my first name ain't "baby"...

so this afternoon, having spent a large portion of my weekend watching “sex and the city” (more on this to come), i decided that the best possible way to remedy my cabin fever/stir craziness was to get on my bike and go for a long ride. so i did. this is becoming somewhat of a weekend routine for me (the riding, not the excessive DVD-watching) and one i want to continue for as long as the weather permits.

i rode around for a good while, with no particular destination; the only plan was to ride until i got tired of riding, and then i’d go home. my aimless wanderings took me, among other places, to point state park, where i sat in the mist of the fountain for a bit and thought about jumbotrons. as i was riding out of the park, i saw up ahead of me on the path a man with a long, flat something-or-other on the ground. as i got closer i realized that the long, flat something-or-other was in fact a giant python! and by “giant” i mean this thing must have been seven feet long. so i stopped and said to the man, “holy shit! is that yours?” he responded in the affirmative. my next question was, “um, is he hungry?” again, the guy responded in the affirmative. then i asked if i could pet the snake. the guy said that was fine, as long as i stayed away from his head. so i pet it for a couple of seconds and then decided to be on my way. i said to the guy, “have a nice day.” and he responded, as he eyed me up and down, “you, too, baby.”

"baby"??? ugh. now, i’d say this guy was in his mid-thirties or so – relatively close to my age. i recognize the irony in a single girl asking a strange man if she can, erm, pet his snake, but there was nothing at all even remotely flirtatious in my interaction with this dude. by calling me “baby”, he took what was a nice, normal, friendly interaction between strangers and turned it into something rather, for lack of a better word, icky.

i don't object to being called “baby” per se. i don’t mind if my friends call me “baby” or “honey” or “sweetheart” or “dear” or (my absolute favorite) “doll” or anything like that. stean called me “bird”, the only pet name (pun intended) i’ve ever tolerated from someone i’ve dated. and old people? old people can ALWAYS use those sorts of names on me and i’ll find it endlessly charming. (aside: my grandmother calls everyone “darling”, in a lovely southern accent no less, and i love it.) but when younger/middle-aged men do it, i get grossed out and turned off and even a little bit offended.

i relayed this story to a guy friend of mine on the phone. he seemed to think that if the snake man had been attractive, i would have had no problem with it. but i must vehemently disagree. any guy who would call me “baby” in a two-minute interaction while i’m sweaty and wearing a bike helmet is not a guy to whom i’m going to be inclined to give my phone number.

granted, we all want to be objectified from time to time. (anybody who tries to convince me otherwise is a silly liar.) this is a world in which being attractive is important. perhaps more important than it should be. i’d be full of shit if I said that it wasn’t important to me. so it would seem that being called “baby” (or the like) by a stranger would play right into this desire to be attractive. but alas, for me, it goes too far. it makes me so painfully aware of my own body that i want to go home and crawl into bed and wrap myself in blankets and eat ice cream.

this adverse reaction has nothing to do with feminism. i mean that. it has everything to do with my own insecurities.

maybe it’s because i was one of those girls who “developed” early. when i was eleven years old i was getting my period, was a head taller than the boys in my class, and was wearing real bras while my girlfriends were still too flat-chested for training bras. i’m sure this had some effect on me and my body image -- i’ve had a completely dysfunctional relationship with my body ever since i became aware of it.

being called “baby” or “beautiful” or whathaveyou by strange men on the street reduces me to my inner awkward eleven year old self, the one who just wants to blend in with the crowd, or be invisible, even. it’s the adult equivalent of having my bra strap popped in seventh grade. maybe i just want to be taken seriously? maybe being called “baby” is some sort of negation of who i am in favor of what i am? i dunno…

maybe what i object to is the seeming inability to have momentary and casual interactions without some injection of sexuality. i know that all relationships, regardless of the level of intimacy involved, are sexual. but is it too much to ask that every once in a while i can just be a person talking to a person without having to be a woman talking to a man? because not every male/female interaction is some version of courtship. (erm, maybe there is a bit of a feminist in me after all...)

or maybe i’ll never escape the self-perception of the brainy know-it-all kid with the giant plastic-framed glasses and the uneven ponytail and the scars on her knees from being a tomboy. i’m a month and a half away from my twenty-ninth birthday. this may be one of those neuroses that i’m stuck with.

and now for something completely different…

my friends michael and steph are in seattle for ten days and since i live downstairs from them, i’m catsitting/plantwatering/mailgetting for them. we all live pretty communally – we don’t lock our apartments ever. so i didn’t feel at all that i was imposing by raiding their movie collection when i dropped in to feed bessie (m & s’s cat) friday night. i ended up borrowing seasons 2 and 4 of “sex and the city”. i’d never watched the show, but know so many people who think it’s fantastic. chalk it up to curiosity.

um, perhaps i just don’t get it, but i wasn’t impressed. sure, it’s entertaining enough, but it’s utterly unrealistic and formulaic and predictable. and the four women are total caricatures – you have the sex-obsessed older woman, the WASP-y princess, the headstrong and independent attorney, and the serially-bad-at-relationships-but-great-at-fashion new york writer. and these women get laid ALL the TIME! in real life, nobody gets laid like this (or at least no one i know). and maybe it’s the prude in me talking here, but shouldn’t they be worried about STDs?

god, i’m so boring. i mean, i did watch 36 episodes of the damn show. but i didn’t have anything else to do and it was hot outside.

my worry, friends, is that S&tC is doing something not-so-good for women everywhere. it’s sending a message that being in one’s thirties and still obsessing about sex and relationships is somehow cool. ugh. if i ever have regular brunch dates with my three closest female friends and we’re all gorgeous and successful and wear fantastic clothes and all we do is sit around and bitch about our sex lives, even though we’re all getting laid all the time, i would like someone to punch me in the teeth. please.