For the last week or so, New York City has enjoyed unseasonably
balmy weather, and I like warm sunny days as much as the next person, but I want it to get cold again. I can’t really get in the mood to do Christmas shopping when half of the kids waiting in line at Macy’s to visit Santa have shorts on, and also, when I wear my bulky winter pea coat, I don’t have to listen to the stupid catcalls.

Let me make something clear. I don’t object to the fact that men comment; I object to the comments themselves. First of all, I started wearing a bra at age ten, so, while it does get a trifle old sometimes, I’ve gotten used to the occasional remark. Second of all, I do not wear tight shirts and short skirts for no reason. I dress not just for warmth but to look attractive as well, and while I do so mostly for the benefit of people I already know, I certainly don’t mind if it earns me an appreciative whistle from a stranger once in a while. But I could do without so-called compliments like “nice titties,” frankly. If you find me fetching, feel free to say so, and if you want to ogle me, I can’t stop you, but — “titties”? Like, shut up! Dialogue lifted from a fifties porno will not get it done!

The same people who make note of my “bodacious ta-tas” will often conclude, when either I don’t respond or I mutter “like, shut up” under my breath, that I don’t like boys that way. If I had a nickel for every time one of these idiots snarled “fuckin’ dyke” at my retreating back, I could buy them all one-way tickets back to the prehistoric era from whence they dragged their hairy knuckles — like, shut up! I find that completely offensive, and not just because these sub-vertebrates assume that, just because I shuddered away from them in revulsion, I don’t like men. On the contrary — I do like men. Repulsive slobbering bigoted chimps who failed to graduate from the seventh grade, and who therefore still believe that calling someone a lesbian constitutes a viable insult, do not qualify as “men.” Nor does this “accusation” qualify as either insightful, original, or accurate. Seems to me, if you want straight women to bite, you won’t use your caveman tendencies and ignorant homophobia as bait, but what do I know? Where I come from, we
use the word “lesbian” as an adjective, not an epithet.

Maybe I missed something. Maybe some women actually respond to this sort of thing. Maybe some women really like it when a total stranger tells them to “smile.” I can’t bloody stand it, myself. “Smile, honey.” “Give us a smile.” “Why don’t you smile?” Why don’t you, like, shut up? When I feel like smiling, I’ll smile, but until then, I don’t need someone I don’t even know choosing my mood for me, because believe it or not, “a pretty girl like me” has a few things on her mind, like the microscopic balance in her checking account, and the deadlines she has to meet, and a number of other not-all-that-smiley things that have nothing to do with you and your antediluvian attitudes about chipper little housewives in training. And as for calling me “honey,” or “sweetie,” or “baby,” or any other completely inappropriate term of endearment that incorrectly assumes you actually know me, I have a name. You don’t know my name, because you don’t know me, and I like it that way, so either address me as “miss” or don’t talk to me at all and pick on someone beautiful for a change.

All the telemarketers that inevitably call as I lift the first forkful of dinner to my lips might want to abide by this rule as well. I know these people have to make a living, and I try not to hang up on them too violently, but I can’t believe they expect me to buy their product or switch to their calling plan when they don’t even know who lives here. “Can I speak with Mr. Bunting, please?” Like, shut up, please? Memo to phone-sales “associates” across the nation: you will not find a “Mr. Bunting” in this household. Mr. Bunting lives in New Jersey, and Mr. Bunting dislikes telemarketers even more than he dislikes lawyers, and he dislikes lawyers quite a bit, but at least lawyers don’t call Mr. Bunting during the evening meal and pretend as though he doesn’t control the household finances because he has ovaries. Believe it or not, here in the latter half of the twentieth century, chicks can write checks. And if these bottom-feeders don’t ask for “Mr. Bunting,” they ask for “Sarah” all nice and friendly-like, and then they proceed to insert my name soap-opera style into every single sentence: “Well, Sarah, I’d like to tell you about the newest introductory rate offer from Chase Manhattan Visa, because, Sarah, you’ve qualified for our platinum card, and, Sarah, as a working woman with a good credit rating blah blah blah Sarah blah blah blah Sarah blah blah blah fishcakes.” Like, shut up! Don’t call me by my first name — we are not friends! If you interrupt my digestion to try to sell me something, you had better step lively with the “Miss Bunting”s, or I will scream at your supervisor until his ears bleed, because when you call me “Sarah,” you don’t even pronounce it correctly half the time! Repeat after me. “Sare. Uh. Sarah.” Not “Sar Ha.” Not “Shara.” Not “Saaah-rah.” Sarah. Learn to read, learn to speak, get a job, and shut up.

One time, I tried the “let ME call YOU back at YOUR home number during YOUR supper” trick on a telemarketer, who then called me a bitch. Like, yeah, file that one under “U” for “uh duh,” and color me just as unimpressed as the last two hundred thousand times somebody called me that, and shut up. Call me all the names you want, but at least come up with one I haven’t heard before. “Cunt”? Yawn. “Twat”? Over it. For many men, those two words represent their entire non-devastating arsenal of non-comebacks; they assume that a woman will burst into tears and slap them upon hearing The Dread C Word, and then they “win” or something. Wake up and smell the words of more than one syllable, Monsieur Roget — if you want a reaction stronger than a wearied “like, shut up,” you’ll have to kick it up a few notches.

A final note: I really hate it when people accuse me of “getting hysterical” or “overreacting,” and I really really really REALLY hate it when people confuse my personality with PMS. Like, SHUT UP! That whole PMS thing has gotten so very tired — put it to bed already! I get irritated easily, and I express that irritation, and I express it in a very un-Little-Miss-Merry-Sunshine way. Why? Because I JUST DO. It usually has nothing to do with my hormones or “that time of the month,” but when it does, I’ll cop to that on my own. When people dismiss my emotions, or any other woman’s emotions, on the basis of real or imagined PMS, it smacks of condescension; those emotions no longer bear count because they don’t have a basis in “reality,” and if we get upset, that becomes our own fault or something. In other words, if a woman yells at you for fucking something up, you may in fact have fucked it up, so quit trying to pin your mistakes on her excess estrogen. And women play the PMS card on each other just as often as men do on women, which sickens me. Even worse, some women think they can behave like brats and then blame it on PMS and get forgiven: “Sorry, I must have been PMS-ing.” Like, shut up! Take responsibility for your own actions! You can’t have it both ways, so take some Pamprin and suck it up.

I just wish people would think. I mean, I don’t care if someone calls me a girl instead of a woman, but I wish the plebes that talk about my “nice rack” would take a split second to mull it over before reducing me to the sum of my parts. I wish the sales reps would take five minutes to go over their call lists and learn to pronounce my name; I wish their managers would suggest that they address their potential customers by last name until invited to do otherwise. I wish certain individuals could distinguish the difference between being a bitch and having a backbone. Maybe Santa will bring some of these people a clue this Christmas. But I doubt it.

Share!