Good Girls Don't...

There are a number of things that girls are taught to not do, either consciously or subconsciously. We are taught not to want sex. We are taught to want to make babies. We are taught that if we do not have an hour-glass - or these days butter knife - figure we must be ugly and no one would want to be with us so it's okay to just sit at home eating Ben and Jerry's watching chick flicks. We are taught so many things that are frighteningly wrong.

We are taught that it's not okay to be better at something than a guy if you want them to like you. This is reinforced by the idea of being emasculated. Which by definition means to weaken or to water down, the first definition is not to make a man feel like he has no penis or like less of a man but this has come to mean only that a dude is not a dude any longer if a woman is stronger, louder, more talented or smarter than he is.

Thankfully not all men are like this when confronted with someone of the opposite sex with greater skills. My peer group is full of them and that's just one reason why I keep them around. I haven't found many more of them outside of my peer group. I feel like I have a rare and valuable collection of male friends who are confident in themselves enough to not feel like they suddenly have no genitalia simply because I can drive a manual transmission better than they can... for example.

I have lost all contact with a man outside of my peer group shortly after I showed him how his car could be driven. Not should, but could. Without breaking any laws or speeding and with his consent, he let me drive his car. Just around the block. And I got a cheap thrill out of driving something with more than a hundred ponies under the hood (don't get me wrong I love my super small and efficient Fiat, but it doesn't drive like a new Jetta or anything with that many horses).

Allow me to elaborate that I've been driving a stick for a good decade now. I know how it's done. He'd been re-learning how to do this for less than a week. Of course I'm going to be better at it than he was at the time. I wasn't just showing off (only a eensy-squeensy bit), I was just having a little fun. But I had the audacity to be better than him at something that women are supposedly horrible at: driving.

Good girls don't play with boys' toys. Good girls don't show off. Good girls don't boast. Good girls should just pretend to do poorly to let the men in their lives feel like they're better at something when they may not be to preserve ego. Then he'll like you. That kind of nonsense is for good girls, nice girls.

I guess I'm not very nice. And that suits me just fine.