At the risk of offending the (few) female readers of this blog, I am in the mood today to spout some vitriol. You have been warned! Stay back!
Things That Girls Do (And Guys Will Never Do):
1. Kiss each other hello. Or goodbye. If two girls know each other for a while, they will do this. The really close friends will kiss when they meet and kiss again when they part. Sometimes, the girls don't even really kiss. The lips and the cheeks move close to each other, they make the kissing motion and sound in the air and then draw away. Kind of a teaser trailer. C'mon, if you gotta kiss, kiss already!
Somehow I just don't see guys doing it. Arabs in thobes used to do it in the middle east but they would kiss the nose (they would even hold hands in the market place), but not here. No way are you catching me kissing a guy friend hello. Guys would normally grunt each other's existence with a 'wassup'.
2. Go to the washroom together.
You are in a group. Suddenly girl 1 says 'I have to use the ladies' room.' Girl 2 suddenly says, 'wait! I will go with you'. And suddenly it's just the guys left behind.
The only time guys go to the washroom together is when I organize outings. Since I am a compulsive planner, I will say (let's say we went to Wonderland), 'OK, we have 10 minutes per ride before the crowds get bigger and lunch is scheduled at 2, so right now we have 5 minutes to go to the washrooms. Next washroom break is scheduled in 1.5 hrs. You gotta go, go now!"
3. Dismiss their cars as 'this old thing'.
To guys, our cars are our alter egos. They are our best friends. If it's a new car, we talk about its horsepower and the deal we got on it. I have yet to meet a guy who did not get a deal on his car. If it's an old car, we talk about it's wonderful gas mileage or the ever surprisingly-still-functioning air conditioning. We never, NEVER, dismiss our cars as 'oh this? This old thing! Yeah, it gets me around.'
I even knew a girl who got a Nissan 350Z and wanted it automatic. Who drives a sports car with automatic. She even put a cute-(there's that word again)-looking sleepy Winnie the Pooh bear on the back window. Somewhere the soul of the 350Z must have died.
4. Use the expression 'it's soooo cute!'.
Girls do it. They see a puppy with drool running over the side of its face and go 'oh it's soooo cute!'. They see a baby in a stroller and go 'oh it's soooo cute!'. Well, duh. Last time I checked all babies were cute. We guys are smart. We don't have to say it. We know.
Sure, a guy will say ''it's soooo cute!'. But that's only in the company of girls, just to earn brownie points with ulterior end motives. In the company of guys only, we might go as far as to say 'oh it's cute'. It's the word 'soooo' in front of the word 'cute' and the exclamation mark at the end that makes the expression 'it's soooo cute!' a girl-exclusive statement.
Tags: Guys Girls
The personal, official blog of author Mezbauddin Mahtab
Mezba, I am a female reader of your blog; and I am far from offended. Most of what you have written is true to life, and our nature. But you have to know our secrets to know the “why” of our actions. Even though I should charge you a fee for revealing the unknown to men, I will give you these tidbits for free—well, almost. You will just have to read the latest entry in my blog and comment as a means of submitting satisfactory bribe for the confessing of all girls’ best and well-kept secrets. Mezba, in my defense, I am going to be a lawyer and need to learn the art of professional schmoozing, blackmail, and bloodsucking. And I am sorry to say that I have decided to start with you. (Laughs).
ReplyDeleteFor your first comment, I will say that I do the “kiss” business rarely. In fact, I only kiss “salaam” when I am in “desi” company. How I do it is another matter. I don’t “actually” really kiss. I am sure that most people don’t, even though it might appear to the casual eyes that we are in deed executing the “kiss.” And if we do actually decide to place a peck on the cheeks, it is too featherlight a brush of our lips to even actually be called a “kiss.” Here’s the mystery behind “the kisses” scene: Our reason, usually, for the performance of the “kiss” is the means of communicating our welcome of or joy at seeing the female in question. After all, we are naturally warm and affectionate creatures. Sometimes, however, we are forced to do the “kiss” business with our rivals because we do not want to openly confess our dislike of them. It is the way of operation in the female world. Why do we go through the motion without the “actual” kissing? It is quite simple, really. We are not fond of the scenario where we ruin the wonderful effects of our makeup by placing an actual kiss on the cheeks.
Why do we go to the washrooms together? Well, I can write a book on this, but the gist of it is that we: 1) feel the best and our strongest at having numbers on our side, 2) like to gossip about men and other girly subjects that we are quite sure guys “wouldn’t be caught dead” conversing to us about (i.e. pads/tampons, cramps, bloating, mood swings, weight problems, marriage issues, etc.), 3) ask each other questions about if we look all right and check our makeup for the umpteenth time to assure ourselves that we look our best, 4) get a reprieve from entertaining the company we are presently with by holing ourselves in the bathroom with our best friends, and 5) help each other with hard-to-do tasks such as adding extra pins or whatever to keep tendrils of hair escaping our complicated hairdos.
Honestly, I like cars that are brand name, look extremely good, run well, last longer than most other cars in the market, and are able to run at high speeds, say 80 mph, if I so choose one day to exercise my anger by driving 80 mph. Only those are the qualifications that I require being met in my “perfectly acceptable dream” car. The list of qualifications and expectations regarding a car for a man is, well, just higher and absurd to us females. We don’t care about the car for anything other than practical purposes; to us, it is merely a transportation device for the special purpose of driving us from “point a” to “point b” (i.e. usually from home to the mall and back). Now, Mezba, if we were talking about clothes and accessories, the meanings of those to women are analogous to what the possession of “this or that car” means to a man. Women express themselves through their clothes and accessories. We will “never” fall out of love with clothes and accessories; they define us better than we sometimes care to define ourselves.
Okay, now to the reasons I say the words, “It is sooo cute”: 1) Saying it is, plainly put, “the” girly thing to do. 2) It is an exaggeration that gets the statement across. For example, I will never just say that I had a bad day and chance having my words summarily dismissed; instead, I will assert with a harassed expression, “Oh, my God! I had ‘such’ a bad day.” 3) The addition of “sooo” is melodramatic and theatric enough to convey that the said object is worthy of our attention. And Mezba, I cannot help but think you missed something critical here. Therein lays a subtle difference in our use of the superfluous language. If we add the “sooo” in the phrase, it means that it is more than the “regular cute” that might catch our passing fancy but cannot capture our hearts.
Dude! What girls have *you* been hanging out with?!!? I think "its so cuuuuuute" on a repeitive basis would drive me just as nutty.
ReplyDeleteAbout the bathroom thing. Well we need to talk about YOU GUYS somehow right? That sthe perfect opportunity. See we're smarter than you think :)
Hehehe..
ReplyDeleteAll quite true.
But I have to say, I don't really like the kiss kiss thing and I'm a girl! I find it annoying and silly and maybe a little germy and I wish girls would stop doing that.
I just realized that I do the "It's sooo cute" thing.
ReplyDeleteThe rest I plead "not guilty" to. Bathrooms are vile places...the less time you spend in there, the less you are exposed to disgusting germs. Unless of course, you keep your hands under the air dryer the entire time (the heat would do a number on the bacteria) but the loud noise deters you from gossiping about the guys too. so bathroom visits have to be lone quests.
being a guy quite comfortable in his masculinity..i feel the need to say..
ReplyDeleteaww what a cute post :p
Heh heh Zak good one!
ReplyDeletethere are a lot of wussy girls around but..all of us?!
first of all, some of us use public transport! does everyone in toronto drive? what's the public transport like?
if some girls are wanting to go to the loo together, maybe they want to gossip about you men. perhaps you should be flattered! ;-)
In Europe, men don't kiss each other on the cheek, but continental style - women kiss each other on the cheek and men and women kiss each other on the cheek.
Now - it seems that some men seem to only complain about what women are up to!
Ek Umeed - thanks for the free talk - it's not that I am complaining about the kiss thing you know - lol - but the "semi-kiss".
ReplyDeleteAisha: what girls have I been hanging out with? alas beggars cannot be choosers :-(
Liya, nowal: Atleast in Toronto most washrooms are clean places. Now when girls in Bangladesh want to go to washrooms together ...
Zak: As a guy who is also comfortable with his masculinity- I say thanks.
Sonia: I think I like Europe.
I'm resisting the kiss hello situations. When I go somewhere where every woman needs to kiss me hello I'll hover around the entrance and then make like i'm fixing my scarf or rummaging through my bag while I say salam from a distance.
ReplyDeleteI am an outcast. I hate Kiss Hellos. They're freakin' pretentious.