Numbered Cage
I’ve never liked math—this constant
mix of different numbers and equations turns into a giant headache. When I was
growing up, it was English that I had fallen for; the multicolored uses for all
these words and letters in an alphabet put together to make something
beautiful. This is the difference between myself and a lot of the male
population of the world today: numbers
and words.
It wasn’t
until I was sat comfortably in a Subway booth that I even noticed the miniscule
difference between the two. I wasn’t even really paying attention to anything
but the toasted sandwich that sat in front of me until I vaguely heard the
friends around me talking about numbers.
One of my
best guy friends was saying, between sips of his water, “I got both of their
phone numbers. Both the 8 and the 6. I’ll probably text the 8 but not the 6.”
Like I said
earlier, math was not a thing of mine—so it was a little hard for me to
comprehend what exactly he was saying here. So I thought I’d interject in what
I was sure was a compelling conversation. “What are you talking about?”
“The girls
from the restaurant we were at earlier today,” he replied matter-of-factly.
It suddenly
occurred to me that those were not just complex math equations that he was talking
about—he was referring to a scale. “The” scale. The particular scale of 1-10
that every girl wishes she didn’t know about.
The guys I
hang out with are nowhere near being terrible people, or piggish men, for that
matter. They are normally gentlemen who open doors for girls and who are
respectful—because all decent human beings are. So it’s a little scary that
they were even indulging their testosterone thoughts within this numbered scale
instead of using the wonderful English language we have grown up learning.
While my friends could be using real words to describe the women they had met
earlier, they instead put them on a scale of numbers. Don’t get me wrong, I
totally get how efficient this system probably is. I understand that maybe
someone is in a hurry to describe someone else so instead they call them a “3”
or maybe even a “9” if they’re feeling generous. I also think the simple use of
a name would probably be just as easy, and a hell of a lot less demeaning.
As a senior
girl in high school, I’ve come to see the way guys discuss girls on a daily
basis, and this is the problem—we are put into number scales, and are
constantly being compared to one another. It starts quietly in elementary school—yes,
you read that right—when girls start to realize that the boys are, well, more
than just the dodgeballs they throw at during recess. Suddenly girls become
aware of how much better they look with a little bit of lip gloss and mascara,
and boys start to notice that our lips aren’t just plain colored after all.
Cooties no longer exist, flirting is born, and we start the plunge into
superficial mentalities.
The real
question here, though, is it just the men who are getting pulled into these
physical charades? Maybe men are appraising women on their looks in the street,
but I know for a fact that women will most likely look twice at a man in
baseball pants. Perhaps it isn’t just about the men talking horribly about women,
but that as a group, we’re all just going about this the wrong way. We’ve grown
up knowing the differences between who is “hot” and who is “ugly.” Not only are
men demeaning to women, but it works just as easily vice versa. Women just
happen to use words over numbers.
The issue
with all of this is that we don’t think what we’re doing is wrong. I called out
the guy friends sitting in Subway, and their argument was that the girls they
were talking about understood the system. The girls knew that this was the
scale they were getting themselves into, like they had asked to be put on it. Also,
this was just how guys talked to each other. No big deal or anything. This was
not an answer that I found appealing in the slightest—what girl, person, even, wants to be rated on a
scale of however many numbers? And what kind of lame excuse is it that this was
just how they talked to each other?
Women have the same problem, though—we
are in no way innocent. We sit at tables in the mall or at lunch and we survey
the men around us and judge how lean or how muscular they are. I completely
understand that the human race is going to always be slightly shallow; men and
women both look for “attractive” people to surround themselves with. We use
describing words that are as deep as a kiddy pool, and sometimes it takes us a
while to get into the personality portion.
What I don’t understand, though, is
how it’s okay for us to rate each other on insignificant numbers. How, when
those two girls both obviously had first and last names, that it was somehow
easier to describe them by a number scale than by saying how funny they had
been, or how smart, how caring. We should be going past the superficial idea of
how a person looks and find out how they feel—who they are. We should not be
handing out numbers that define physical qualities.
A lot of
the time in the world we live in today, women are sex objects. This is the way
the world sees us, and at first glance, that’s all that matters. I’ve been
involved in enough conversations with the male species about the “booty” and
boobs to know that as a fact. When it comes down to it, no person deserves to
be treated this way. No one walks down the street hoping someone is going to go
to their friends and talk about what number they rank on a scale. This goes for
both men and women—and it’s time that we understood that this isn’t okay
anymore. It’s time we all come to the mutual decision that instead of treating each
other like numbered sex objects, we talk about them like humans. We stop picking
what number they rank and we start talking about how generous or lively they
are. We use real English words and try to remember that there’s life outside
the numbered cage.
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