Confessions of a Formerly "Male" Miss Smartypants

Having a female brain in no way guarantees one understanding of certain things until actually living the life. Like the whole nature vs. nurture debate, some things are innate and others just have to be learned, often the hard way. Being born gonadally and endocrinally challenged virtually guarantees a bevy of opportunities to learn the hard way, or at least with a New Jersey assload of redacted opinions and practices. If a bunch of words have to be made up in the process, so be it.

In my more masculine life I used to like making little jokes about women and the whole thing about not having pockets, or at the very least, not putting anything in them. “Seriously, do you really think that if you stuck a wallet in there, people would look at you and think you naturally have a large square lump on your ass? Or that it makes you look fat? Please.” Yes, I was a real cut up; loose and free with my witty sarcastic observations. So smug. So smug.

Flash forward to now, and yes, I do feel pretty much like a giant jackass about all that. Just the other day I stuck a folded up twenty in the front pocket of my khaki pants, agonized in the mirror for a few moments, and then took it out. Instead, I choose to lug around a now 20 pound purse with lord knows what inside rather than risk someone think I was sporting a perfectly symmetrical pocket of lard in a unlikely location, as if that would be the pressing thing to worry about in regards to my appearance.

I also used to smirk about women who looking exactly as they did the last time I saw them, go on and on about looking like shit that day. In male life “looking like shit” means you just crawled out of the swamp after being lost for a week, or ripping open the seat of your pants on a crate and then tried to fix it with staples and a wool pea coat tied around your waist. The definition has since been modified. A lot. Now looking like shit means I spent 5 minutes less time getting ready in the morning. Maybe my eyeliner smudged just a tiny bit, or a slight puff of wind mussed my hair. Sometimes it’s just that I dared have a slice of cheese on my sandwich and gained 11 pounds overnight, leaving me feeling like an overstuffed sausage in the same outfit that used to be falling off of me.

We’ve all heard the long running joke about the woman circling around for the closest parking spot to go to the gym. Guys get a real kick out of this ridiculous looking paradox and have a really good chuckle every time it’s brought up. Me too. Well, that is until it finally sunk in that men have virtually zero risk of having someone lying in wait for them because they happen to be wearing easily removed clothing. When the mental trade off suddenly becomes ‘burn 5 more calories or significantly reduce the risk of rape’, it suddenly doesn’t seem so silly. I will, however, hold on to the idea that it is kind of silly that I’ll circle to park close on occasions when I’m wearing ridiculously uncomfortable shoes.

Speaking of which, I also never understood why anyone would subject themselves to wearing ridiculously uncomfortable shoes. Most of these are heels of course, and some are real foot killers, not to mention impossible to run in. It was beyond me that women would wear shoes that not only made her feet feel like they were caught in a bear trap, but also leave her prey to less fashion conscious assailants. Honestly, even now it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Well, except for one factor that trumps all. But they look so pretty! Laugh if you want, but it’s good enough for me.

michellelianna