I’ve just noticed this after moving to the south that guys do not know how to act around women who don’t follow the more Traditional ‘mother with babies’ mold. Are women SUPPOSED to be stupid/ditsy/obsessed with fashion/makeup/looks in order to be a woman? I’m beginning to feel that that is the definition of what makes a woman sometimes, by being around these type of men. When you don’t act like that they give you weird looks, and think you’re being ‘rebellious’. It’s not fair for women to have to lower their IQ by 40 points to be ‘normal’. It seems I can’t smile and be friendly to a guy without them thinking you’re hitting on them, never mind being congenial - they refuse to acknowledge you at the same level. I only find this with traditional leaning, perhaps Southern guys. Guys from the north or more liberal seem to be fine interacting with girls like me. Even international students don’t act like this… What do you do with these type of guys???
Hmmm, depends on your definition of “traditional.”
If by “traditional” you mean traditional Catholic men who are closely associated with the Tridentine Mass, the answer is different–let me know and I’ll answer that question. I assume you mean more Southern guys in general, though.
I moved to the South when I was 18. I actually had to have a manager sit down and explain this to me because I honestly didn’t understand it. Yankee (I use the term fondly) customs are different.
It’s not the intelligence or the career. There’s a tradition here of women being charming, friendly, and bubbly, at least by yankee standards. Yankee introverts like yours’ truly
ahem have an even harder time with this.
In my normal interactions, I was polite–almost too formally so by Southern standards–but I didn’t smile very often or very warmly. Why? Because the way I had been brought up was to be somewhat more reserved, which is typical, especially on the northeast coast. There, smiling and being as engaging as the “typical” southern woman is is seen as socially pushy, and kind of boundary-crossing. (This is very hard to describe to someone who hasn’t lived in both places, but I’m taking a stab at it.) As a result, a lot of my coworkers assumed that I had a very bad attitude all the time, even though I didn’t and I generally liked them. I had to learn to smile more and be more effusive in order to work better with customers, and this translated over to life in general.
Again, it really isn’t the career or your intelligence, at least not for most of the guys. It’s that
not acting a certain way isn’t expected, and is like you’re speaking a foreign language, except it’s a body language rather than a verbal one.
PS–Also, my accent didn’t help. Because I spoke more formally, with fairly precise northeast-coast diction and without the Southern vowels or contractions, I appeared even more “snooty,” for lack of a better term, when that was combined with my body language. Eventually my accent has softened a bit, plus I learned how better to interact with people here, and those who I worked with for any length of time eventually learned that I didn’t mean to sound or act at all snobby, but that I’d grown up a certain way and was still learning how to integrate a bit more into the South.
PPS–None of this is to sound denigrating to either culture; I love both! I’m just trying to explain my experiences with this and why the OP might be picking up the vibes that she’s getting.
Perhaps you need to broaden your scope.