I realize I’m talking to one of the Shes. My friends called them “Granola Girls” in college, particularly in reference to me: “I don’t think she’s all that, but Greg will like her because she’s a Granola Girl.” But I will not use that term anywhere else in this post because it’s condescending and derogatory. I’ll call them the Shes simply because I don’t have some catch-all phrase handy. My friends were right about one thing: I like them.
They generally dress in earth tones and second hand thrift store clothing, sometimes splashed with turquoise jewelry. I’ve noticed that when you get closer to the heart of the city, their clothes turn blacker and sleeker. But all the Shes share a similar sensibility: disdain for materialism. Often vegetarian. Artistic.
I’m out of practice. I’ve forgotten how they deftly sidestep the usual conversational dead weights and quickly proceed to matters of substance. Within five minutes of being introduced, I suddenly realize we’re on the topic of family and how it changes your life to live either close to them or far away from them.
She says, “It was a little easier in some respects to live across the country from my family. I couldn’t feel their disapproval when I quit my Internet company to start my arts and crafts business.”
She’s not just a She; she’s a defector. You don’t meet one of those every day. I say, “It’s easy to deal with family. Just carry cloves of garlic, and sometimes holy water.”
She smiles, but only faintly; she understands the line for what it is, a placeholder instead of an actual contribution. I have to be careful around the Shes. The usual banter quickly sputters and stalls around them.
Somewhere else in the room, someone is recounting a story about herself and a well-known writer. She carefully repeats the name of the writer several times, and her voice edges slightly higher every time she does so. This conversational gambit is the exact opposite of the She mentality. They do not care about famous people or glamour by association. And, in fact, I never really expect to impress the Shes. They will ask what I do and I will say that I work for a technology consulting firm and their eyes will dip down. Sometimes I think about spicing up my answer a bit:
But in truth, I have no interest in lying to them or even really impressing them. This isn’t about lust. The band Cake has a song called “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” about fetishizing the polar opposite of the Shes, the tightly wound corporate woman:
She’s touring the facilities and picking up the slack
I want a girl with a short skirt and a long, long jacket
But that’s Cake and this is me. The position I’m staking out here is simply one of appreciation and respect. Shes: whenever you invite me to dinner, I like how you serve strange things with multi-colored sauce and it’s almost always good. I like how you create crafty objects out of thin air, like an army of artistic MacGyvers. I like how you force me to weigh each thing I say so that I can be sure to extend and deepen the conversation. I still like cheeseburgers, but I like you.
Posted by Greg at 05:21 AM on 05/25/05