By Sarah Morris
Contributing Writer
“Chivalry is dead” is one of the most overused phrases today. Not only is it available; the idea saturates media today with its falsehoods. Chivalry is supposed to be a grand lifestyle to live by, in which men specifically must mind all manners: hold doors open, pay for dates, shower women with gifts and romantic evenings.
I think it is important that women everywhere realize there are reasons that chivalry has “suddenly” disappeared. Men did not just sit down one day and all decide to be assholes just to get on our nerves. I believe that the start of chivalry’s decline can be dated back to the women’s rights movement. We wanted to be equal to men, we wanted to vote and we wanted to be able to actually claim ownership to our own belongings, receive an education and hold office.
If women want to be treated equally alongside men, we have to be ready to accept that they’re not going to be overly gratuitous all of the time. If we are truly their equals, they have no real purpose in treating us like the “princesses” some of us imagine we are. But now, we need to look at the most obvious reason why chivalry has keeled over right in front of us.
Too many women are sluts these days. Come on ladies, I know you’ve all been to a register and seen girls bent over, hands on the floor, bums in the air, pretty much having sex with guys on the dance floor. I also know that most of you have been one of those girls before. I’m not sure that girls who behave like that really deserve to be treated as expected. In that moment at least, when ladylike behavior ceases to exist, so does the opportunity to be treated like one.
It has come down to the changes our society has gone through. I personally think such advances are great: women should be able to go around acting like men and behaving however they want to in regards to their sexual actions. But it is necessary that if women want to support free love (not in the groundbreaking manner in which hippies celebrated it), they need to be able to accept the facts that men do not want to open doors and spend money on girls who give it up on the first date, or first register … whatever it may be.
So ladies, go ahead, grind like you are in a Lil Wayne music video on the weekends. But when you meet a guy who you want to take home to Mommy and Daddy, make sure you act like a girl who deserves to be taken home as well.