So as you may or may not know, sometimes I get a little
obsessed with Buzzfeed. It comes and goes, so I’m not really worried about it.
However, as I was jumping through page after page a few weeks ago I found this
article on the 27
Perks of Being a Girl with Guy Friends. As a girl who has always had a lot
of guy friends, I was super excited to read it.
But for the most part, I found it infuriating. Sure, some of
it rang true (my guy friends have been some super awesome wedding dates, and
man pockets are the best), but a lot of it seemed just like stereotypical
nonsense. I would NEVER dream of having my boys beat up a guy on my behalf.
Their “love” advice just frankly sucks half the time. Plus I am perfectly
capable of overindulging in delicious junk food with my female friends, thank
you very much.
I have been mulling it over for a week or two, becoming more
and more offended by these so-called “perks,” and finally I decided the only
way to combat the lies is to share some perks of my own. Now granted, these
still won’t be universally true, because while you can always try and break
things down as “girl” versus “guy” behavior, a lot of things just depend on
personalities. With that being said though, here are the top 3 benefits I’ve
found from being friends with guys.
I said I am capable of eating junk food with my girl
friends, and I’m certainly capable of drinking with my girl friends (and trust
me, I do), but without a doubt I drink more when I’m with my boys. This is
twofold.
For whatever reason when I’m hanging out with the guys we
are far more likely to just have a casual beer or two with whatever we’re
doing. Getting dinner? Better have a beer. Playing Settlers of Cataan? Clearly
need a beer. Watching anime? Definitely should turn it into a drinking game.
This may partly be because of my own drinking preferences.
It’s rare for me to drink wine, so a glass with the ladies just doesn’t happen
as often as a beer with the boys. It may partly be because the boys tend to
have alcohol around, and they tend to start drinking it. I know when I visit my
brother the fridge will always be well stocked with beer. Heck, I just helped
some of my friends build a kegerator for their house a few weeks ago (and by
helped, I mean in my normal manner of assisting wherein I mostly watched and
occasionally handed over a tool or held something when asked).
Besides drinking more often, when I’m with the boys I also
tend to drink larger amounts. It’s tough to try and keep up with them. I should
really know better. I run around trying to remind them “but I’m tiny!” with the
appropriate hand gesture to indicate my smallness, but they encourage the
drinking anyway.
Now in their defense, if I really didn’t want to drink I
wouldn’t. I do have some self-control, thank you. I think I give in more
frequently with the boys because I know first of all that they are going to
drink excessively, so at least I’m not the only super drunk person. And second,
I feel utterly safe with them. Not only will they not let anything bad happen
to me, if I’m ridiculously hung over the next day they’ll take care of me
without judging. I think they half expect it at this point.
 |
| Maybe this explains it... |
Call me sexist if you want, but one of my favorite things
about my boys is that they handle things. If a problem comes up, they fix it.
I’m not saying I can’t handle things myself, but I tend to ignore problems
until the point where you absolutely need to do something. Same with my female
friends. We talk and discuss and complain and only eventually do we actually do
something about the issue.
For instance, when my amazing brother sent me a Wii I was
having an issue where I had to keep switching cords between it and my
Playstation, which I found super annoying. My friend Pietro was over and when I
started complaining about it he looked through all my cords and my tv, and
figured out how I could solve the problem by getting a HDMI cord. A simple fix,
but I guarantee if he hadn’t gotten involved I would still be switching out my
game consoles whenever I wanted to use one.
Last night they managed to get a swimsuit stuck in the
washing machine. My approach after a few attempts to fix a broken washer would
probably be to go to bed and ignore it until I was out of clothes (which I’ve
discovered recently would take a LONG time. I own 29 pairs of black underwear
alone). But Kevin and Pietro poked it, and turned it upside down, and attempted
various strategies until finally they fixed it (my contribution was to get my
hand briefly stuck in the machine. FTW as always).
Again it’s not that I think girls can’t accomplish things.
But I do think we tend to delay and deliberate over a problem before we look at
actually fixing it. The boys just try to handle it immediately. It’s awesome.
Again this breaks down into 2 benefits. The first one was
definitely more of a big deal back in high school. The guys always want someone
to be naked-ish. You cannot even imagine how many different things they can
turn into a strip game. Strip poker is for the squares. Once you’ve played a
game of strip pool, or strip Magic, then we can talk.
That might seem odd as a benefit (unless you’re an
exhibitionist), but the truth is that hanging out with the guys has made me far
more comfortable with nudity. With girls, even when you’re friends there’s a
bit of awkwardness when someone has to strip. You say things like “we’re all
girls here,” “well we all got ‘em,” or my favorite “it’s nothing you haven’t
seen before” in order to make it feel acceptable to take off our clothes. Sure,
eventually good friends can just wander around in whatever state of dress, but
you’re always aware of it on some level.
With the guys, it’s like their own nudity doesn’t mean
anything. They’ll play strip games all night long because they don’t seem to
care what you see on them. That attitude rubs off. Thank goodness, because
inadvertently I end up ruining/losing clothes. A few months ago I happened to
be wearing an adorable red dress and then attempted to hop a fence to recover a
Frisbee, which was a poor choice as it completed tore open the whole side of
the dress. Did I freak out? Nah, I just hung out the rest of the night with my
side exposed. Whatevs.
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| Who needs strippers when you have male friends? |
Besides strip games, since nudity doesn’t seem to matter to
guys, they spend a lot of time taking off their clothes. They wander around in
towels, and on hot summer nights strip down to boxers when they’re playing
Starcraft. Which means when you’re a girl hanging out with a bunch of guys, you
get to spend a lot of time admiring their half-naked bodies. Hey, we can be
platonic, and I can still admire your pecs! They’re not mutually exclusive!
Of course there are many more benefits to having guy
friends. Sometimes I worry that there might also be come cons, such as hanging
out with the guys all the time makes me less like a girl, but my boys are
definitely worth it.
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