The Sheriff just got back from a lovely little jaunt to the Lone Star State to visit a just graduated Smithie and Albrighter in West Texas (speaking of my Sheriff identity, in the DFW airport I spotted a fabulously awful pink cowgirl hat with a tiara on it...damn shame I didn't buy it). Bluntly, I was surprised by how much I liked it: given that I spend most of my time in Northampton (and will be vacationing in Rehoboth Beach, a gay beach town, this week with more FF writers), I thought Texas would be a shock in a nasty way. But aside from a local in a bar who bought us a round and then asked our opinion on the Arizona immigration law, I found most of the people to be extremely friendly, if a little innocuously hyper-religious (our visit coincided with a Christian rock festival called Rock the Desert, and we ran into many Christian rockers clad in skinny jeans and hipster haircuts in the airport. I also found a stunning pair of leopard-print cross earrings!).
One experience that left me angry and ready to post occurred on our last night in town. We saw a show called Summer Mummers, a vaudeville-style show that was absolutely hilarious, and that encouraged audience participation in the form of throwing popcorn, both at the actors and other audience members (once a big fan of Rocky Horror, I love any chance to act unruly in a theatre). A group of older men in front of us noticed our obnoxious Yankee accents (or the fact that we were young, cute women, take your pick) and picked on us flirtatiously for the duration of the night, tossing bag after bag of popcorn at us.
Pretty harmless, except that their wives were sitting right there too. While I was three sheets to the wind and certainly didn't tell the men to stop, their poor wives sat there next to them, watching and laughing with tentative insecurity as their husbands flirted with much younger women and paid us far more attention than they did to their wives. It just reeked of such machismo and disrespect. But clearly, these women had adjusted to it and aside from jokingly calling their husbands creepers, they made no attempts to temper the behavior of their husbands. I found it sexist, disrespectful, and honestly a little sad that these women were so resigned to it.
But am I just judging harshly from my thoroughly Yankee perspective? Is this maybe not as dysfunctional as I'm perceiving? What say ye, dear readers?
Much love,
The Sheriff
I do not mean to disrespect you, but I fail to see how men hitting on you ( which I disagree with because of lack of substance other than "throwing popcorn") while their wives are near is sexist. rude-- yes, sexist -- no.
ReplyDeleteThey did more than throw popcorn (which was aimed to go right down cleavage)--they leered constantly and they catcalled. Both of which were very much gendered behaviors on their behalf, and that I read as sexist.
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