This is a column I wrote a while back, so it's a little long for the average blog. You were warned.

Gender gap through language

We hear a lot today about good communication. It’s the answer to everything. Many of us have heard that if guys and girls would just communicate, then relationships would flourish, marriages would be saved, the rivers would flow with milk and honey.

While true communication is key, there is a large gap between talking and communicating. This is due largely to the fact that word meanings change not only over time but also over gender. Words like “hot”, “love”, “commitment”, and terms of endearment have very different meanings for guys than they do for girls.

But the real communication block is the word “cute.” This word has been confusing guys and girls alike for years. According to Mr. Webster, cute means “attractive or pretty especially in a childish, youthful, or delicate way.”

Most would agree that infants, attractive children, puppies and other baby animals are cute. But beyond that, I would say guys don’t have a really good grasp on how girls use the term.

Girls use cute to describe nearly anything; especially anything small. This is understandable with miniature pets, stuffed animals, and perhaps Dollhouse furniture. However, when we start talking about miniature bottles of hand lotion, baby carrots, and other such ridiculous things as cute, it’s no wonder guys are lost.

The most recent meaning of the word cute is, possibly, even more confusing. The word has come to have little, if any, connection to physical appearance. Girls are now using the word cute to indicate their approval of something, or more frequently of someone. More often than not, the someones they are approving of are other girls. One will often hear the phrase: “She’s cute; I like her.”

This type of phrase is most often used to describe the kind of sweet, pleasant girls other girls view as completely non-threatening. When jealous, a girl will rarely refer to another as cute. If they do, it has an entirely different connotation. In these instances, the term refers to being “cutesy” – hardly a compliment. The term is the polite way to convey meanings such as shallow, trite, trying too hard, and other more unflattering terms.

In addition to being the blanket mark of approval, or disapproval, depending on how it is used, the term is also used to convey affection. The phrase, “You’re so cute,” especially if it follows an odd or quirky act, implies a laughing sort of tolerance for their behavior. You like them, so you’ll humor them, even though they may be slightly weird.

Yikes. Running through so many definitions of only one word is enough to make anyone dizzy. Considering the wide variety of situations in which the term is used, it’s sometimes difficult to tell how to react if it is used to describe you.

For girls, it is probably necessary to be familiar with the multiple meanings of the term. Guys, give up now. And don’t worry, we think you’re cute.

Tightrope

People frequently say that life is all about balance. We have to balance things, and we have to have balance ourselves. Most often we hear the example of juggling. We have these things up in the air: school, work, family, church or play, and we have to keep them balanced. Or what? If you’re juggling, and you lose track of one thing in particular, likely you will drop that thing. It will fall to the ground, and maybe you just wind up neglecting it all together as you continue to juggle. Or, maybe dropping that one thing makes you nervous and you wind up dropping everything. Or, perhaps you have to pause all of your proceedings while you pick it up and keep going. However you look at it, the imagery only extends to the failure of a task: one facet of your daily duties.

I have discovered my own preferred metaphor: walking a tightrope. Now, I’m not claiming this is a new idea at all. I just wish to argue that for me, in my brain, it works better than thinking of jugglers. If you lose your balance on a tightrope, you don’t drop a thing, you fall. You do. Not school, or work, or friendships. You. And you are the one who has to find a way to get back up again. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found it much easier to drop a class and take it later, or catch up at work, or renew a friendship when I’m not falling apart myself. To me it doesn’t matter what I’m juggling. Balance isn’t just about juggling responsibilities. We must have balance within ourselves to move forward, to succeed.

I suppose if you were really attached to the juggling tasks idea, you could combine the two. Because there are thousands of jugglers out there, and I wouldn’t want to discredit your methodology. So juggle away, but remember you are always on the wire, and if you don’t have balance yourself, it won’t matter how good you’ve gotten at multi-tasking, or scheduling, or prioritizing your activities.

Disclaimer

So, this is the way the world is going, and everyone’s doing it, and countless people tell me that I’m witty and brilliant and insightful and funny and I should just blog because everyone will love me. But I know that once there is that expectation, I’m sure to disappoint. You will come and read what I have to say and think to yourself, “But I was told she was funny. She’s not very funny. Why do people say she’s funny?” (Or insightful, or profound, or whatever you happened to hear) Well, let me just tell you right now that I have agreed to try this experiment, but I don’t agree to like it. Nor do I plan to care what you think. Nor do I make any promises about the consistency of my posts, or subject matter. The upshot of this is that I will write whenever I feel like it, about whatever I feel like, and if there is no theme, or unifying element, or continuity, then too bad.

That being said: Fine. I’ll blog.