Do I Look Like Barbie?
By Ol' Red, Aurora, Colorado
I've just been informed of something I would have found absolutely
hideous to the point of requiring renting a hall, giving everyone who
showed up access to the Internet and all postage machines I could
find, and having a complete knock-down, drag out fight that would
last the next ten years and leave 98% of the combatants on both
sides stunned and speechless for the rest of eternity had I heard
it ten years ago.
Luckily, I'm a little older, a little wiser, a little more balanced.
No. I'm still ticked. You can add "highly" to the front of that. Just when I
think people are still no darned good, but there might be a few out there
slowly but diligently heading up the evolutionary path, along comes
proof positive that no matter how advanced these few individuals get,
evolution has the same plan for them she did for all the other long-died
out species we keep finding bits of buried far below the earth's crust:
None whatsoever. It's like she's teasing us. "Hey! Lookie here! This is
where you could be heading as a whole. But I thought it would be more
fun to just make a whole slew of ad executives and people who think
they know what you'll buy even though they'll never listen to a word you
say and could care less that their every move humiliates you as an
individual and only gives people who think less of you anyway more
fuel for their misbegotten beliefs in your lowliness."
Thanks. Thanks a bunch. Now, please allow me to set you straight before
you entrench yourself too firmly in very stupid beliefs about women, whether
they're fly fishing or not.
This whole thing started when I heard that some time ago, some dim-witted
company had put out (get this) "color coordinated fishingwear for women."
Adding insult to injury, they apparently come in purple and pink. Were you
insane or just really stupid? Who came up with this idea? Who drew these
things on a plotting board? Which one of your corporate leaders was unlucky
enough to not have his IV changed in time so that he became permanently
and hideously impaired beyond all criteria? If you had to pick only one
question you're willing to answer here, please make sure it's the one
on how you could for one second believe a woman
standing in a river fighting fish to the breaking point would want to do
it looking like some lost, gigantic Easter leftover?
I know, I know. Some men out there are going to roll their eyes at me.
I'm getting "emotional." Allow me to inquire of these men, and all men
in general, how would you feel if you woke up one morning, went to buy
a suit, and every store you normally shoped in was filled with new lines
of suits designed by women executives who, based on false and
misleading stereotyping of the male caste, designed everything to
fit their ideas of what you would look good in and
what your wife would buy for you. Without consulting YOU. Without
showing the slightest regard at YOUR righteous indignation and
clear, unsullied complaints?
You'd feel like we do. I guarantee it. We roll our eyes at this stuff too.
We wonder, silently most of the time, aloud when a bunch of us are
together, about what in the hell goes through people's minds sometimes.
I wondered if they were planning a "seasonal" type of match-n-wear line,
where colors coordinated, not with nature, but with whatever silly holidays
fell and in what order. I'm not wondering that because I think it would be
a great idea, I'm wondering how far these people will go to make us
look so utterly childish and foolish and honestly believe they had their
fingers on our "female pulses."
Don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming the guys here. Well, not exclusively.
I'm blaming those incredibly stupid women who believe we'd fall for this
garbage as well! Shame on you, and shame on your mothers for not
imparting better standards to you! It's hard enough walking past
moronically posed, completely malnutritioned, faceless, fleshless
mannequins who are silently screaming, "this is what you should
look like and what you should wear," but it's sheer atrocity when it's
being designed, plotted and planned to nail you in your weak places
by one of your own. I've got news for you, girlfriends. It ain't working!
In fact, it's having the completely opposite effect. It's ticking us off unlike
anything has in a very long while. And, amazingly enough, it's making
our men mad too. They see through your cheap ploys and stupid toys
like they see a river bottom through a clear stream. You're not fooling
anyone anymore.
We are raising our daughters and our sons to see us as human. Lumps,
bumps, bruises and baggy things all included. We are raising our sons
and daughters to laugh at you -- long and hard for trying to fit them into
the mold you used to use on us when we were younger. When we didn't
have a fully-formed backbone. When we never spent all day trying to
catch a fish for fun and it turned dark and we suddenly realized someone
left the cooler at home with all the food and we had to seriously catch a
fish, gut it, find wood, start a fire and spit that beautiful creature over it
so we wouldn't have to go hungry until we could pull camp the next morning.
You see, you've got us all wrong, and you don't care. You make it a point
to laugh off our protestations, figuring we'll eventually shut up. So this isn't
for you. This is for anyone, man, woman or whoever who sometimes
wonders, "Am I the only one who sees how stupid this is?" You aren't
alone, bud. Yes, women do wonder about what they're wearing on the
river. In the same way you guys do. Let's drop the male/female thing
here for a second and talk like people who hunt the mighty trout. Or any
other fish, for that matter. Trout are sight hunters, right? Lots of fish are,
right? So you want a shirt that doesn't clash against the sky and make
you stand out, right? You want pants and/or waders that don't look like
candy canes abruptly stuck into a river. Brown, green, dark blue or
anything along those lines are fine, right? You know, the same colors
used to make men's waders and clothing … the same
colors that fit into the scenery . . . the colors that are somehow exclusive
to the male fishermen because the women are ooh-ing and aaah-ing
over the new Spring Pastel Floral Fields collections of fishing clothing
and gear?
Thought of that way, it's just danged silly, ain't it? Yeah. I thought so too.
We all have a thing in common here. We have all stood
in a river or by a river and seen, actually seen a fish floating there, staring
up at us, wagging its tail and smiling. Actually, physically smiling at us!
Because he or she knows we're there. They can see us, plain and clear
no matter what we're wearing. So, we know something, us and those
fish. Even at it's most sincere, even when it's a matter of wills clashing
and someone being victorious and someone losing, if only for a little while,
it isn't what you've been wearing all day that brought you both to this
challenge. It isn't whether your skin is brown and mottled or multi-colored
and shiny. It's the little, tiny thing left when you've stripped away all the
gear and clothes and clatter-trap and skin and bone that answers why
you're both here, at this time, this place, hopefully with other ill-garbed
heathens like yourselves and fishy friends of all hues. And no matter
what name you give it, no matter what size you think it is, you know all
the colors of it. And it don't match a dang thing. But it does make all
the colors around you come together and, maybe they seem just a little
brighter, deeper, sweeter.
~ Ol' Red
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