Ethnography, Women, Radical Romance

Date: Friday September 19, 2008
Location: My balcony
Time: 6 pm

Groups of people walk by my apartment on a regular basis, so I figure, why not use that to my advantage. So I set up my chair and my laptop and sit back to enjoy the show. Today was a particularly interesting day.

A guy and a girl walk by holding hands, maybe in their late 20s wearing some baggy sweats. They just walk on by, not noticing the person walking the dog at the end of the leash who won’t stop barking. The couple is so engrossed in each other, they don’t notice anything going on around them.

Oh my here comes a good one. There is a girl that is walking over to a blue truck (make and model? Who cares?!?!) and starts yelling at the person within. The window rolls down as she steps next to the driver side door revealing a guy possibly in his early 20s. Something along the lines of him being a jerk and a lying bastard…of course. He doesn’t say much, in fact, he is dealing with a woman screaming at the top of her lungs in a very public place, in a pretty calm fashion. She yells at him for quite a while, never once letting him get a word in, telling him he’s all kinds of screwed up. After a while he rolls up his window, starts his car and drives away. She of course, throws her phone at his car. The phone misses the car and shatters on the pavement, at which point she starts cursing the cell phone maker, whom she is sure is of the male sex.

A guy is walking down the street and coming towards him is a girl in a really (and I mean really) low cut shirt with white pants so low that I swear I can almost see her butt crack. It is hard to say if they know each other or not, but they stop and talk…well flirt, for a little while. He pulls out his phone and most likely gets her number (there’s no way that he’s checking his text messages people). They briefly say goodbye and she walks away. As she is walking away from him, the guy turns around to check out the view.

Analysis.
Well I must say, today was rather odd. Normally I don’t have so many people arguing outside of my apartment, couples are usually like the first one I observed. They are a perfect example of the kind of relationship that most of us ideally want. A calm situation in which we are so into each other, we don’t really have a care in the world. Who knows, maybe so, maybe not. Either way, this is why the romance genre is so popular with women because they want that kind of relationship. They want to be swept off their feet and romanced like there is no tomorrow and in romance novels, they are able to experience this vicariously through the characters in the novels.

The second couple is why so many corporations stay in business. Like the diagram located in our book, the base is supported by those above it, and those above it support those below. The girl will probably go home and eat some comfort food in the form of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream while she curses the male population in general. Let us not forget that broken phone lying on the pavement. She, as a consumer will be supporting Ben and Jerry’s and the phone company, with likely another purchase due to her frustration and anger. On the discussion of high and low, privileged and not, comes the concept of high class and low class. It was once privileged to keep all your family problems inside the home, those that “aired their dirty laundry” in public were considered to be of a lower, less privileged class. Watching the girl reminded me of some elements we watched of Jerry Maguire where his first wife, played by Kelly Preston was getting mad at him when he reveals that he has changed his mind about how he is going to be a sports agent.

Lastly, the two people who met on the street. This is a demonstration of de Beauvoir’s Second Sex. The girl in the white pants is getting her roll from the male. She finds herself attractive because the guy pretty much says she is it is from this that she understands her role in society. It is not because she makes her own destiny or path, rather, she makes herself a commodity in the eyes of the male sex by dressing the way she does. You cannot dress that way and expect no one to check you out or look twice as you walk by.