PINK IS FOR EVERYONE

I love presents. And I love babies.

So why do baby showers blow?

I also love sherbet punch — LOVE IT! LOVE IT! LOVE IT! — and pastel mints and boxed wine. Can't get enough. Seriously.

And yet baby showers make me crazy. Why?

I was trying to figure this out on my drive home today from a shower in Kansas City. And the best explanation I could find was the oppressive conversation.

Here is a sample:

"That is cuuuuuuuute."

"That is toooooooooo cute." (said in a manner to outdo simple "cuuuuuuuute"; how would you top "toooooooooo cute"?)

"Isn't that darling?"

"That is sooooooo darling."

Put those four snippets on a two-hour loop and you'll get a pretty good feel for my afternoon.

Don't get me wrong. I go as ga-ga as the next gal over a plush toy or hand-sewn blanket, but my enthusiasm doesn't knock 37 years off my age and 50 points off my IQ (you do the math). Only playing with my dogs does that. But I can't help it. They are soooooo cuuuuute. I luff them sooo much. Oh my God, they are TOO, TOO awesome. (In my defense, what kind of lesbian would I be if I didn't fawn over my pets to a nauseating degree?)

Seriously. Why is it that when certain gatherings of women form it's like a competition to see who can be the most infantile, or most "feminine," as evidenced by being the most over-the-top ga-ga for lace borders and pastel colors and Disney characters? I think I have found a direct correlation between degrees of this behavior and lengths of fake fingernails and eyelashes, but I have yet to subject my hypothesis to rigorous scientific analysis.

Another thing I can't stand about these gatherings is the rampant sexism. You know the drill. If it's a boy, everything has to be blue, and if it's a girl, everything has to be pink, or else your kid will grow up to be some sort of FUCKED-UP GENDERFREAK, aka GAY. The mother-to-be at this shower — she's having a boy — opened a set of plastic pacifiers that looked like gangsta bling, and someone seriously uttered the question: "Aren't those sort of girly?" To which everyone was quick to point out that, no, not really, they're fine because yellow can be for boys or girls. Whew. Disaster averted.

Man, I'd really like to go to a shower and bring, I don't know, say an ORANGE gift with a card that reads: "Here's hoping your daughter is a great big dyke with a great big IQ and an equally large and age-appropriate vocabulary."

Another thing I find unpleasant about these events, especially this one, where a lot of people are relatives or old family friends, is that you get a sense that people are whispering behind your back. You get this sense mainly because you are whispering behind their backs. But whereas you are saying stuff like, "Did she change her hair color?" or "Has she lost a bunch of weight," they are saying, "Does she still not like men?" or "This must be hard for her since lesbians are barren." If you think I'm just being paranoid, you don't know my family and their friends. Very possibly they are thinking that I did not have enough pink things in my childhood. Or possibly too many upside down pink triangles — perhaps some ill-conceived pie-shaped mobile over my crib put me off men.

I don't approve of smoking, but I have to say my favorite women at this shower were the ones who ducked outside periodically to get a big lungful of bitter tar and nicotine — an antidote, as it were, to the sickly sweet girly sugar air inside. They'd come back all refreshed, fortified for another round of cotton-candy emotional display.

Some other things I liked about this shower besides the smokers: the cream puffs from Costco; the nut dish; this seventh-grader named Kaylyn or Katelyn or something who just got back from a trip to France, Italy and Greece (she was sister of the mom-to-be and, hands-down, the smartest person there); my mom, who wrote in a card to the mom-to-be, her granddaughter, that "Motherhood is the hardest and best thing in the world"; and my great aunt (pictured below with my niece), who was a nun for 28 years — who lived in a convent of scholarly women for 28 years — and who can sit in a gathering of unparalleled silliness and behave — bless her soul — as if every woman there were the most dignified and worthy human being on the planet.