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Let’s Go, Girls


 

I’ve been noticing several Girls’ Night Out events on local calendars recently. There was one at Ace Hardware, and there’s one coming up at Savage Mill, I believe. Main Street Ellicott City sometimes hosts Girls’ Night Out events. 

I don’t recall seeing any Boys’ Night Out events. Ever. 

Why is that? 

The truth is that if one is a girl, girlhood lasts until adolescence - - say, age thirteen - - and after that one is a woman at eighteen (or twenty one, conservatively speaking.) No one over the age of twelve is a girl. 

What is the deal, then, with the Girls’ Night Out phenomenon? Do women need to be infantilized in order to cajole them to come out and spend money? Is it a nod to suggesting that we can put down our adult cares and responsibilities and just “be girls” again?

Don't men want to put down adult cares and responsibilities, too? Then why don’t I see specially themed Boys’ Night Out events with equal frequency? Can’t you sell them things by enticing them to “be boys again”? 

I have the same feeling about “Girls’ Night” that I do about kids’ menus with cloyingly cute food items. No one feels comfortable ordering “Suzy-Woozy’s Clucker Duckers” or “Roary the Lion’s Bravo Burger.” You feel about five years old. Or worse, you feel about five years old during one of those times that you know that adults are secretly laughing at you. So then why do we go all cutesy when marketing to women? 

These are people whose discretionary income you are after. They are adults. In most cases they are earning their own money, not begging for an allowance. There was a time, of course, when husbands took a dim view of their wives working outside the home and/or having social lives apart from the family unit. An event called a Girls Night would’ve looked relatively harmless compared to pursuing employment, higher education, political organizing…

“Sure honey, you go out with the girls. I’ll babysit the kids.”

How to have a moment of independence in a life dominated by the expectations of the patriarchy? Make it look harmless. Non-threatening. Cute, and pink, and juvenile. Awash in stereotypes of femininity.

Are we still doing this? Do we have to perpetuate it? Does anybody care - - or is it just me?



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