(500) Fabricated Differences Between Men and Women

The "Battle of the Sexes" is some played out crap.
No medium has ever escaped the lure of exploring the concept. Exaggerated portraits of ultra feminists and male chauvinists battling out, and reaching a state of mutual understanding by the end (and usually making out).

But c'mon, that never happens in real life. But gender roles really are ridiculously rampant.

It still amazes me that women get paid less than men for the same jobs and nobody seems to care to do anything about it. Why doesn't it make anybody angry? Where's the picketers? Rosie the Riveters? It just quietly weaves its way into society, into culture, into children.

But this isn't about politics or a bra-burning feminist rant.

I watched (500) Days of Summer tonight. Despite the trying-to-hard-to-be-(quirky) thing it had going, there was something deep in themes that got me thinking. Well, after "Wow, Summer is a colossal bitch."

But was she? (Spoiler Alert!) She told the dude that she didn't want anything serious. That it was all for fun. He just kept ignoring that, putting all his faith into the fairy tale endings he'd been brought up to expect. She was bluffing. She'd end up loving him and they'd live happily ever after. So is it really her fault he didn't take her words at face value? Is it his fault for being naive?

Or is the fault of gender roles, forcing us to think that women can't be callous, unemotional, flippant, fickle. "Players" if I must use the word. She's supposed to fall madly in love with him, not use him for dates and sex and to impress with her absolute quirkiness.

I can't shake the feeling of "man, she's a bitch" though. And I also can't help thinking that if I were prettier (and perhaps quirkier and had a pension of wearing only things in various shades of navy and light blue), I could fall into the same brand of bitchiness. Does this mean I'm a guy? I do prefer to go the bathroom by myself.

But, no, I think we're all simply human. There are some fundamental differences between men and women, but we exaggerate them so greatly so we can have our "battle of the sexes" edition of Survivor. They're both equally capable of being the pining guy counting the days until he sees the girl again and the girl that leads him on by avoiding commitment and then gets married to somebody else.

I could probably go on forever about this, but I'm tired. And need to go do something girly.