Wanna Go Steady?

I love 80’s movies. It’s almost unhealthy how much I love all 80’s movies. Not just the teen dramedy ones like Say Anything or The Breakfast Club, but also Stripes and Uncle Buck (yes, I just admitted that). But I do have an 80’s teen movie relationship fantasy. It’s the scene where the girl has a date with her new crush and she’s sitting up in her room in her carefully picked out teal eye shadow putting the final poof in her hair when the doorbell rings. She waits a few moments, and then grabs her purse from the bed and appears at the top of the stairs to look down at the foyer where Mom/Dad is questioning Date for details. Date reassures Mom/Dad that everything will be fine and they’ll be back before curfew. Then Date leads her out to the inevitably crappy car and gets the door for her and there’s a tape deck and something slightly tacky on the dashboard and they go and have a lovely time.

Here’s the issue with that picture now, and the reason why that scene never happens anymore: my generation is lazy. I’m personally admitting to it on behalf of my generation. My parent’s generation has been telling me for years this was true, but I didn’t want to believe them, now I’m faced with the fact that it’s all been true. As a result, the whole relationship architecture has been rocked to its core. Texting and hanging out have taken the place of calling and dating.

Rules girls were a “thing” for a while. I’m sorry to tell all the women out there who have passed on their Rules Girl wisdom to their daughters, but dates aren’t in vogue anymore.

But what if you want a date? This, I think, is a fruitless process because my generation has lost even the concept of what a date is. Getting someone who is a part of my generation to ask a girl out on a date is like asking a puppy to make a crème brulee.

Dates served as a way to socialize people. I’m sorry I sound archaic, but forcing someone to change out of their sweatpants and treat someone else like they mean something makes people realize how they really should be acting all the time to everyone. If someone isn’t nice to you when they’re in slacks, they really won’t be nice to you once they’ve resigned themselves to their stained t-shirts. On the flip side, some people, no matter how nice they are, will never be able to articulate that in gym shorts during a belching contest and a South Park marathon – of course I’m referring to myself, I can’t speak on behalf of other people’s personal lives.

But let’s look past my personal fantasies. What does this lack of dating, of process, of social graces mean for my generation as we grow up? This means that the boys of my generation will stay boys. They will go into business or politics and struggle. Why? They won’t be able to ask for what they want. They will expect everything to slide into their laps. They will not treat time or money like it has any value because they’ve never learned to treat people like they have any value. They also won’t be able to deal with rejection. Dating is as much about rejection as it is about the actual date. No one is good at rejection and you only get better with experience. There is also a lack of charm and wit.

For my fellow women, we will continue to be called mean spirited harpies. I think women are becoming more and more androgynous, but not in a good way. Women are trying to show that they can be equal too, and women are finally getting the jobs credit and sometimes even paycheck they deserve. On the other hand they are also being called more mean names by the day. This is a result of having no divide between being an equal in the office and still being a girl in everyday life. If some guy would just man up and ask a girl out maybe he would see that she can act like a lady, if she’s just given the chance.