This story is going to make me sound like a bad feminist. Perhaps this is fitting, as Roxane Gay’s book of the same title just turned 10. The story I’m about to share has very little to do with that essay, but it is about something that isn’t necessarily PC to admit: Sometimes, I like when a man comes along and saves me. There. I said it.
When I was in Seattle on Sunday, the ladies and I found ourselves in a bit of a pickle. We’d placed an order for Thai food at a restaurant in a part of town where parking was a clusterfuck. Instead of finding a proper space, J. idled in a non-parking spot in front of a stop sign and threw on the flashers. She was picking up our order and was gone for maybe five minutes.
Call it karma or bad juju or plain old shit luck, but the car battery died, and we were now stranded with an illegally parked Subaru that wouldn’t start. While S., the adult of our group and the only person who knows anything about cars, tried to diagnose the problem, and J. called her husband who had dealt with the issue previously and then AAA when that did not help, I did what I do best: Offer a solution that is either surprisingly effective or not helpful in the least.
“Hey J., do you know how to pop the hood? Because I think if we have the hood up and stand around with the jumper cables looking dumb and confused, some man is going to stop and help us.” I know, I know. It’s very sexist and the antithesis of the “women can do it all!” movement. But it also worked like a charm. Not five minutes later a middle-aged gentleman sauntered over and asked if we needed a jump.
His name was Charles. He was waiting on Thai food from the same restaurant (chicken skewers, green beans and one other snacky small plate that’s escaping my memory), and he has two daughters. S. called it, by the way. She knew exactly what characteristics our potential savior would have, and she was right. Bless the world’s girl dads. They simply cannot leave young (30-something is totally still young!) girls and women to fend for themselves, and I fucking love that about them.
I wish it wasn’t the constant refrain of girl dad politicians that they are pushing certain legislation because they “have daughters” instead of doing it because it’s the right thing to do for women regardless of whether they are related to any or know any or used their sperm to create any, but that’s a whole different conversation. I think most girl dads have their hearts in the right place. They want their kids to have someone like them to lean on should said children ever find themselves in less-than-ideal situations. I’m sure my husband feels the same way about E., and maybe his mechanically disinclined wife, too.
I like that Charles was chivalrous enough to stop. My plan to feign being a bimbo sort of killed, which was fun and empowering in an ass backwards kind of way. Charles didn’t think we were dumb or anything, but he did help us get the car going again so we could safely make it back to J.’s house and I could spill a half-full container of som tum all over my new pants. What a day!
The point is that I believe this brand of helpfulness is attractive. It didn’t make me want to bend over the trunk of the car and let Charles bang me in broad daylight or anything, but it was sexy in a very specific way. I’m the kind of woman who likes to feel taken care of by her man. It’s one reason why I let my husband do all the paperwork…is what I’ll be telling him from now on.
In all seriousness, I don’t care if that makes me a bad feminist to occasionally want someone to sweep me off my feet, remove the obstacles, manage the challenges and, potentially, do all my eighth grade wood shop homework because I’m cute and have no interest in learning how to use a T-square—an instrument I have never once used or even witnessed being used out in the wild since.
Now, maybe you’re reading this and thinking that I’m doing a disservice to both men and women for holding this perspective. That could be true. But I’ve never met a man who didn’t genuinely want to be helpful when someone needed it. I’ve also never met a woman who was so independent that she didn’t like it when a man in her life took care of something annoying, so she didn’t have to.
It’s OK for these things to be true. It doesn’t hurt to be honest about what it means to embody masculine and feminine energy. We all have both energies within us. Sometimes that means a woman is changing a tire instead of calling for assistance or that a man is hiring a service provider to fix the garage door instead of YouTubing the solution and trying to MacGyver it himself. Other times, it means that a woman is dominating the bedroom, and the man is taking it, and vice versa. We all have moments of giving and receiving, driving the action and letting someone else take the wheel.
Maybe the biggest lesson here is not to be so concerned with labels. I’m not necessarily a bad feminist because I like to be saved sometimes. I’m just a human one. I hope I’m never too proud to accept help if it’s available when I need it. And should I ever meet a girl dad who went out of his way to get my friends and me safely on our way, I know I’ll be thankful he cared enough about his own daughters to be a good person when he had zero skin in the game.
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix
P.S. Did you miss this week’s audio companion about synastry (aka astrology for two people at once)? If so, you can listen here. This one is available for all subscribers. Enjoy it!
P.P.S. My group tarot reading is going down on September 16. I invite you to join me! You can find all the information under the workshops section of my website here. Thanks ;)