Bellydancing? I can swing it

Middle Class Rage
    By Monica Lesmerises

I spent last Saturday night getting horny with my friends, courtesy of an "entertainment service." One of us had a birthday and we, as loyal pals, surprised my friend by hiring a dancer.

My friend with a birthday was a guy named Eddie, and the entertainment was a female belly dancer. The first person I heard articulate what we were all thinking--"This woman is making me horny!"--was wearing a skirt.

Seem a little backwards? It made perfect sense to the women in the room.

Fortunately, the birthday plans were a co-ed decision. The men who decided to hire entertainment consulted Eddie's female friends before making the big decision: "So what do you think," they asked us. "Should we get Eddie a stripper or a belly dancer?"

To the men planning the party, this was a legitimate question of preference. To us women, it was a no-brainer: a clear example of what you might call an "instinct gap" between the genders.

The men took our advice and opted for the belly dancer. The mixed crowd at the party had a fabulous time watching Eddie, whose dream woman is Agent Scully, don a silver lamé turban and shake his mechanical-engineering-major bootie like none of us had ever seen before. The scene was hysterical: ideal fodder for our college yearbook, and a birthday none of us will forget.

I can only imagine what a disaster the stripper would have been. Many of the women would have left the party early, or come late. We wouldn't have laughed like we did. We would have scolded the men about it in the dining hall in the following days. And as for the horniness, I guarantee a stripper wouldn't have done it for any of us women.

Stripper or belly-dancer, the men's outward reactions may not have differed much. But to the women there, the difference meant that I put money in her waistband, and the general sentiment among my girlfriends was, "Wow. She was amazing." It also meant that we joined the hooting and clapping rather than frowning on it. Our visceral reaction to the belly dancer surprised the men, but to us, it was again a matter of instinct. We didn't sit and decide that a stripper is more socially oppressive than a belly dancer. But while the belly dancer enchanted us, we knew the stripper would have made us uncomfortable.

This is just one example of the instinct gap. I don't have to explain to my female friends why a belly-dancer is worlds apart from a stripper. Nor do I have to explain why I take specific note when a female professor is denied tenure, or why Shannon Faulkner is still a huge bad-ass even though she dropped out of the Citadel, or that natural cleavage is basically a myth. But to a lot of men, I do.

I don't mind. For one thing, Yale is a pretty darn good place to be a woman. Most people will listen to your opinions and try to understand your point of view. But one thing that will never be eradicated is the fact that men and women have different instincts.

There are certainly differences among women too. Some hate the word "chick", some don't mind it. Some don't mind it from friends, but do mind it from strangers. We all have different definitions of where flattery ends and discomfort begins. What feels like harassment varies from woman to woman. And we should feel comfortable with whatever our personal instincts are. I have a few myself:

I love action movies, but hate all James Bond movies made before 1995. Even if they are classics, I can't get past the weak and silly female characters. This doesn't mean I am too wrapped up in feminism to appreciate the movie. I just instinctively don't like Goldfinger--it makes me feel like crap when Sean Connery pins down a woman and forcibly kisses her.

I am happy that the men in my college encourage women to join stickball games in the courtyard. But some comments I've heard when women get up to bat are annoying. For men at bat, it's things like, "Hit it over the master's house! " But for women, comments are in the range of, "Keep your eye on the ball. Get behind it." Anyone who has ever played a sport with a ball knows to keep her eye on the ball. Now just tell us to hit it over the master's house.

I hate that Paul Newman is still sexy and Joanne Woodward isn't. I don't care if Soon-Yi loves him, I think Woody Allen is wretched for hitting on his girlfriend's teenage daughter. It is my instinct to question the power dynamics involved in a relationship rather than just call it love. I can't believe Yale had to think twice before refusing to rehire Professor Jorgensen last year after he slept with an 18-year-old student in his class.

I don't mind Barbie: her waist has to be the size of her wrist so her doll clothes don't fall off. I don't feel pressure to look like her. But I hate toy irons, and I sometimes feel sad when I see little girls playing "House" instead of "Keep-away." I wonder if those girls will later have trouble navigating the competitive corporate structure. Maybe it's weird, but I think it without trying.

I hate Cosmopolitan magazine for running articles like, "How to reconcile with your husband--even if he's cheated." I think Cindy Crawford is sexy, and Kate Moss is a blight on society. If men are pissed that women have entered VMI, they can retaliate by going to finishing school and having debutante balls. You can't keep your historically all-male stuff, because our historically all-female stuff sucks.

This is just a small example of stuff I think but don't necessarily explain. It's not because I haven't thought seriously about it all. Sometimes, however, explaining why it's not okay for professors to sleep with 18-year-old students feels like trying to explain why the sky is blue.

In the end, I don't suppose I expect much to change in terms of male and female instincts. But it definitely is comforting to me that when everything works out right, I can be in a room with 15 men, 15 women, and a belly dancer, and have a rip-roaring good time.

Back to Opinion...