Today's Fan Mail Fridays is a pretty interesting one because it tackles a bit of parenting, womenhood, masculinity, and the #MeToo movement; it's such a thought- provoking post and would greatly benefit a lot of parents of boys as well.
Hi Martha!
I wanted to get your perspective on something. My son was telling me a story the other day regarding an incident with a woman he had just met. He was at an art gallery opening and struck up a conversation with a woman who was there by herself. He's just out of college and is 24 and the woman was a high school art teacher in her mid-30's, so there was a substantial age gap. He said that they seemed to develop a nice rapport, maybe even a bit flirty, and were chatting for close to a half hour. He felt he had a good comfort level with her and wanted to compliment her on her appearance so he told her she had a "really, nice, hourglass figure" and from there everything quickly went downhill. She was taken aback and said something like, "Excuse me, you hardly know me, why are you commenting on my body?" He went into damage control mode but only made matters worse when he tried to convince her that "hourglass figure" was a compliment rather than just apologizing for offending her. She finally said "you really don't get it do you?" and then landed a stinging slap across his cheek and walked off. I would love to have been a fly on the wall for that one ;-) I did tell him that he should stick to more neutral areas when commenting on a woman's appearance, so the clothes or shoes they're wearing should be fine, maybe the hair too, but never the body. I wonder if his age had something to do with it and perhaps she would be more receptive to the comment if it came from a man in her age group, and maybe she saw him as some college guy who wanted to score with an older woman? It's hard to know all the dynamics, but I just wanted to get your perspective.
V
Hi V!
Thanks for writing. First off, I was taken aback when I read the part where he was slapped by the lady; I could imagine how you felt as a parent when you heard that part; putting myself in a parent's shoes, I wouldn't want to hear that and I would have probably retaliated on the lady if I saw that with my own eyes.
So yes, I understand how any parent would feel in this situation, but then again, there are a lot of layers here and I wasn't physically there so I can't really comment on the situation. Instead, let's try to understand why most men seem to be always sexually- motivated when meeting women and discuss how we can teach young boys and men to approach women in the time of #MeToo.
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