Women acting like men.

Before I got sick last week, I had every intention of writing about a conversation I had with Carlos regarding an article that appeared on the NY Times 2 weeks ago about casual relationships.

To be completely honest, I didn’t write about it because I forgot; but today, while I was getting ready for work, I was listening to the morning show on Z100 and they were discussing the book “The Hook Up Handbook”.

I suddenly remembered what I felt I REALLY needed to say.

"The book's title and many of its guidelines ('Getting a room isn't just polite, it's a necessity') suggest that a new sexual revolution is afoot among a fast-and-loose generation nurtured on the wisdom of 'Sex and the City,' who see boyfriends as passe, dating as dated and the idea of commitment laughable."

Keeping in mind that I, like the authors, have also come of age in an era when decorous dating has ceded to the hookup, I think that the fact that this book even exists is a sign that the times we are living in are bringing about the demise of self respect and is proof that we are living in an era when we (women) are trying so hard to be equal to men that some of us have began to blur the lines and are adopting some of men’s worse characteristics.

I am not going to say that I have never hooked up because were I to say that I would be a big fat liar, but I think that there is a lot to be said about women who look to fill the emotional voids in their lives and their physical needs by having drunken trysts (if you can even call it that) with strangers. In all seriousness, I think that any woman (like the authors of the book for example) who has a motto such as “drink until he is cute” has SERIOUS issues.

Whatever happened to the days when you could play the field without necessarily swapping alcohol flavored spit with some random guy you met in some bar? I mean, I do read Cosmopolitan and I did read the article that said that something like 40% of relationships (don’t quote me on that) begin as a hook-up, but I think that I would be extremely reluctant to begin a relationship with someone who had groped my ass before they even knew my last name.

Not to mention, that in this day and age we are living in a world plagued by the AIDS epidemic among other not so fun STDs. You could argue that hook-ups don’t necessarily end in one night stands; however, it wouldn’t be the first time that a one night stand was preceded by a hook-up. This is where people get careless and stupid, and this is why women are the group that’s most affected by STDs.

I think that the examples of empowered women that the media portrays are accurate in some ways but idiotic in others. As cool and kick ass as Samantha Jones was, I hardly think she should be anyone’s role model in that aspect. Let’s all remember that this is someone who admitted in an episode that despite her promiscuity she had never been tested for STDs.

Female empowerment begins within and the moment you start disrespecting yourself all in the spirit of being more emancipated or free or whatever it is, then you’ve already lost the battle. I am not saying that we should live life by “The Rules”, but I do think that selectiveness pays off…and if we are looking at Samantha Jones as a role model we should also remember that her private persona once cost her the professional credibility she worked so hard to attain and all she could say to that was “if I was a man we wouldn’t be having this conversation”, and a double standard it was, but this is yet another example of a woman adopting a men’s worse characteristics.