What happened to dressing? I don’t mean the kind of dressing where you roll out of bed and manage to get a t-shirt over your head. Everybody does that, and I’m fucking sick of it. I’m talking about real dressing. Dressing where you match the event. Dressing where you’re a little uncomfortable in the name of looking right. Going to a restaurant where dinner is $150 a plate and the men are in dinner jackets and the ladies are in dresses to match, rather than just the waiter. Or going to a Broadway show without your damn baseball hat and with shoes. Real shoes. Dressy, shiny shoes. Not flip flops, not Crocs, not Uggs. What happened to occasion? I see the same thing everywhere: Men whose jeans cling tenuously to the line between dressed and indecent by being just snug enough to catch on a boxer hem. (WHY IS THAT EVEN STILL A THING? It’s AWFUL. It looks good on ABSOLUTELY NO ONE.) I see women wearing their pjs in the streets, or wearing leggings as trousers instead of innerwear. And they’re wearing them to restaurants! Not cafes or diners, but restaurants! Places that they would have, at one point, been turned away from. How have we gotten to this point where we are so obsessed with our immediate comforts all the time that nobody can even figure out how to wear proper attire to a wedding? And what the hell do we have to do to reverse it – because it’s gross.
Davina, social sec. Westchester.
So I understand that my neighborhood of Brooklyn is small (like, equivalent to a large high school-small I’m coming to find out more and more), but my friends and I do not constantly need to sleep with the same people. Like really, I don’t know if it’s that all guys are whores in this area or that I will just have to accept the fact that I feel strange talking with my friends about who I’m hooking up with because they have inevitably hooked up with them before or inevitably will hook up with them in the future. What has happened to any sort of exclusiveness?! I’m not asking you to marry me, or for my friends to be celibate, but there needs to be some sort of separation here. This is probably–definitely–a product of everyone hanging out in the same bars in the same part of town every night, but it’s too convenient for me to have it any other way. Apparently for them as well. To think of the cesspool that’s happening right under our very noses really grosses me out.
Sue, receptionist, Red Hook.
I respect a woman who holds out from having sex with me on the first date, I do. But when a woman is a prude is a different story. Don’t invite me over at 1:30 in the morning when I first start hanging out with you, and expect me to expect something different than hooking up. We have a beer, we have some laughs, we watch Netflix in your bed, you take your pants off, and then say, “don’t be confused, I’m not trying to hook up with you tonight, I’m just getting comfortable” ! That is just totally misleading and anti-clamactic and you’re just straight up a tease. Not to mention I don’t know whether to be mad that I was lead-on or mad that I was shafted–either way I’m mad. And then on my way home after slightly storming out of your apartment, I begin to feel like that was desperate of me to get angry. It’s just not right to put someone in that sort of mental predicament.
Mo, auto mechanic, Corona
The ends to which New Yorkers will go to look cool – as opposed to being cool – always seem to outdo the means they have at their disposal. That is they always look stupidly transparent in their attempts. Just the other day I saw a woman who obviously thought she was Ms Cooly Cool personified complete with snotty look dragging her little toy dog along the gutter. The animal didn’t look or act well; in fact it looked decidedly very unwell. A truck driver with the thickest Brooklyn accent imaginable was calling out “Hey liedy, liedy your dawg was run down two blocks back. I think it’s a gonna. Hey liedy, your dawg’s dead”. To which the lady stuck her head even further in the air (or metaphorically up her ass) and continued to drag the unfortunate beast along by a broken neck. Only in New York folks. Only in New York.
Maisie, server, SI.
I like my girlfriend’s friends for the most part. Some are actually really great and I express this to them after a few beers in me all of the time. So when my girlfriend comes at me all like, “Susie said that it seems like you call all of the shots in our relationship and I’m sick of it!” it really pisses me off! I thought we were buds! I know that you’re closer to my girlfriend than me, but come on, you’re really cock-blocking me here from my own girlfriend. I held you to a higher standard than this. I liked you the most because you really stayed out of our business (for a while, at least). But now that I know you’re not staying out of our business, I feel like I can’t be the same with you anymore. Buds don’t do that. I can’t blatantly tell you why I’m being different towards you, but it’s weird to me that you still act the same towards me after bad-mouthing me to my girlfriend. That’s messed up.
Kevin, driver, Forest Hills
Simone de Beauvoir had it right. She called women, “the second sex, “ and quite frankly, that is the accurate depiction of women in this country. Recently, there have been a few events that reinforce this theory. First, the Texan woman wrongfully sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing warning shots at her abusive husband while he receives nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Furthermore, when the Texas government opened themselves up to public criticism in a public forum, they couldn’t handle the accurate insults of a woman exercising her right to free speech in an attempt to show how dismally women are treated and had her physically dragged from the podium. The Lone Star State does not stand alone in its failure to protect women’s rights. Ohio seems to stand right with it. Ohio overturned the abortion law, making it illegal for women to obtain one, even in the instance of rape or incest. America may be the leader of the free world, but who actually benefits from the type of freedom offered? Not us. We are the ones that get fucked over, again and again by the male hypocrisy that is our judicial system. The same system that believes they know what’s best for the moral safe guard of bodies and minds better than we do. I think not. So don’t insult us by telling us that the United States Judicial system is progressive about women’s rights. You’re not fooling anyone.
Sarah, therapist, Brooklyn
People should realize that sharing a crowded elevator is pretty much the same as their rush hour subway ride… with pretty much the same taboos and pretty much the same opprobrium brought down on the heads of offenders. Loud voices, private conversations, either phone or in-person, food, tinny earbuds and most of all respect for the other person’s space. Nobody appreciates boorish behavior in any situation but six inches from my face will make me accidently stamp on your foot or better still administer a stern knee in the bollocks.
Cilla, singer, Tribeca