I’m not one to be a groupie. Yeah, I know some of my friends just read that sentence and snorted the milk they were drinking up their noses, but let me explain. Being a groupie, I think, involves some sort of awe on the groupie’s part, and generally speaking, I am not one to be impressed. To be a star-fucker, you must first worship the star — that’s why you sleep with them. I mean, come on. Kate McDowell be surprised someone deigns to sleep with her?
But that’s not the point of this rant. There are a lot of sexual double standards that irk me, but few of them have to do with the entertainment industry. Fortunately, groupies do, so I can write a daze rant about them. Why is it that male rock stars get to have hot female groupies who will hop on the tour bus to do the craziest shit imaginable, but female performers have to put up with lameass 45-year olds who follow them around and threaten to kill them if they refuse to marry them? Why is it that we assume male singers get a piece in every town they visit, yet Britney Spears has to hold press conferences to proclaim her virginity (which, by the way, I suspect has gone the way of the dodo)? I guess it’s the American way.
But I’m not going to let the ladies off the hook so easily. Just because we’re the “weaker” sex, and our groupies get to be called “stalkers” instead of “sluts,” doesn’t mean we’re in the clear. See, I think that women should be held to the same standard as men. It’s one thing if you hang around a tour bus waiting a couple hours for your invite up to blow a couple lines and get naked, it’s quite another if you cling desperately to the bumper on their way out of town. In both instances, you are a lameass, but in the latter, you are a stalker.
Yes, Virginia, women can be stalkers too. This precedent was set by David Letterman’s stalker a while back, but she was obviously mentally ill and not too physically attractive, so even if she didn’t do things like scale the gates of his Greenwich home, America would probably be unwilling to accept her as a mere groupie. Since then though, I feel like women’s sense of responsibility in terms of stalkerism (whatever, it’s a word) has declined.
For example, I’ve heard of women on this very campus (imagine!) who engage in behavior I would term beyond groupie-ish and starting to swim in the muddy waters of stalkerism. Trying to get it on with a starter for the Big Red is one thing, waiting outside his room and refusing to leave is another. Where’s your dignity, for chrissake? If he wanted to bang you, he’d do it. If not, accept it gracefully and move on. That’s what rock stars’ groupies do. Actually, their groupies suck it up and sleep with the drummer ( Ed. note — or the manager, it depends), but I’m sure an equivalent could be found on this campus. Maybe someone who quit their sport to join the Cornell drinking team. Maybe someone who plays intramurals or sings a capella. Ultimate frisbee players work too in a pinch; I dated one during a slow Ithaca summer when all my boys had left town.
So what I’m saying is this. Yeah, guys are creepy and can be assholes — proof of this can be found in every story your best friend tearfully tells you over brunch at North Star on Sunday morning. But girls can be creepy too. Some creepy girls need to back down, pick their dignity up out of the gutter, stop declaring their new “obsession” all over campus and move the hell on.
Archived article by Kate McDowell