By Chiderah A. Monde
It is rather discouraging, being a huge fan of Motown and music from years past, because these songs make us girls wish for the times when there was actual courting by a gentleman admirer, dates that consisted of moonlit walks and holding hands, celebration of how beautiful women are in all of our perfect imperfections, and written love letters singing a sad song of wishing she would come back when she’s gone…
It’s discouraging watching movies like “The Notebook” and getting falsified ideas of what men in love look like, since dating back in 1940 is obviously the same as it is now…
It just doesn’t happen like that anymore…and I’m a little bitter.
There are a few guys out there who will argue to the death that they are still perfect gentlemen who know how to treat a lady right, and this might be true….but the characteristics that make a “Southern gentleman” today has definitely changed from what was considered one back then.
Sorry guys, technology won’t let you be “Southern gentlemen” anymore.
Because today ladies, instead of hurriedly bumping into a man on the street and turning to apologize at the same time he is, causing your eyes to meet and your heart to instantly be captured…
We turn to Myspace, Facebook, Match.com, Eharmony.com and many other websites to see if we can lock eyes with his perfect picture. And then we pray he looks like that in real life if it is at all an attractive profile picture.
And today, instead of receiving a letter in the mail titled “To My Dearest” and detailing the outing he plans to pick you up later tonight for…
We get 10pm text messages saying “Wussup, whatchu doin tonite boo?”
Followed with “I’m tryna chill tonite, you gonna let me come ova?”
Or maybe that’s just us college aged girls….I should certainly hope those older aren’t subject to the same unfortunate text messages.
Still today, instead of getting close at a local lounge dancing the night away, face to face, his hands on your hips, yours around his neck slowly swaying to the sounds of Smokey Robinson’s “Cruisin’” or Marvin and Tammy’s “You’re All I Need To Get By” (my favorite songs)….
We go to the club and get freaky to “Falsetto” or bend over to the remix of “Back That Ass Up” as the DJ asks over the microphones “Where my nasty girls at?!” and naive girls scream in response.
When did it become okay to leave the “getting to know you” part of human relationships out and get right to the relating?
To need a “down ass ride or die bitch” as opposed to feeling so lucky because there “ain’t no woman like the one [you’ve] got”
To see him across the room at the next party instead of him picking you up and assuring your parents he’ll get you back safely by midnight.
To never spend nights on the phone talking with your special someone because he prefers texting anyway…
Or even to be told things like “damn girl you look good” or “you sexy as hell”, in replacement of being told you’re beautiful.
It became okay when texting became a verb, when Facebook became a verb, when Match.com became where you find your one true love, when love dropped it’s vowels and became luv, when terms of endearment like “bust it baby” replaced “sugar pie, honey bunch”….
And when girls began taking directions in a song from Lil John, who says things like “bend over to the front, touch your toes, back that ass up and down and get low”.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
If technology is going to be the death of romance, then only people can be its savior.
