Tuesday, August 27, 2013

My personal flight from hell

Now that I am back from vacation, I will spend my next few posts telling you all about my adventures. We'll start from the beginning at BWI.

Other than a plane crash, my flight from Baltimore to Boston was my idea of a terrible flight. And no, it's not because there was a crying baby on board (I didn't see any children, actually). No, it all had to do with the two young women sitting next to me for the entirety of the flight (less than an hour and a half long, but even that was too long to be in their presence).

Now, I know I was in a sorority in college, but sororities up north, especially Ivy League/local ones, are quite different than the stereotype people imagine. Well, these girls fit the usual stereotype of bimbo sorority sisters. First of all, they were perfectly quaffed: dyed hair (dumb blonde jokes are welcome), curled at six in the morning, and looking beach-ready with their Lilly Pulitzer clothes and matching bags. They were also extremely chipper for such an early flight; they were super-smiley and giggly the whole way, and the bloody marys didn't help that situation. The first thing one of them said to me was, "It smells like Cheerios in here!" NOT a good sign.

I wouldn't have found their demeanor so annoying if it weren't for the girly drivel coming out of their mouths. Their main topic of choice was how they were trying to get pregnant. WONDERFUL. Just what I want to listen to. One of them already has a child, so she's telling the non-pregnant one ALL about it. It started with how she and her husband (the whole "we" even though pregnancy is only a woman thing) got pregnant sooner than they thought after she went of the Pill (Newsflash: if you and your partner are young and healthy, you will get knocked up, pronto. That's what biology wants you to do!). Then she goes into how she wasn't sure if the baby was okay until she could feel it kicking, onto how the second trimester didn't feel like she was pregnant except for her belly, and mentioned that a 42 pound weight gain is perfectly fine (pregnancy really is the scape goat for all fatties in the world). The idea of pregnancy/childbirth/children terrifies and disgusts me: this was not how I wanted my vacation to start.

Then the wedding talk started. They were clearly traveling to go to a friend's wedding, so then of course that gets them all reminiscent about their own weddings: who was in their bridal party, who was cheap with the wedding gifts, who didn't get invited, etc. It was Pinterest come to life. They just couldn't shut the hell up about wedding shit. And guess what? Soon after we started our descent into Boston, the conversation came full circle about getting prego again and how long of an age gap you should leave between siblings. Splendid.

It's women (and conversations) like these who make me wonder if Feminism ever happened. More women graduate from college than men now, we have several female astronauts now, and there are rampant female-focused debates happening internationally regarding abortion, female theologists, etc. And yet the only thing these girls could talk about were weddings and babies, the stereotypical things women are supposed to talk about. Ladies, look around you. There is a much bigger world out there besides rehearsal dinners and diapers. Make the world proud of American women, not embarrassed by them.

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