Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Alicia Kenworthy's avatar

I agree with everything you've written, Mary. I used to work as a hostess and cocktail waitress in an upscale bar/restaurant. My job -- beyond managing wait times -- really *was* the physical interaction of it all. And honestly, there's nothing more satisfying. My mind felt sharper when forced to search for in-the-moment replies to propositions, etc. ("Miss, let me take you away for the weekend." "But we couldn't do that, I'd fall in love!") I loved physically wading through a crowd to find "Sarah, with a polka dot skirt, party of 6." Occasionally, an older gentleman would place his hand on my shoulder or a drunken patron would give me a hug, unsolicited. Only rarely did I feel threatened by it -- and I always felt secure in the knowledge a coworker, with his or her myriad people skills, would know when and how to step in. I felt kind of... blessed to be in a position where my presence felt welcoming, or healing, or inviting to other human beings.

Human beings feed off of each others' energy. We need it.

Of course, now that same restaurant has QR code menus and sends text messages when a table is ready to be seated.

Expand full comment
Jonathan Weil's avatar

This may sound hopelessly old-fashioned, but — could part of the problem, pre-dating social media by at least several decades, be that we no longer have the old rituals/grammar of acknowledging each other in the street? Like, once upon a time, a man might take his hat off to a pretty girl in an overt gesture of admiration that, being codified, was also circumscribed and unthreatening? Whereas now men no longer wear hats and even if they did, they’d feel stupid doing that, so they have no recourse but to stare rudely, or avert their eyes, or at the other extreme mutter/grab/call out something obscene. I’m not saying all those things didn’t happen in the Hat days, but I do think that for a lot of men and boys, the ability to look straightforwardly at female beauty, to acknowledge it and have that acknowledgement acknowledged in turn, would assuage that pang of “rightful animality” you detected in the Toronto boy without having to scare/gross out/otherwise discomfit women and girls.

I said “once upon a time” because I’m aware that this golden age of courteous gentlemen lifting their hats to pretty flower-sellers comes to me purely from old stories, and may itself be nothing more than a nostalgic fiction…

Expand full comment
30 more comments...

No posts