"No Boys Allowed"

“No Boys Allowed!”

I don’t think I used my outside voice when I said it, but I wasn’t that subtle either as I leaned forward and said to the woman in front of me, “What the HELL is a Man doing in the women’s dressing room?!”  The woman in front of me was with her teen daughter getting ready to try on prom dresses.  And, as for me, I had an armload of unmentionables to try on…. That’s the department we were in.  And yet plain as day there was a man in the dressing room.  He was late 20’s to early 30’s, standing in front of the shuttered door where his woman was trying on formal dresses as well.  He was, it appeared, reading his cell phone … but who knows. 

Now I like men.  Honestly, I do.  I’d like to have one of my own some day; I hear they are handy to have around the house for plumbing emergencies and occupying the couch on Sundays during football season.  BUT there are three places – in fact, three SACRED SPACES, where I do not want to see a man (ever):

Ø  The Women’s Dressing Room where I’m trying on things that make me look fat (everything)

Ø  The Hair Dresser’s when I am looking like a drowned rat with foils wrapped around strands of my hair

Ø  The stall next to me when I am, well, you know…. Passing the time ….

Well, maybe a fourth – I was getting a pedicure once and the guy in the chair next to me behind a screen, was yacking it up on his cell phone.  I wanted to say:  SHUT THE HECK UP – I’m here to de-stress and I don’t want to hear your whole drama unfolding while I’m trying to pick my nail color.  (By the time I, the Original Cheapskate, decides to spend money on a pedicure, I am typically so stressed I am in an altered state of consciousness.  Anyone who ruins the mood of relaxation is running a risk… I can be a little testy.)

Point:  there are some places where we need to just be able to “be” without distraction and unwind. 

The woman at the cashier counter said, “It’s a tricky situation….” When I told her I asked a man to leave the dressing room.  I responded to her:  “No, it’s not.  There are some places women just NEED to be alone without men.”

Caveat:  YES if he had a minor child in the dressing room and was the sole guardian available to help her and make sure SHE was SAFE in the dressing room, I might stretch the rule.  But let me tell you about the Sanctuary of the dressing room.  Women see themselves in a full-length mirror only a few times a year and that is one of them.  It could involve swearing.  But typically outside the dressing stalls there is 3-sided, mirrored cove where you can spin and see if whatever fits you correctly.  If you have a teenage daughter, that’s the place where you say:  “Too low.”  “Too high.”  “Your father won’t let you out of the house in that.”  These are bonding conversations – and fighting words sometimes – that need a certain amount of privacy.  How do you know he’s not a pervert snapping pictures of your kid as he is standing there?  Maybe he is.  Maybe he isn’t.  The fact is:  You just don’t know.  And once men are involved in a ladies-only zone, how can Security “police” the area and make sure thugs aren’t attacking women in the dressing room and stealing their purses, etc.?  Do you know how many times women walk OUT of the dressing room really quickly to grab “the next size up” and leave their jackets, purses, packages unattended?  It’s dumb.  But it happens.  No, of course men aren’t the only ones who steal and a comrade in the next stall could take your stuff too.  But gender inclusion in the dressing room is just a really complicated mess.  That’s probably why at the Sporting stores, they have the changing rooms in the center of the store with doors running from floor to ceiling.  There is no inner hallway; you are either in the room, or you are not.

Back to the original story – the mom in the dressing room said, “Well I think he’s from another country.”  And I may have mumbled, “well he’s in AMERICA now…. And he needs to tow the line.”

So you are wondering what I said to him.  First I stepped out of the area to breathe something other than fire for a moment.  Then I looked around for my friend the clerk that I had been chatting with earlier.  She had evaporated.  I really wanted Her to be the bad guy, not me.  But she was not around.

I mumbled something grim like, “Yay.  I get to be the adult today.”  I stepped back in and took a breath.  “Excuse me sir.  It is not customary for men to be inside of the women’s dressing room.”

Is it really important what I said?  I did say it politely.  I think, though, it is MORE important what HE said:

“I didn’t see a sign either way when I came in,” and he smirked. 

Escalation of blood pressure, not tone of voice:  “It IS the WOMEN’s Dressing Room” – (He had to walk through an ocean of bra’s to get to the dressing room so I am pretty sure we didn’t NEED a sign.)

What happened?  I jumped him and jammed his cell phone down his throat.

PSYCH.  Just kidding.  What really happened is his girlfriend opened the door and he said, “It seems I am not wanted here.”  And she took his arm and pulled him inside the dressing room.  No.  I’m not kidding.

And I still felt weird going into the room next to them and trying stuff on. 

I did not come over on the Mayflower, I can assure you.  But I think that our culture is changing so fast and tearing down so many social customs that it is forgetting to ask, what’s the purpose for this or that rule or custom?  Maintaining a certain amount of decorum in society actually lifts us above the animals.  It is truly in the small ways that we establish a respect for life.  Manners and privacy are important.  If you don’t think so, then ask yourself how you felt the last time some jerk cut you off in traffic and gave you a hand signal not listed in the DMV manual.  Ask yourself if you are comfortable that we are rapidly becoming a voyeuristic society – where we watch things on tv that are highly personal behaviors and then expect everyone around us to NOT be having babies out of wedlock. 

We have to establish the water mark for social behavior.  If we continue to tear it down on television and subsequently in real life, we will find that we have opened a Pandora’s box of barbarianism that degrades us completely. 

One more example before I leave you to chew on all this.  I think we should find a way to “fine” parents who put vulnerable or embarrassing videos of their kids on social media online.  The one that went around last week was painful to behold.  Even though it was supposed to be positive it almost made ME cry FOR the kid.  She was about 9 years old coming home to her room with her school backpack on and sees a Rubbermaid bin in the corner.  She goes over to it and it is an adorable black kitten.  She picks it up and as the little kitten is meowing, the girl is so moved that she is crying hysterically holding it saying:  “Mom, can we keep her?”  “Mom, I want her.”  And stuff like that.  The kid is genuinely hysterical.  (well, in short order so was I because my Empathy button is stuck.)  This was such a raw, personal moment, WHY would you put it online so a million of your closest friends could see that your kid fell apart and your magnanimous gift of …. A cat? 

Wait for my new book coming out next fall called:  What the Hell is the Matter With People?  It’ll rock your world.

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