I’m sure I’m not the only girl who feels like this … chivalry is dead! I always daydream about the decades when our grandparents were young and how nice it must’ve been to be courted by a complete gentleman. These days you’re lucky if a guy holds the door for you as you walk in behind him, and I’m not just exaggerating, I’ve experienced this firsthand. You always hear older people talk about how lost, rude and disrespectful our generation is, but I wonder why. Could it be our music and pop culture? I say indubitably.
You hardly ever hear sweet love lullabies anymore, and most songs having to do with male and female interaction are all about sex. How they want to have sex, where they want to have sex, when they want to have sex; you don’t hear much about taking a LADY out and treating her with respect or even monogamy. Don’t get me wrong, artists from the early 1900s made songs with sexual themes, but the way they sung it, you’d hardly notice. New artists are way raunchier and they say everything in the most disrespectful tones. Pop culture encourages men to “Love ’em and leave ’em.” It promotes short, unfaithful relationships (and I use that term loosely), one-night stands and horrible “dating etiquette.” It also encourages women to accept this type of behavior from men because it is ubiquitous.
We shouldn’t have to settle for a jerk just because everyone is a jerk. We’re just making it easier for them. When women begin to realize that the more we stick together and resist these behaviors, the sooner the male species will begin to evolve. What you allow will continue. What men fail to realize is, they’d get more cooperation from those of us who don’t accept these behaviors if they were just a bit more chivalrous. All chivalry is is the practice of being well-mannered. It’s not that hard, is it?
Here’s a starter’s guide just to help all you “men” out there take the first step toward being a Chivalrous Gentleman: 1. Pick-up lines are lame, and trust me, we’ve heard them all. 2. Simply ask a woman out. No we don’t want to “hang out,” “meet up,” “chill” or “play it by ear.” 3. A “movie night” at your place at 10 p.m. screams that you just want to have sex. 4. I know we’re in college and we are engulfed in the culture, but meeting up at the bar for drinks is not a date. 4. Lastly, don’t behave in a manner in which you’d be embarrassed if your mom saw or heard you. That always works, a man who honors his mother will, without a doubt, respect his significant other.
Brittany A. Artino is a junior studying communication and diversity studies at Ohio University.
