Let’s go… Slaho!

Some things I just don’t get. One such thing relates to what happened today.

Today was my friends’ son’s 9th birthday. As they seem to do every year they have a pool party. We always have a good time at his party and look forward to attending it every year (and any other gathering these friends have because they are awesome hosts, and they always know how to show a good time). There is only one drawback to their party… no, my mistake, almost ALL pool parties. It seems that if there is a pool party, the men go in the pool and the women don’t.

Now, it’s not like I have this thing that the women MUST go in the water. It’s not like this 39 year old is looking forward to bathing suit clad women to join him and the other guys in the water (though that may be nice). What bugs me is that when the women don’t go in, the men become the sole caretakers for wading children. We become small islands in a see of water where a swimmer stops for respite (and sometimes two or three swimmers). We become catapults, and rocket launchers, sending kids flying through the air to splash in another part of the pool (unless the pool is too full, like today, in which case we are spared of this duty). We also become lifeguards making sure that none of the kids are underwater any longer than they need to be, being constantly aware of every splash, which becomes difficult with the amount of times some of these kids enter and exit the water. And all the while the ladies sit outside doing whatever they do (usually gossiping, though they’ll deny this. They are only sharing information… vital information about “friends” in precarious situations) while the men run (or swim) themselves ragged. That was the case today. As it was last week at our July 4th gathering. As it has been at almost every kids pool party we attend.

To be fair, this is not ALWAYS the case. The ladies will enter the pool at small gatherings when there aren’t too many kids. And usually when there aren’t too many people to see them in the pool. You see this whole pool thing has become some sort of vanity issue from what I can tell. One of two things happen. Either the ladies are not comfortable being seen in their bathing suits by people there that they don’t know, or they don’t care but don’t want to be the only ones going in the water , therefore becoming open to criticism by those who didn’t enter and/or missing out on a great opportunity to “share information”. Or maybe they become afraid that if THEY are in the pool it is they whose “information” will be shared about. Men don’t have these issues. We don’t care what we look like. We don’t care if they are talking about us. We don’t care how we are perceived by others. And it is foreign to us why this is such an issue for women.

I went out with my wife last night. I was ready to go in ten minutes. I then packed up the kids, drove them to my sister’s house, got them dinner in the process (drive-thru BK) and returned home. She still wasn’t ready. Who was she looking to impress? Surely not me. I’ve seen her at her worst. A shower and a little make-up and she is good as gold! (And I think she looks great W/O the make-up) But she has to wear the perfect outfit make herself up perfectly, fix her hair just right, and whatever else she needed to do over a 30 to 45 minute period of time. And she’s one of the good ones! What is the big deal? I’ve already been won over. So who is this for? Probably for the others joining us. Women apparently feel that if they don’t prepare themselves to a certain degree, then “just imagine what the others would say!” To which I say, “who cares?” Their opinions shouldn’t matter. Only mine should and you are fine just the way you are. In fact, most of us guys would say the same thing.
Maybe some women would think that if they don’t make themselves up then their men would look elsewhere… the roaming eyes. You know if such a big deal wasn’t made of it, many of us wouldn’t be thinking about our eyes roaming. What happens is that when women make the big fuss that they do, their men wonder, “what are they so worried about?” and start to look around out of curiosity. Then we get busted looking and we get the “see, that’s why we need to deck ourselves out!” Vicious cycle, huh? But started by who?

You know, it’s not like I can’t appreciate a woman decking herself out and making herself up to look gorgeous. I like it when my wife makes herself up. But she doesn’t have to… at least not nearly as often as she feels she needs to. And this isn’t a knock on her… most women are the same way. How many times has a man heard from a woman, “It’s just so easy for men. To go out you just have to throw on a pair of jeans and a shirt. To go to the beach you just have to throw on some trunks. WE have to shave or wax our legs, and put on make-up and tweeze our eyebrows and highlight our hair, and do our nails, and blah blah blah, and yatta yatta yatta, etc, etc, etc. You don’t even have to shave, and gray hair looks good on you guys.” To which my response is, who asked you to do all this? “What, you mean you don’t want us shaving our legs and pits?” That always gets me, because the obvious answer is yes. Hair in the wrong places = bad. But the way I see it this is all the fault of that first woman who decided that this was all a good idea. If she would have never decided that all this was good and important, we wouldn’t know any better!! We would be happy men with our hairy, make-up less, gray-haired, lightly mustached girls. And we wouldn’t have to hear about how much work they do to look beautiful for us, because they’d already look beautiful to us. And we wouldn’t have to wait for an hour for them to get ready to go to the grocery store. We’d be cool with whatever! AND they would be in the pool with us taking care of the kids at birthday parties to boot!! THAT’s what I’m talking about.

**DISCLAIMER** The truth is that years ago that one lady DID make herself up, and planted wild ideas in all women’s heads and got them used to prepping themselves to the max, and got men used to them looking this way. I am not asking women to change all this. I like my wife looking pretty (she’s already beautiful, but you know what I mean… I gotta be careful here… I think I’m treading shark infested waters all of a sudden). So don’t think that I’m trying to start a revolution here. I’m not!!

I JUST WANT THE WOMEN TO HELP US IN THE POOL WITH THE KIDS. THAT’S ALL!! Is that too much to ask? I guess I’ll know the answer to this when the next pool party comes, huh?

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 12th, 2009 at 9:56 pm and is filed under Just thinking.... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.