the x's

My gender frightens me, sometimes. Okay more than sometimes.

So there I was, walking home after a particularly intoxicating dinner (yummy hot sake), enjoying the clear, un-humid, fall air - which is like the chupacabra of New York weather. I got a call and so I continued walking and I ended up going from the East Village, all the way over and up past the Flatiron, as I made my way toward the dreadful Penn Station area, when I decided to catch a cab the rest of the way home. It was about 10:30pm on a Tuesday and there seemed to be a shortage of taxis available. No bother, I thought, I'll keep walking.

I stopped at one point, seeing a cab approaching from a couple of blocks away, turned and stuck my arm up to signal that I'd be catching that ride. Literally as if on cue, a gaggle of chicks wobbling around like new fawns on their six inch stick-heels tumbled up next to me and did a full-on pack interference cab steal. Seriously, it was like something you would see in a movie and I was stopped in my tracks, staring at what had just happened, while they clacked over and shoved each other into the closed door of the cab, the leader trying to hold them off as she attempted to open the door.

Losing the cab wasn't the problem for me there, because there was another right behind the first and I just hopped in that one, while the gaggle were still struggling to untangle their heels and successfully get into their appropriated ride. What disconcerted me were the girls themselves. They were young, maybe 24 or 25, dressed in all of the drippings and bindings of your typical twenty-something Manhattanites and all had on very tall, double platform, stiletto pumps, atop which they teetered and listed while looking down to avoid stepping in a crack or divot in the sidewalk. They carried expensive bags and they shouted in a high pitch to each other as they careened back and forth into one another, thereby moving as more of an animated, screaming blob, than a group. I'd love to say this is somehow a sort of anomaly, but this is the state of chicks in the city now and it's frightening.

I'm not knocking getting dolled up or purchasing high heels. At six feet tall, I have many pairs of high heels myself and I wear them proudly (especially now that I can again). My problem is with the shrieking and the obliviousness and what comes across as the desire to either be or at least act completely stupid and vacant. When did being a smart woman become so passe? When did having your wits about you and acting in a graceful manner get ditched in favor of not paying attention, making a spectacle and looking like a dumbass? How is that productive or desirable in any way?

Attention idiot twenty-and-thirty-something chicks: you are not Carrie Bradshaw. And if you were, she's like 46 now and advertises a range of wrinkle creams, so give it up. Your little broke-for-shoes existence is vapid and you look like an moron. Spend some more time reading books and keeping up on the world around you and for fucks sakes, stop yelling at squeaky, unnecessarily high decibels and conduct yourself like a lady and not some piece of bumpkin garbage. If you're going to spend all that money on clothes and accessories, at least don't shame the gilded wrapping by being an imbecile.

I totally see this changing things.