This past Saturday, my roommate and I decided to visit our friend at his new job. He had recently been hired at one of the local bars to work on Saturday mornings/afternoons and we thought it would be fun to visit him for brunch. So we woke up, threw on some clothes, pulled our hair back, and walked out the door to start our day.
When we walked in, we were greeted by our friend before taking our seats at the end of the bar next to an older gentleman. Our friend introduced us to him as a man we’ll call Dennis and joked about how Dennis likes to talk a lot. The four of us laughed and my roommate and I ordered our first drinks.
After a few minutes, Dennis began a conversation with us. He was just a friendly old man who apparently spent a lot of time at bars, especially the one we were currently at. We learned he had been in the area a lot lately as his wife had divorced him, took all of his money, and left him with three rental properties that he needed to get rid of. My roommate tried to lighten the mood and tell him to just forget his ex-wife, but was stopped by Dennis who let us know that his ex-wife was his “best friend.”
Poor Dennis, right? We thought so too. We felt bad until we learned more about not only the divorce but as we learned more about our new friend Dennis as a person.
Let’s start with the rental properties that his wife left him with. As it turns out, Dennis fell in love with one of their tenants. He explained how he really wanted to f*** this woman and how his family knew it. He also explained how his family was torn apart after this tenant he loved so much began living free of rent because he stopped charging her. Turns out that my initial assumption of alcohol being the reason he lost his “best friend” was wrong…it was something so much worse, but Dennis seemed to be missing that. This nice, old man seemed a little oblivious, but overall he still seemed harmless. Too bad the story doesn't stop there.
We talked beer as I decided I needed to learn how to like it because my bank account didn’t seem to like mixed drinks. We talked politics because that is what everyone has been talking about for months. We even talked about the menu and worked on deciding what burger my roommate and I were going to share as the regular, Dennis, gave us recommendations. We shared stories and joked around; we even laughed when one of Dennis’s bar-friends walked in and he offered up the comment, “Wanna buy my hotties?” Old men make somewhat sexist, but ultimately harmless, jokes about young girls all the time, not a big deal to me. That joke isn’t what upset my roommate and I that day, Dennis’s reasoning behind that joke is what upset us.
My roommate is a naturally beautiful woman. She is a tall, slender, blue-eyed, blonde woman who dresses simply and wears very little makeup if she wears it at all. She doesn’t spend a lot of time focusing on her looks partially because she doesn’t need to, but also because, quite frankly, she doesn’t care. Either way, she does so proudly and on that Saturday, she did so while dressed in some jeans, a tee shirt, and a flannel with her hair in a ponytail. She explained to Dennis why she doesn’t wear makeup and was interrupted by him telling her that she should.
Dennis said he likes “dainty” women. He said that my roommate was trying to be a manly-man by not wearing makeup and drinking beer while wearing “that plaid shirt.” He told her she should try a little more. He talked to her as if she owed it to him to try harder in her looks—as if she needed to even think about impressing a man like him. To try and validate his argument, Dennis said to us, “Well think about it. I wouldn't even have been talking to you guys if you were fat and ugly.”
To be honest, my roommate and I are a little different. She doesn’t think twice about not putting makeup on in the morning, and I have a hard time convincing myself to leave the house if I’m not wearing makeup. I always say, “you never know who you’re going to meet” to help justify why I always put makeup on. My roommate says that she wants to be recognized for her accomplishments and abilities rather than her looks, and while I agree, I take it farther and say that I wont’ be able to share my accomplishments and abilities if I can’t even get someone to look my way. In reality, it is because of men like Dennis who have led to the belief that as women that we must “look good.” Looking good has been viewed as having our hair and makeup done along with wearing nice clothes (sometimes even clothes that are tighter or more revealing) just to be acknowledged or at least try to be acknowledged and avoid criticism from gentlemen such as Dennis.
It was disappointing that on that Saturday, we thought we were going to enjoy brunch with our friend while having light-hearted conversations with this man at the bar, only to be faced with the reality that we were only worthy of his time because we weren’t “fat and ugly.” Ultimately, this man who spends a majority of his time throwing them back at bars around town shouldn’t hold any light to two women who will soon graduate from a university with plenty of experience to help set them up for success. Unfortunately, there are many men in the world who think the same way as Dennis and many who actually could stand in the way of what we want.
While I know this is the reality of the world we live in, I can only hope that slowly we can work on getting to a point where this reality is different. Like my roommate, and many other women in the world, I want to be recognized for the things I do, not the way I look. Although we can pretend as if we are making progress as women, it is men like Dennis who remind us that we still have so far to go. Eventually, we will make it, but until then, dress yourself up or dress yourself down, wear or don't wear makeup, do what you choose, but don’t do it to appease men like Dennis, do it for yourself.
