As A Stranger In "My Own" Land
I went to a surprise 30th birthday party for my younger co-worker this evening. His wife (they're newlyweds...they've just been married a year) arranged the celebration via email, and since all of our team was invited I felt obligated to show up. I thought it'd be an opportunity for me to mingle with my co-workers outside of our forced family lunches (the one's we've settled into each day at the behest of our boss's boss), I was also curious to see what the birthday boy's wife was like. I was almost taken aback when I met his rotund and immature bride. The immature part didn't surprise me so much (she'd been sending exponentially more frequent emails about his party as the hour drew near), but her plumpness would've caught me off guard if I hadn't gone on my non-date last week.
Last Saturday evening while I was out with one of my secret suitors at my first hockey game last week (before my trip to NO I was told by one of the few brown men at work that there were 4 [2 company, 2 community] men who were interested in me), I conversed with a few locals about why I hadn't been approached by men at Walmart (something I'd grown accustomed to in NO). When I remarked that I knew I was a minority here and that I'd found that the women here are "big" (given that I'm not at a size 14 anymore), I was told that men here like big women.
My suitor's friend was a bit tipsy, so I know she was telling the truth. "Men here like big women because they find they can't do with the smaller ones what they'd like to do. They can't put them in the positions they'd like to put the bigger ones in without hurting them," she said. I started thinking about scrapping my plans for working out.
Other things I noticed were that women here don't have style like the women I'd known in my youth in the south of the US. Granted my parents came from poverty, there was still a sense of manners and style that I'm not finding here. That was evident in the way my co-worker's wife had decorated their home and the way the women were dressed. It brought me back to my lunch today.
While dining with the only other two brown women at our site (brown being women who need relaxers to fit in while fighting a humidity that doesn't exist here) we talked about my new Brazilian friend's boyfriend. When asked by the black woman what her boyfriend was like, my new Brazilian friend struggled with the words to describe him. "He's white," she finally said after sharing that Brazil has over 130 different races to choose from when filling out government forms. "He has style," I corrected, "color doesn't matter." My new Brazilian friend agreed. "You can't teach style," I said, quoting a line from Amy Tan's book & movie THE JOY LUCK CLUB. Meeting my co-worker's wife & friends, I noted that style was something I inherently have that isn't widely valued here in IA.
Ironically, at the end of my brown women's luncheon in my office, the only male southerner in my work group stopped by my office & jokingly said, "You know, this can't be a regular thing," referring to me having lunch in my office with women as opposed to our daily ritual of me having lunch in the newly 30 year old's office with the small group of white male colleagues I work with. My Brazilian friend said, "You have lunch with your family all the time. Once a month won't hurt!"
Toward the end of my time at my co-worker's birthday party, I mingled with the birthday boy's wife to say my good-byes. She'd repeatedly asked who the NO phone number belonged to and I reiterated that I was the one who called wondering where the party was. "You're their boss," she decided when I told her I was the NO number. "NO NO," I said, "I'm their co-worker!" "Yes, but you're their boss," she insisted. "No I'm not!" I said again. "Ron, tell her I'm not your boss," I implored of the environmental technician that works in my group and who's close to the birthday boy. "Welllll..." he said. "See, you're their boss," the birthday boy's wife insisted. I didn't say anything about the bossy part of my personality or the fact that I could be their boss in the future given that I'm on a succession plan that would put me on the fast track to being their boss in the next decade.
After spending a bit of time with my degreed co-workers and their blue collar women, I understood why they are so intimidated by my strength. I am intelligent in ways they don't know how to combat without undermining me professionally, I have a style that leaves them feeling low class, and I represent a relatively foreign (yet racially stereotyped) group of black women that they expect to be combative. I also understood why my indpendence is so threating them...I am at work everything they dominate at home. I don't need them financially, reproductively, or socially. I'm everything they wish they could be without a sex and race change. This presents for me a new social challenge.
The birthday party this evening has left me realizing a number of things:
Last Saturday evening while I was out with one of my secret suitors at my first hockey game last week (before my trip to NO I was told by one of the few brown men at work that there were 4 [2 company, 2 community] men who were interested in me), I conversed with a few locals about why I hadn't been approached by men at Walmart (something I'd grown accustomed to in NO). When I remarked that I knew I was a minority here and that I'd found that the women here are "big" (given that I'm not at a size 14 anymore), I was told that men here like big women.
My suitor's friend was a bit tipsy, so I know she was telling the truth. "Men here like big women because they find they can't do with the smaller ones what they'd like to do. They can't put them in the positions they'd like to put the bigger ones in without hurting them," she said. I started thinking about scrapping my plans for working out.
Other things I noticed were that women here don't have style like the women I'd known in my youth in the south of the US. Granted my parents came from poverty, there was still a sense of manners and style that I'm not finding here. That was evident in the way my co-worker's wife had decorated their home and the way the women were dressed. It brought me back to my lunch today.
While dining with the only other two brown women at our site (brown being women who need relaxers to fit in while fighting a humidity that doesn't exist here) we talked about my new Brazilian friend's boyfriend. When asked by the black woman what her boyfriend was like, my new Brazilian friend struggled with the words to describe him. "He's white," she finally said after sharing that Brazil has over 130 different races to choose from when filling out government forms. "He has style," I corrected, "color doesn't matter." My new Brazilian friend agreed. "You can't teach style," I said, quoting a line from Amy Tan's book & movie THE JOY LUCK CLUB. Meeting my co-worker's wife & friends, I noted that style was something I inherently have that isn't widely valued here in IA.
Ironically, at the end of my brown women's luncheon in my office, the only male southerner in my work group stopped by my office & jokingly said, "You know, this can't be a regular thing," referring to me having lunch in my office with women as opposed to our daily ritual of me having lunch in the newly 30 year old's office with the small group of white male colleagues I work with. My Brazilian friend said, "You have lunch with your family all the time. Once a month won't hurt!"
Toward the end of my time at my co-worker's birthday party, I mingled with the birthday boy's wife to say my good-byes. She'd repeatedly asked who the NO phone number belonged to and I reiterated that I was the one who called wondering where the party was. "You're their boss," she decided when I told her I was the NO number. "NO NO," I said, "I'm their co-worker!" "Yes, but you're their boss," she insisted. "No I'm not!" I said again. "Ron, tell her I'm not your boss," I implored of the environmental technician that works in my group and who's close to the birthday boy. "Welllll..." he said. "See, you're their boss," the birthday boy's wife insisted. I didn't say anything about the bossy part of my personality or the fact that I could be their boss in the future given that I'm on a succession plan that would put me on the fast track to being their boss in the next decade.
After spending a bit of time with my degreed co-workers and their blue collar women, I understood why they are so intimidated by my strength. I am intelligent in ways they don't know how to combat without undermining me professionally, I have a style that leaves them feeling low class, and I represent a relatively foreign (yet racially stereotyped) group of black women that they expect to be combative. I also understood why my indpendence is so threating them...I am at work everything they dominate at home. I don't need them financially, reproductively, or socially. I'm everything they wish they could be without a sex and race change. This presents for me a new social challenge.
The birthday party this evening has left me realizing a number of things:
- Style (and class) is something my parents taught/gave me even when they didn't have money. Style and money are not necessarily mutually exclusive but independent of each other.
- Strength from the opposite sex at work is scary to a man who's accustomed to out-thinking his woman at home.
- Women (even in a group as small and under-represented as a black woman, a Brazilian woman, and a truly african-american woman) lunching near a group of white men is threatening to their white manhood.
posted by N'j at 8:55 PM
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