Feminism be damned.

I am not a fan of male chauvinism. Larry Summers – not my guy. I am a huge fan of equal pay for equal work, the ERA, and a general avoidance of discrimination. I have, in fact, been called a “screaming feminist” (sorry for the repetition here) by men who like to wear shirts that imply that they are lesbians. I am, however, also not the kind of woman who has to deal with a lot of male chauvinism. I work in a field dominated by women and I almost never get hit-on by strangers.

But there are certain times in my life when I’m reminded of how awesome it is to be a young woman of precarious means. Say, hypothetically, that I rear-ended an Audi today on my way down to City College. After calling my mom to cry, calling the insurance company to report, and getting my general shit back together (and out of my car), I faced a seriously bent hood on a very small, very meek, very inexpensive Daewoo (that’s a kind of car, for those of you not cool enough to know that). So I headed to a recommended body shop, pointed at the hood of my car, noted that I only had liability insurance, and was told to “wait till Dan got back from his break.” “Dan,” my friends, in the course of 30 minutes called me “darlin’” at least four times, told me that he could “fix anything but a broken heart” (literally. fortunately Pierre’s bent hood was not heartbreak caliber), fixed my car, and let me choose how much I would pay for the endeavor. This rocks. An otherwise shitty week totally salvaged by some random dude’s kindness and metal-hammering skills.

Of course, they might treat all customers the same way. If my dad drove his Mercedes in with his 6 feet of height, silver hair, and golf-club polo shirt, trying to get a dent fixed, they might have let him pay cash and called him darlin’. Or if I had bitched instead of sniffled, and been wearing a suit instead of jeans they might still have said when I asked how much, “Well, whatever.” I’ll never know. That’s what’s funny about life. Empathize all we want, we really have no idea what it’s like to be someone other than ourselves (unless you have an identical twin, I guess). What would it be like to walk through the world prettier or blonder or less pretty or male or really tall or super-short? Partially deaf? With an extra toe? With perfect pitch? I have no idea. But I do know that when faced with a mechanic or a hardware store clerk, I’m damn glad to be a woman.

Here’s a related question: why is it that when you have limited car insurance, mechanics try to work with you to save you money, but when you have limited health insurance doctors go out of their way to screw you. I once got a root canal thinking I didn’t have dental insurance, but really wanting the root canal, only to find out that I was still insured (thank you, California Teacher’s Union). When the dentist went to file with the insurance company they also had to reimburse me, because they’d charged me the “uninsured price” which is MORE than what they charge insurance companies. Uh, unfair? So is it the insurance companies themselves sucking? Or is it that most mechanics know what it’s like to have weak car insurance, but most doctors have spent their entire lives happily health-insured? Or something else? Also, I’ve never had a doctor call me darlin’. Though that might be a little creepy.