some rules are meant to be followed

When the book The Rules came out, my mother bought it for me (despite that, she is generally an excellent mother). In fact, it was one of my Christmas gifts. Not as awesome as when my father bought me a travel iron (I was 14 at the time), but still, I was a bit crestfallen. Wasn't there a less embarrassing gift available? Like a nose-hair trimmer? But curiosity got the best of me (in spite of what happens to the cat), and I read it.

I've always been an open book. I am pretty much incapable of being enigmatic. Whatever pops up in my brain comes directly out of my mouth without any consideration of how to word it, or whether it should be worded in the first place. There just doesn't seem to be enough time to think before I speak. I tend to write the same way. Proofreading and doing drafts doesn't even occur to me. Sometimes I'm reading a blog I wrote a year ago and find typos, even though I've likely read it multiple times since then. Life in general is a first-draft proposition for me. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

In the name of empowerment and feminism and all that jazz, women have decided to tell men what they want. Being demure and coy seems archaic and oppressive. We are women, hear us roar. We want a relationship! We want conversation! We want to cuddle! We want a career and a family and a group of girlfriends with whom we can discuss sex, Oprah, and shoes! Then women got the idea that they could be men. They could have sex and not care. They could love and leave. They could date multiple men, sometimes in the same night. They could have their Sex and the City lifestyle and be in control of their emotions instead of their emotions controlling them.

In my humble and likely flawed opinion, it seems like this all points to there being something wrong with the way women work. There's something wrong with being an occasional slave to our emotions, to wanting to cuddle, to owning 4 pairs of high-heeled black shoes (all of which are totally different, by the way). There's nothing wrong with being demure. There's nothing wrong with being coy. There's nothing wrong with being a woman. Letting a man open your door doesn't oppress you. Carrying a heavy box and refusing his assistance doesn't make you more of a woman. Makeup and perfume don't make you a submissive partner. The poem that opines "the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world" shouldn't be taken as a degradation of a woman's role- in the case of "anything you can do, I can do better," men and women can both run a company or a country, both perform surgery and save lives, and both can cook and clean with the best. But only women can bear humans. We will always have the upper hand. Men and women need each other- not just biologically, but emotionally and mentally. But it's the balance that makes it work. Women don't need to be men. We have plenty of men (despite what Cosmopolitan and the rest of the women's mags would have you believe).

While I don't necessarily agree with the seeming strategic nature of The Rules- I think it should be a bit more genuine- I think there is something to be said for following a few of them. Not to the point of putting out an egg timer for phone calls, or only accepting dates by Tuesdays, but keeping a little mystery is never a bad thing.