Gender troubles

While I was out riding the other day (for the past week, everything in my life has been structured around motorcycles), I remembered I needed to pick up some deodorant. On a gas break, I stepped into the gas station convenience store and quickly scanned the aisles for something other than livid polythene bags of processed carbohydrates. I found a small shelf of personal medical and hygiene products and spent another few seconds searching for deodorant, which I finally located in two varieties: Arrid^(tm) For Men and something called Ladies Choice^(tm) Invisible Solid. Hesitating slightly, I settled on the cloying pink Ladies Choice and headed to the check-out. An elderly black man with bloodshot eyes and a blank expression swooped in front of me and placed a 40 of Olde English on the counter, then asked the salesgirl for two packs of Kools and a lighter. When she swiped the age-restricted items, the scanner emitted a startled "uh oh!" in a prudish robotic voice. Somewhat bashfully, I stepped up to the counter with my pink tube of deodorant, wishing I'd gone with the Arrid. Equally impassive to purchases of ridiculously named deodorant as she was to purchases of malt liquor at 10 in the morning, the salesgirl scanned my item. The prudish robot remained silent.

Stepping back out into the blaring Texas heat, I popped the frosted cap off the top of the deodorant and gave it a skeptical sniff. It looked and smelled exactly like a giant Elmer's glue stick. Whatever a lady is, I decided, she would probably not choose to slather this stuff on her pits.

Later that day, while my husband and his brothers sat shirtless on the living room couch and played endless rounds of Call of Duty, I retreated to the home gym for some cardio and push-ups. Every now and then, I'd catch a pungent whiff of the floral-cum-paste smell of Ladies Choice emanating from my body. As a distraction, I turned on the TV: Pitch Black, probably my favorite Vin Diesel vehicle, was playing, and as I did sets of push-ups, I thought about how great the character of Jack is in this screenplay -- a (spoiler!!) budding adolescent girl who pretends to be a boy, and who spends the entire movie idolizing and emulating Vin Diesel's space-age killer cowboy persona. What really struck me was how differently this was interpreted in the higher-budget, higher-grossing sequel, Chronicles of Riddick. There, Jack grows up, grows her buzz cut out into an appropriately luscious mane, and transforms into the sexy spitfire sociopath love interest -- the sci-fi version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Unlike the relatively nuanced discussion of sexuality and gender generated by Pitch Black, the sequel is the Ladies Choice of Hollywood's take on women: commodification masquerading as self-assertion. Ladies, you can choose your choice! You can be strong... and sexy! Smart... and sexy! A sociopath... and.... whatever, as long as you bring in that 15-25 market with cleavage and tight leather pants!

I was so caught up in my seething feminist outrage that I barely noticed my arms turning to jelly from the frenzied pace of my workout. I got up and examined my biceps, which, even after years of regular weights, push-ups, and yoga, were no match for the slovenliest male couch-potato. Is that why I identify so strongly with Jack?, I wondered. Am I just a scared little girl at heart, playing dress-up and acting tough to gain the respect of some distanced, abstracted, quasi-paternal figure -- who's actually just waiting for me to get over this awkward tomboy phase and act like a sexy lady?

Pitch Black ended and 27 Dresses, the Katherine Heigl rom-com about a perpetual bridesmaid, came on. I watched -- sweaty, breathless, half-dazed -- as Heigl paraded across the screen in the titular 27 hideous bridesmaid's dresses, none of which she had actually chosen for herself, but all of which she inexplicably loved too much to throw away. I mashed the power button on the remote, leaving a greasy slick of sweat on the molded plastic. Next time, I'm getting the Arrid and the 40, goddamn it.