Sunday, July 5, 2009

Girls' Night Out

Recently, I was invited to attend something called “Girls’ Night Out.” It was one local hotel/casino’s attempt to boost public relations by bringing local female writers into the property so that we might be enticed to write about it. They gave us a complimentary night on the town – or night at the hotel, more accurately. The package included a room for the night, wine and heavy hors d'oeuvres at their steak house, a private behind the scenes tour of the property, a private session with their flair bartenders and VIP tickets to a concert including a meet and great with the artists.

I’m not going to publicly denounce the property for this event. I think it was a pretty good idea and they let me bring a friend and we had a good time. There are definitely worse ways to spend a Saturday night. And believe me I know. I’ve experienced some pretty terrible Saturday nights in my life.

But what I did find interesting was that they felt the need to make the event gender. Here are a few of the particularly annoying stereotypes I encountered.


Stereotype #1: Women drink Chardonnay
When we arrived for our wine and hors d’oeuvres reception at the steak house, they had about 30 glasses of wine pre-poured for us. Now I could go into how I feel about pre-poured wine in the first place (Excuse me! I’d like to see the bottle!), but it’s even worse when 20 of those thirty glasses were chardonnay. Honestly, if you’re going to pour white wine, couldn’t it be a sauvignon blanc or a pinot gris or something? The assumption that women like cheap chardonnay is ridiculous.


Stereotype #2: Women like posing for group pictures
Even before the rowdy shots of women plastered all over social networking sites, there was this idea that women like to get together and pose for pictures. They ask waiters to get shots of them when they’re in restaurants. They take pictures together in their outfits before they go out for a night on the town. Or do they? Do they really?

Actually, I know quite a number of women who hate to get their picture taken at all. So when the organizer of this event made all of the women gather together for a group shot, I said – loud enough for everyone to hear me – “is this really necessary?” I hung back and mumbled and groaned as everyone else was handing over their cameras – “Take one with mine!” “You just press that little button over there!” The idea of taking photos was so far from my mind that I hadn’t even brought a camera with me. In the end, I was coerced into joining the photo, but I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit.


Stereotype #3: Women are always looking for new and ingenious ways to shave their legs
It was nice for the hotel to put together gift bags for us. They left them in our rooms and they were full of things that women supposedly enjoy, specifically, a lot of lotion. Which is also something that Buffalo Bill in the Silence of the Lambs liked a lot, but we don’t need to get into that.

One of the things in the gift bag was the “Smooth Away” hair removal system as seen on TV. And, honestly, I couldn’t give it away. Neither my friend nor I wanted anything to do with this scary thing. Really, the fact that inventors think that women are looking for more ways to rip hair out of their skin is ridiculous. Shaving (and sometimes waxing) works just fine. Thank you very much. I don’t need your so called “easy, safe and painless” thing. Because there is no way it could possibly be “easy, safe and painless.” And, by the way, making it pink isn’t fooling anybody.


Stereotype #4: Women don’t like to taste the liquor in their cocktails
At one point in the evening, we were forced to sit down at the property’s newest attraction: a flair bar. First of all, I think flair bartending in annoying. (You can even read a previous blog on the subject.) You don’t need to throw bottles around and light things on fire. Really, just pour me my drink.

Unfortunately, somebody at this flair bar was pouring drinks. Horrible drinks. The kind of drinks that people assume women like. This was called a “Raspberry Lemon Drop.” They were taking the often female ordered “Lemon Drop” martini and adding some raspberry liqueur to it. Maybe if they’d actually used Chambord it would have been kind of okay. But this drink just tasted like a glass of sugar. There was no hint of liquor in it at all. And all of the other women (sans my friend and I) were just sucking them down and cooing over how delicious they were. Yuck! I just sat there with mine in front of me, and some PR guy came over and harassed me (with a PR smile all the time) about why I wasn’t drinking it. Are you kidding me? If this had been a gathering of men they would have made real martinis or at least something with bourbon in it.


Now I like my free cocktails as much as anyone, but I refused to drink this. And I like free wine as much as anyone, but I don’t need to drink a pre-poured cheap Chardonnay. And I like a gift bag as much as anyone, but I’m not going to use your freaky hair removal system. And I don’t need to get my picture taken with a bunch of women I don’t know who do like enjoy all of these stereotypical things.

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