m going to be averaging days between periods to calculate the window when I should most definitely not even think about the word sex, so that I don’t— Oh wait! There’s a supermoon this month! *Tears up printed Excel sheet* *Starts all over again*

The Final Solution… no wait.

No one likes a complainer who just wants to complain, so here’s my proposed solution to go along with it all:

Everyone—men and women alike—stop expecting anything from anyone based on gender. We’ll all be happier for it, I promise. When I bring my Dallas Cowboys tumbler around with me, don’t wonder if I borrowed it from the man in my life. The man in my life is a cop who is way better at yoga than I am and who spends his free nights at poetry readings. I know, I don’t understand it either. But I’m glad I got to know him as a person, because he’s wonderful.

And when a woman shows up somewhere without makeup, go a step beyond not asking her about it and start to train your brain to not care about it. This will take effort, but do it anyway. Just remember, makeup is fun sometimes; other times it’s not. Who gives a shit, really? It’s just paint.

Imagine if women didn’t have to try to be women. How many more bilingual females would this world have? How many more wells would there be in Africa?

No seriously, how many? I’m too busy with the calculus of ovulation to sit down and figure it out.