Why Skanks Have Ruined The Sisterhood

Tonight I called my grandma, and, as usual, the first question she asked me was whether I am ‘going steady’ with anyone (that’s grandma-code for consistently dating a nice boy). Tonight, instead of giving her some vague story about some okay guy I’ve been out to dinner with a few times, I tell her that I think ‘going steady’ is something that belongs in a book titled ‘The History of Dating.’ She asks me why. I say ‘sluts, Grandma. Sluts.’ (I’d had a few glasses of red wine.) She tells me to mind my language, and after a few moments of digesting the ‘s’ word she asks me what I mean. Let me explain…
 
It has become apparent in the world of dating that a lot of boys don’t take it steady because they don’t have to. They have access to loads of girls who don’t hold high hopes for chivalrous gestures, effort, or even just basic manners. Girls who are willing to be bedded on the first date and discarded as quickly as the condom wrapper that was used in the deed, in the hope that just this once he might ask her out again. Girls who are willing to move good conversation and humor to the bottom of the priority list in the hope that underneath all the banal chat he’s really a smart guy. Girls who are willing to drop everything the minute he texts or calls, because if she doesn’t, he’ll find a girl who will. Girls who are willing to sit, wait, take only what they’re given and ask for no more, because they doubt there’s anyone out there capable of ‘going steady.’
 
Grandma asks ‘who are all these floozies?’ (Now that’s a term that belongs in ‘The History of Dating,’ isn’t it? But I’m willing to bring that one back for 2014.)
 
Good bloody question, Grandma… Who are these floozies!? I’ll tell you who. They’re every second girl you meet. The Sisterhood.
 
SISTERS, IT’S TIME FOR A TALK.
 
You’ve let things slip. Boys aren’t to blame for the state of our dating culture. You are. I am. (As much as I would like to exempt myself from the status of ‘girls who are willing to,’ I’m afraid I’ve been guilty of this several times in my earlier 20s, so I’m in the boat with y’all.) WE are responsible. In being ‘girls who are willing to,’ we’ve lowered our expectations, upped our bullshit threshold, and stopped looking out for ourselves. And in doing that, we’ve actually stopped looking out for each other. Have you heard of The Broken Window Theory? It’s pretty much what we’ve let dating become by being floozies. And let me be clear, by floozie, I don’t mean a lady who is free and frivolous with her sexual morals (although, how much fun is that!?) What I mean is a lady who constantly makes excuses for slack guys.
 
The Broken Window Theory is a notion that suggests ‘baddies’ will take visual cues from their surroundings and calibrate their behavior based on what they see. So, say there’s a building with a broken window or two, and nobody repairs those windows, vandals are likely to break a few more, and a few more after that, and then perhaps start trashing the inside of the building. And who knows, they might even light a fire (those cheeky arsonists). And once that building is trashed, what do you think happens to the next one? People start breaking a few windows there, and then trashing the inside of that building, and guess what? It ends up just like the previous building…and then they start on the place next door, and eventually the whole block becomes TRASH CITY where vandalizing is the norm.
 
Welcome to modern dating, TRASH CITY, where ‘girls who are willing to’ have welcomed lazy, inconsiderate boys in as the norm. These boys run free with rocks, spray paint, and matches. They smash windows, tag walls and light fires. They see their friends treating us a certain way, so ‘this must be how we roll with the babez, right, brah!?’ Monkey-see, monkey-do! And more often than not, we let it slide… because we expect it from them. And that’s sad.
 
Sisters, are we over this yet? I really hope so. Because for every time you let it happen to you, it’s gonna happen to me, to your best friend, your sister, your best mate from work. And that’s no sisterhood to be proud of! We’ve bred a generation of lazy boys, and they’re outnumbering the good ones. If you’re done, I’m done. We could start a revolution right now if we wanted. A revolution where good guys are no longer the exception but the rule. Can you imagine?! (I can’t really, but my grandma tells me it’s a real swell time!)
 
Let’s stop being floozies. Let’s take a good look at our bullshit-thresholds and make some overdue adjustments. Let’s get on the same page. We need to be on the same page if anything’s going to change in trash city. With the way things are, our individual power is useless. It’s our power as a collective that’s going to transform the way we date (and are dated). With some commitment, I reckon it won’t be too long before the only lazy boys around (well, most of them) are of the leather lounge variety. And maybe, when my grandma rings, I can more often (than not) give her the response she’s hoping for: ‘Yes, Grandma, I AM going steady!’