I'm just a girl

THE SUNDAY MORNING WALK OF SHAME

Sundays have always been my family “fun-day”, reason why I’ll find myself having breakfast, lunch, or the very well respected and very popular combination of both, brunch, at my brother’s place most Sundays.  My brother and sister-in-law signed up for a yearly farmer’s market program, meaning they can pick up fresh and organic fruits and vegetables bi-weekly for a year somewhere near them.  One Sunday morning I decided to join my brother on his quest for the best looking fresh produce.

As we started walking down the block, my brother and I noticed a peculiar pattern: there were too many girls dressed up, but in a down way. They had on nice heels, but they were carrying them on their hands, their stockings were on, although some had them ripped, and some even had cocktail dresses on, half- way zipped, or with the seam on the wrong side.

I blame growing up in a small suburb and commuting to school for not noticing this before. I suppose I figured it is NYC (yes, as cliché as it is, most of the stories you’ll find here come from my two eyes going on adventures in the city) so everyone is always dressed up in their own way, expressing themselves and their personal style. As far as the smeared make-up and tangled hair, I believed it to be something “new” that I simply could not put a grasp on or did not define as my style.  I had obviously known of the term walk-of-shame, I had seen and heard of it multiple times on TV shows and movies strategically marketed for women but I just never saw a myriad of these walks of shame in such a short period of times. It must be a psychological effect, I had never put so much attention to this phenomenon until that morning when my brother started counting the number of girls doing the famous walk of shame and then split them into categories. It was then, and only then, that I started noticing them.

THE CATEGORIES

·         The I’m-so-ashame-that-I’ll-call-my-mom-and-pretend-I’m-on-my-way-to-church: my brother and I spotted this one. She was on her way back to her dorm loudly talking to her mom on the phone, explaining to her that she had a very uneventful night, emphasizing on the uneventful.

·          The OH-EMM-GEE-what-did-I-do: This is the one that is the most ashamed of her actions. The first one my brother and I spotted was with her arms crossed with one side of her body leaning on the back wall of one of Barnard’s buildings as she was walking with her head, of course, facing down. I’m sure the wall gave her the supportive hug she needed.

·         The the-heck-to-it-I-don’t-give-a-damn-what-you-or-your-brother-think: This species to me is the best one yet. She has no shame, she clearly knows what she did and is proud of it. An uncountable number of hickeys? No problem. Normally you’d expect someone who’s not a shame of walking like she just had sex to be on a list of walkers-of-shame, but considering she wants walking in a zig-zag, I’d say she was still drunk and did not have time to process her walk; I will give her the benefit of the doubt though. I saw another one of these one morning in Washington Square Park. I was quietly minding my own world as I was turning the page of a book I was reading when I saw her walking pass me. She walked across the park, people would not stop staring at her. She was looking straight in front of her. She truly did not give a damn. I wanted to give her a standing ovation and just applaud until she exited the park, but my book ended up winning my attention and I went back to reading. Kudos to you both, walkers of no shame!

·         The he’s-such-a-gentleman-I-know-he-loves-me: This one walks day-dreaming looking at the floor in front of her. She has a smile on, but her shame is illustrated by her attention on the ground in front of her. Sometimes she’s even holding a flower that may be a little dried-out, or maybe wants to focus on the very dangerous flat pavement that could suddenly open into a sink hole and suck them both in, as in her and her almost dead flower. If he was such a gentleman though, wouldn’t he have walked her home or put you in a cab? Who knows, maybe his fear of sink holes is much worse than hers that he can’t even think about walking on a Sunday morning.

·         The let-me-call-my-friends-so-they-can-walk-back-with-me: This one believes she’s on to something, she truly thinks she can fool everyone. She meticulously plans the whole morning out so that no one can notice what a wreck she looks like. She will call her friends in the morning, or maybe even the night before as she’s hiding in her guy’s bathroom to “touch-up”, and will have her meet her outside a subway station or in a particular corner at a specific time, not too far from her guy’s place, but not too close to hers (because then she would’ve done all the walking by herself). Her friends will arrive to walk-her back, give her some moral support, push away lurkers by staring back at them, bring her a sweater to put on her dress so that she’ll look like she’s having a “good ol’ time” with her friends on a Sunday morning. The best of friends will even bring her some cleaning wipes and some make-up. She’ll walk back to her apartment telling her friends all about her night, they’ll gasp, giggle, hug, go on Facebook to see pictures of this mysterious man, and then split once their princess is home safe and sound.

·         The this-is-not-a-walk-of-shame-because-I’m-only-walking-from-the-taxi-to-my-stoop: You’d think this one is not a walker of shame, or a walk of shamer, after all she did take a cab. The problem is, even though she’s trying to be quiet and not cause a scene, she does. She’ll arrive to her door-step and realize she cannot find her keys. She’ll take her heels off because she cannot stand them anymore, and sit on the floor as she digs through her purse. After looking for a few minutes, she’ll begin to think she left them wherever she spent the night, so she’ll start walking, only after walking a block she’ll put her hands in her pockets and find the keys there.

But, what’s so shameful about having a pleasant, or out-of-this-world time with someone the night before, that we must put such a horrible label on the walk home one makes the morning after? Matter of fact is, there’s nothing shameful but we, women, have made it that way.  Yes, we are the ones to blame for this. It is us, our embarrassment of sex, because sex is a taboo subject and we don’t want society to know we had some the night before, and even if we didn’t we don’t want them to assume we did. I’m even in blame for this. I have asked my friends to let me borrow clothes in the morning, after crashing at their place, because I don’t want the world to think I had sex last night, when honestly all I did was drink too much to go to my 6-story walk up apartment at 4:00AM, so I had to wait until the actual morning (4AM still counts as night-time when it comes to the weekends, “amirite”?).

If you think about it, we are in a disadvantage against men when it comes to this. Men don’t wear tuxedos when they go to a bar, but we may wear a nice LBD. They’ll wear a shirt and a nice pair of jeans, probably the same outfit they would wear on a Sunday morning to go out for brunch or to run some errands. Their make up won’t be all smeared because they probably don’t wear any- although you can never be too sure in NYC, after all it is the home to so many delicious eye-candy Calvin Klein-look-alike-models-, and their hair will look perfectly normal, their feet won’t be hurting from walking around the city in their new sky-high Loubatins, so they won’t be carrying them in their hands. Oh, and their shirts, they’ll button them up properly. In any case, even though there’s no such thing as a guy’s walk of shame, I truthfully believe they’re the ones who should be doing all the walking on a Sunday morning.

Now, think about it this way, by us being the ones to crash at their place we will continue being the ones who are walking back home early in the morning when we could just sleep through comfortably in our own bed. We could comfortably shower in our own place and put on clean underwear right then and there, yes clean underwear. If you don’t want him to see you make-up less, or worse off like a panda bear in the morning, then let him stay at your place. That way, you can run off to the bathroom, pretty yourself up and he’ll never know your raccoon self. We could be the authoritative figure, it’s our apartment and our rules must be followed, tell him you have things to do in the morning because doing your nails and watching re-runs of “Friends” are very important things to do in the morning. 

• Stay tune for more, after all, I am expecting you to care.