Loved and Wanted: the Ultimate Guide for the Modern Woman, Part I Back to the Roots of Femininity by Elena Miro

Author:Elena Miro
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2020-07-19T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Four: Of Valley Girls and Nerds—Stereotypes and Mean Girls

As I walked through the store trying to decide what kinds of outfits I wanted to bring on my trip, I struggled with my own inner judgment. I had never had such a hard time picking out clothes before, but, for some reason, this decision was taking on such importance. I suddenly flashed back to a time in my mid 20s. I was fresh out of law school and had my first position in a law firm. My receptionist was a year or two younger than me, and when I met her, I made some immediate judgments based on her looks. I started thinking about what that really said about me.

She was a blond with a good body, and she had that kind of ditzy blond personality. I immediately thought that she would be shallow and not very bright. As I worked with her, I found that wasn’t the case at all. She was quite intelligent and not at all superficial. I reflected on what exactly it was that made me react that way toward her. In high school, I was one of those girls who was basically invisible. While I had endured some bullying for being an “ugly duckling” in middle school, by high school, I had blossomed enough that, though I wasn’t one of the hot, popular girls, neither was I that bad-looking. I was, however, smart, and that’s what made the boys avoid me at all costs.

That’s probably when I invented several stories about the kind of girl I was and the kind of girl those hot, popular girls were. I was deep and intelligent; they were shallow and dumb. They were women expressing the stereotypical feminine traits of passivity, sensuality, and receptivity to the degree that it was detrimental to themselves. They were acting the way they did to the benefit of the boys around them, and it was clear they wanted to be the center of attention for them. It was over the top. Still, the boys didn’t see it. What I saw as self-degradation, the boys saw as genuine interest. Their behavior was, in fact, getting them exactly what they wanted. The boys couldn’t get enough of their attention.

I reflected on another time in college when I had gone on a school trip abroad with several kids my age. There was one boy, and he had the interest of two girls. One of the girls was more like me—intellectual and pretty in a tomboyish kind of way, but not someone you would describe as hot. The other one was more stereotypically pretty, but definitely not as smart as the first one. The pretty one hung on every word the boy said and laughed in what appeared to me to be such an obvious “ass-kissing” way. I didn’t see how the boy could respect that, but in the end, he chose her. I asked him why, and his answer was simple, “She laughs at everything I say.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.