A NEW STUDY from the English vitamin company Healthspan claims that “Women spend 10 days every year ‘grumpy.’“
Stop the presses right there.
Women, myself included, spend way more than ten days every year grumpy. I’ve already been “grumpy” for significant parts of two days this week. Which, I suppose, supports the study’s finding that the 1,000 men surveyed “contradicted [the] evidence, to claim the women in their lives in fact appeared to feel grumpy ‘closer to eight hours a week.'”
I’d like to, for a moment, pick on my boyfriend, whom I love. Our long-distance relationship puts us in the same place less than half of the year. During that time, I have seen him grumpy more than ten times. I have seen him grumpy more than eight hours in a week. Sometimes, we even get grumpy on the same day. Sometimes, he lets things bother him that don’t bother me. You know what the difference, as outlined by this survey, is? The triggers relegated to women. Here’s a few:
- feeling fat
- weather/bad weather
- waking up with a spot
- all the hot water being used up in the morning
- rubbish on tv
- no one making you a cup of tea
Are you sh&*$ing me?
The implication here seems to be that women are programmed for mood swings over every little thing and, Watch out!, when they do come. This grouchy business is just the way we roll and the men, the poor, poor men in our lives are left picking up the pieces from our tiny meltdowns and black cloud of grouchiness that follows us around. When a man is grouchy he’s, what? Don Draper? All sexy, moody, and steely-eyed? No. He reacts in any number of ways — silence, sulking, outbursts, discontent — Just. Like. Women. Because, dear clueless people at Healthspan, men and women are not so different that females lose their cool when it rains on them or no one makes them a cup of well-deserved chamomile (more than ten times a year, I’d venture) and men only feel grumpy once a year if a giant asteroid happens to take out their favorite bar.
Of the 1000 men polled 68% admitted to zoning out when their wife or girlfriend is feeling low and 15% tell her to “snap out of it.” The 1,000 women surveyed were pitted against their own gender when it came to answering question about the (immeasurable!!!) matter of “grouchiness” — one in five claiming they suffer from more mood swings than the average female. What exactly constitutes “average female” and “average mood level” is beyond me. To the 500 women out of 1,000 who said they were moody “a lot” — you’re allowed. In a world where misogynistic surveys like this still exist, where the majority of a group of 1,000 men want you to be sunshine and butterflies, you just might indeed be feeling pretty damn grumpy.
I’m going to borrow some words from the British and call this entire survey bloody rubbish, though, so you can take it off the ridiculous list of day ruiners we’ve been allotted.
