Now isn’t really a good time to write this because I’m super
grumpy from being grilled by a grandparent about the state of my life. I’ll try
and keep my signature elegant and humorous style (see, funny joke).
I
watched Sun, Sea and Suspicious Parents last
night and I’m generally disgusted at the general state of ‘dating’ in my
generation’s time. Once again I feel like writing a disclaimer stating…
actually fuck it I’m going to write a disclaimer.
I don’t dislike men,
women, dating, clubbing, house music, grinding, crop tops, Sambuca (although I
can’t forgive the paint- stripping effect of Vodka), parties, lip- nibbling, casual
sex, kissing in clubs.
I am aware that everybody is different and
that going on holiday to Malaga/ Ibiza/ Magaluf/ Amsterdam might be great fun
for most people and one day I might pack up my grocery trolley and visit one of
said places. Not all club holidays are bad.
Not all men grope
women in clubs and vice versa.
I try to avoid
generalisations. Apart from if you wear white trousers and/ or socks and
sandals you are probably a pillock.
My main qualm with above programme is how it highlights the
self- respect reducing culture of pulling on nights out. One bloke was so
mortified when his parents revealed that they had seen all of his antics over the week that he had a full blown meltdown and
said ‘f- you’ to his parents a lot… which is a clear sign of shit going down. I
was watching and thinking his behaviour wasn’t that bad, he didn’t throw up in
a shoe or anything, he didn’t get his balls out in public… so what did he do?
The
programme showed a compilation of highlights from his week- long bender with
his pals (I can’t remember where they holidayed but it had a lot of neon lights
and sunshine) and the main thing that was terrible was his treatment of women.
Every time he had gone out he had grabbed women and started necking
them. At the end of one night he was literally staggering around the strip (is
that what hip people call a row of clubs?), going up to women and asking them
to sleep with him. One girl told him that she and her friend would be up for a
threesome, at which point he returned to the friends/ the camera and bragged
like he has just founded masturbation or something. I know the women involved
were just as bad but this is an example of what I find really disturbing about
modern day club culture.
I’m
about to finish my third year of university, so I’ve been on many a night out
and I have my own experiences (bad ones) that I could recall from falling for flattery
from boys in clubs. My step dad always points out that it isn’t just the men
who are up for the old one night stand, but I can only talk about it from a
female POV (for the time being, you never know what the future holds). Student
clubbing seems to have become its own sub- culture that breeds a deep loss of
self- respect. It’s probably always been like this but it just makes me so
angry. I’ve had a man in a club move me out the way by grabbing my lady garden,
a bloke tell me that I was up my own arse because I wouldn’t kiss him and- on
several occasions- I’ve had the surprising revelation that I’ve grown an extra
pair of arms, because when I’ve looked down there has been a man Koala- bearing
me from behind.
Alcohol
is a lot to blame, it’s not exactly a taboo subject that students binge- drink
to dangerous amounts. I try not to be guilty of this, but I like getting tipsy
so sadly I occasionally veer in to the realm of ‘oops I’ve dropped my bag… I’ve
got it now… oops I’ve dropped my bag!’ and repeat. Sometimes this state leads
to excessive P.O.A in a club with a stranger. I feel like I am a sensible
enough drunk to say I have my self- respect intact, but sometimes I’ve woken up
and feared for how close I was to doing something sober Bryony would have hated.
I’ve been upset twice when I’ve
asked a boy I’ve met on a night out if they want to meet the next week and they’ve
never texted me again. Do they think this means I want to marry them? Why can’t
we get to know people before we see them in the nuddy? I feel like I am really
old fashioned and boring but I know I’m not. I’m a feminist, women and men can
do what they want as long as it makes them happy; if you have flings/ one night
stands and it makes you feel gr8 then groove on. My worry is that this club
culture is accumulating a really bad attitude. If you give someone everything
on the first night, what else is there to do after? I know- because I have friends who have said it countless times- that
temporary flings can lead to horrifying, misplaced self- questioning. We don’t normally
think ‘they’ve had a good night and they don’t want anything more’ but ‘what is
wrong with me, why haven’t they texted?’.
I
genuinely think that if I got asked out for drinks before necking a boy in a club I would cry happy tears in a way reminiscent
of when Rylan got snot on Nicole Scherzinger on the X- Factor. There has barely
been a night out where my arse hasn’t been groped; it’s like being in a club
removes all social etiquette that you would exercise in the street.
The boy
on Sun, Sea and Suspicious parents knew that his behaviour to girls had been
pretty sleazy. As I say, I know that there are women who are a bit grabby in
clubs, but how am I supposed to defend some of the men in clubs when I’ve been molested about 50 times in three years. I cannot be flattered by
a man that I have just met feeling my downstairs! At least shake my hand first. I know you aren’t all like this men. I
love you, trouser- snake owning people but hell, there are some knob-heads
letting you down.
Last
week I peeled a girl off the floor (she was wasted) in a bar in Leeds that
generally attracts over 20- year- olds. She looked at me in panic and said ‘I’m
17!’. She walked out of the toilet cubicle without buttoning up her jumpsuit,
her bra out. I fastened it up and wanted to ship her home in a taxi. She then
attached her face to the nearest bloke and I face-palmed… hard. An acquaintance
of mine came up to me once and said, about a girl he was taking home, ‘I know
she is fat but I want to get laid’. I was once told that I couldn’t ‘dress like
that’ (crop top and skirt) and expect not to be touched up or hit on. I am sick of hearing boys talking about me
and going ‘go for it… she’s a 10/ an 8/ a 9’ (although god bless the bloke who
thought me a 10!).
Boys and girls, all I want to know is that
this binge culture is not going to make self- respect become extinct.
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