I am The Man. What does that mean? Well, for starters, it means I don't get my own week.
The Ball State University campus holds several promotions devoted to raising awareness for a number of university-sponsored organizations, including Asian American Awareness Week, Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Week and PROUD week.
Awareness weeks are cool because they are kind of like college-level, politically-minded show-and-tell sessions that eradicate ignorance. They offer a platform for under-represented groups to let others know, "This is who we are, this is what we stand for, now please leave the stereotypes to our own stand-up comedians."
And because awareness weeks promote positive insight and diversity, it is probably a good thing they are also becoming increasingly popular. Last week, as a matter of fact, I wasn't alone in seeing several promotions for Vagina-Friendly Week. Well, so much for my "show and tell" analogy.
But the mere fact that the vagina gets its own week raises an interesting issue in and of itself. There are only 52 weeks in the year, my friends. Is it really time to start handing out the few we have left to random parts of human anatomy?
Is the belly-button going to get one before Mormons do? Sure, Mormons have a complex and misunderstood history, but what about the blatant discrimination against outies in this country? It's a toss-up, but I'm getting carried away.
I know that Vagina-Friendly Week is just an attention-grabbing term used to promote women's rights in general, but I feel there is some merit behind the question of how and why one group is deemed worthy of awareness while another is not.
Take myself, for example. I like jumping on bandwagons. But guess what? I'm a straight, white, penis-having, member of the middle class - not one of these four categories has any hope of ever getting its own awareness week. Sure, we can try to put "honky" and "cracker" on our r+â-¬sum+â-¬s.
We can even list off a few stereotypes: can't dance, can't jump, can't dress, secretly racist. But no dice.
There are just too many of us, and we still have to consider the elderly, handicapped, mentally disabled, homeless, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and about thirty off-shoots of any of these movements before we even have a chance to get on the ballot.
After that, AIDS and STDs get an obligatory nod. After all, less racism equals more choices of people to have sex with. Then breast cancer, then regular cancer, then leukemia, of course, because children are the future.
And then? Sure. Then we might consider throwing whitey a bone. But there's just one small problem: After that list, there might only be one week left!
Well, that's an awfully small amount of time per year to raise awareness for such a large group of people, so here's my proposal. In order to promote an eventual understanding of white dudes, I think we should alternate the week each year among the most misrepresented factions of this group.
The first year, Canadians will get a chance to explain themselves. The year after that, Hippies will speak. Then Trekkies, then Metrosexuals, then NASCAR and World Wrestling Entertainment fans could split a week so they can help each other form complete sentences - and so on down the line.
But what becomes of the penis in all this hubbub, you ask? Well, the penis doesn't really need a week to explain itself. It doesn't really even need a whole day. It will probably do just fine being relegated to mid-mornings of the extra day in February on leap years.
There. Now everyone is happy. And come next leap year, hopefully we will all have made a genuine effort toward promoting a better understanding of each other - that, and hopefully we'll all be sleeping in.
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