Is Free Stuff Part of Being a Woman?

Call it the gift and the curse of being a woman. You smile, look pretty, and men give you free stuff. The downside: They flirt--and may even ask for a date.

Case in point: I go to two restaurants where I rarely pay for my food. In both cases, men who work there give me my food for free. In one case, the manager has been comping my food for about eight years. In the other case, a bartender has been giving me free stuff for roughly a year or two.

I didn't ask either of these men to do this. In fact, both have rebuffed me when I pull out cash to pay. "Your money is no good here," they say, or, "Don't worry. I got you."

Whatever, I say to myself, no need to fight them to pay money I don't have to.

But that doesn't mean there isn't a price. In one case, the manager who comps my food is way older--I'd guess in his 60s--and he blatantly flirts with me. I am pretty certain he knows I'm not interested because it never goes further than his saying slick stuff to me when I'm in the restaurant. Last weekend, he told me he was glad I came to the restaurant alone and not with a date--because he doesn't like to see me with dates. "I don't like those guys," he told me. [Note to self: I knew one day I'd be glad  I took my exes who were 6'10 and 6'4, respectively, into said restaurant to pick up food. Obviously, they left an impression. :-)]

WTF. Speechless, I just took my free food and rolled out.

But this man also bought me a dozen pink roses when I graduated from college several years ago. He said they were from the restaurant staff. My daddy--probably just a few years older than him--was none too happy.

Besides free food, off the top of my head, I've gotten free car maintenance, cable service, home repair, and party admission from guys I barely know (or don't know at all), just by showing up and smiling sweetly. The common thread? I never ask for free stuff. Guys just offer. The whole damsel in distress idea, maybe?

TALK BACK: Have you ever gotten free stuff just because you're a woman? Tell us about it.

Why a Woman's Weave is None of Your Business

I wear a weave and I'm proud of it, dammit.

Well, actually I wear braids -- a style called tree braids that looks kinda like a weave because the braids are hidden.

No matter, posts like this one from a blog I read regularly annoy me. So does anyone who looks down on women who wear weaves.

Why? Because an outsider has absolutely no idea why a woman might choose to wear a weave. It's not always just a fashion thing, trust me.

I have various minor health problems. And somewhere along the line, my hair--already soft and fine--seemed to start growing more slowly in certain places. I don't know if it was the medications, relaxers, or what, that caused this problem. I just know that my hair is always longer on top and in the back than on the sides, and even though it's long enough to pull back in a ponytail, it's hard to find a style I can wear sans weave that doesn't look foolish.

So I embraced weaves. And braids. In short, I embraced what I feel looks good on me. I don't really care if certain people have an issue with it. It's not about them.

I know that my natural hair--now relaxer free and protected from daily styling because it's hidden and cornrowed--has its best shot at growing out in a healthy way as it's currently styled.

My advice for anyone--male or female--who feels you have a right to judge someone who wears a weave is to please consider this: You can never know another person's motivation. From cancer to arthritis treatments to a bad perm or coloring to simply being cursed with hair that just won't grow, there are plenty of reasons why a woman might choose to wear full or partial weaves or braids. You have a right to your personal preferences, yes, but broad generalizations about women who wear weaves are silly and usually false.

If you've been blessed with a head of healthy hair and you're happy with it and weave free, good for you. We're happy for you and trust me, we wish we could say the same.

Oh, but please don't consider this post a defense of bad weaves. It's not. I don't condone that at all. So, my fellow weave wearers, I just ask one thing: Keep it looking good ... because over-the-top, extreme, down-to-your-butt weaves are not cute, and overgrown braids or bad or poorly maintained weaves are NOT cool, so please do it right or not at all. :-)

Domestic Abuse: When Harm Goes Both Ways

Every 15 seconds, a woman is severely assaulted by her male partner, according to research compiled by Yale University. And every 14.6 seconds, a man is assaulted by his female partner.

Does the statistic on assaults on men by women surprise you?

That was the subject of a recent episode of the Tyra show. Two women featured on the show regularly become so hostile that they hit their boyfriends upside the head or even push them down the stairs out of anger.

The men, wisely in my opinion, announced on the show that they could no longer take the abuse. (In one case, the man had long ago exited the relationship, while the other guy just mustered up the courage to leave his child's mother.)

Tyra pointed out that men who are the victims of domestic abuse are not that different from abused women. They stay despite the continuing abuse and make up stories for the inevitable bruises and scars that draw attention from coworkers, family and friends. Some tell the truth about how they were injured; others make up fictional stories about their wounds. ("I broke up a fight between my cousins," one guy said he told coworkers.)

What Tyra said about abused men behaving similarly as abused women rang so true to me. I have seen an episode--thankfully just one episode--of domestic violence firsthand. It wasn't a clear-cut case of female-male abuse or male-female abuse -- Instead, I'd say it involved a bit of both.

At the time, I lived in a condo building and had made friends with a neighbor who lived with her boyfriend in the same building. On the night in question, that girlfriend picked a fight with her boyfriend. It clearly wasn't the first time they'd had a physical fight--after all, she was way too comfortable calling him a bitch and other names that I won't mention here.

And for his part, her boyfriend seemed to snap very quickly into hostile mode, and he knocked her to the ground in our parking lot several times.  I tried (all 5'2 of me) numerous times to get him to stop hitting and rough handling her. But he just pushed me out of the way. And every time she had a chance to get away from him, she just went right back again, cursing, yelling, even hitting him back.

I call this an episode of abuse that went both ways because while her boyfriend, at approximately 6'4, clearly had the upper hand over her petite, slim frame, she was every bit the instigator. I hate to say it, but it was almost like she enjoyed it, cursing at him over and over again, hitting him, knowing that it would fuel his anger. (She would later tell me that the episode I observed was the first time they fought that way. Yeah, right.)

But when it got to the point where he was straddling her on the ground, his fist raised to begin punching her, I yelled at her boyfriend's friend--who up until that point had just been sitting in his car, engine idling, watching as his friend beat my friend up--to please stop him. And he did.

Later that evening, my friend went to stay with family, claiming she was never going back to her boyfriend.

That lasted about a day. Her boyfriend bought her roses, told her he loved her and that he was sorry, and a few months later, she was pregnant with his child.

This all happened about two years ago. My friend and I had only known each other a few months when the beatdown occurred in the parking lot. I kept in touch with her while she was pregnant but have since moved away from the building that she and her boyfriend live in, and honestly, I've distanced myself from her. That situation was just too intense. 

And to be honest, I don't know that I'd put myself out to help if I observed a similar situation again. That night, I knew I wouldn't have felt right about walking away. But in a case where both partners seem to enjoy abusing each other, I have to question whether it's worth it to intervene.

TALK BACK: Would you intervene if a friend and his or her partner were physically fighting in front of you? Why or why not?