30 Things Every Woman Should Have And Should Know By The Time She's 30

i think it's okay to still point out that shitty things are shitty esp when they're from 1997 and being reposted without irony on huffington post in 2012

it's also okay to make jokes about them bc laughing is fun

Could someone post the male equivalent of this list so I can see which 30 things I am most assuredly failing at?

since a month or so ago, when my mother said to me 'you're going to be 30 next year!' (which i am but i am 28 right now, okay) i have been feeling a lot of oh-god-i'm-nearly-30 type pressure. oh god i'm nearly 30 and i haven't got my shit together, oh god i'm nearly 30 and i have unreasonable expectations about how chill it's going to be to be a thirtysomething, oh god i'm nearly 30 and i haven't made enough bad choices in my 20s to pass muster as someone who's successfully 'done' their 20s, all of it.

and so even though i am not a women's mag kind of woman this sort of thing can catch me pretty hard - not the contents of the list itself, but the idea that there is a list, and i should be getting on top of it.

oh my days b_g that kitten umbrella!!!

confession: I bought the official umbrella that was used in rihanna's music video

clear umbrellas are the best, so much fun to stand under one during a downpour

Anyone remember the umbrella fetishist that posted here a few years back?

oh god i'm nearly 30 and i haven't got my shit together

I didn't start feeling like this until I was about 38 or 39.

I have had so many umbrellas die on me in my life that I could never imagine getting a nice one

the key thing is not to care about traditional measures of getting ones shit together

Getting your shit together is a temporary achievement...Everything falls part in the end.

I have had so many umbrellas die on me in my life that I could never imagine getting a nice one

― iatee, Thursday, April 26, 2012 6:43 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

heh I've always wondered why every single store in NYC carries the same generic black umbrella

somebody should do a study about it, like that one about the greek coffee cups

If anything, my shit has become ever-more-disparate in the five years since my thirtieth.

Probably something I should talk to a proctologist about.

i used to have this fucking awesome paul frank umbrella that, one of the big transparent ones, made of blue plastic, with some kind of monkey-based design. i was going to japan for a term and so i took it with, thinking, it's going to be the rainy season and i'll have a cute umbrella that will be different from the cute umbrellas everyone else has, it'll be awesome. and then it turned out that in japan, or at least in the town and university where i was, everyone had plain umbrellas, the transparent ones you could get in the convenience store or collapsible ones from muji. but cute character umbrellas were just... not done. so not cool.

These let-make-everyone-feel-inadequate lists not unique to women's mags btw - the likes of Esquire and even Popular Mechanics frequently publish, say, "25 Things Every Man Needs to Know" (#1 on Esquire's list: skinning a moose. Yeah, i really need to know how to do that), or "31 Things Every Man Should Own" ("Road Atlas - the man who only uses a GPS is half a man"). Here's ''75 Skills Every Man Should Master'' (#25: "Drive an eightpenny nail into a treated two-by-four without thinking about it"). And act your age: "Things a Man Should Never Do After the Age of 30" - (#27: "Break up with a girlfriend by e-mail").

Actually, you shouln't do that after the age of 14 ....

let- = let's-

why would you want to go *back to* an ex b/f if he 'reminded you how far you've come'. what horseshit.

i mean lad's mags are no better obv but .. gimme a break

Much as I agree that this list is horseshit, I think you're misreading that one. It means two separate exes. One who you could imagine going back to. And another one who reminds you how far you've come.

Not sure if anyone's already said so but this list is as OLD AS THE HILLS, I have seen it appear and re appear in Cosmo, newspapers, Facebook posts and so on for a long time.

And it still blows.

this list is as OLD AS THE HILLS, I have seen it appear and re appear

Welp, AOL bought HuffPo for ~$365 million to provide it with more content.

30 lists every IPO buyout should publish on its website before 30 days

Yeah trayce I said it earlier. I have seen this list many many times. Didn't realize it at first but was then like hang on a sec!

Ah sorry! I skimmed the thread before I posted that :(

confession: I bought the official umbrella that was used in rihanna's music video

omg this is my favourite thing about this thread by far!!!

also everyone who isn't 30 yet, don't worry about being 30!!! worry more about not being an asshole in life!!!

otm

Worry about letting things you want to do slide without DOING THEM, you will regret it I say!!! DOnt think "I can do that later/when I have more money/when I have time". Carpe the damn diem.

I've done most of the man things, but I have never thrown a punch ;_;

I threw a punch! Since I'm a woman and don't need to have done that, you can have mine.

It was a friend of my husband's at a NYE party. He lives out of Canada and always treats me like a toy when he comes home to visit? I had enough of him swatting at me for a reason I can't recall, so I punched him. He got all bent out of shape about it even though he'd pawed at me 30+ times over the course of the evening!

anyone posting here who poo-poos the Esquire list should re-read #6 and feel slightly ashamed

list weak like clock radio speakers

the kiss thing only gets to me because it seems to imply that you shouldn't *have* to use your words, and that verbally expressing your desire (or lack thereof) needn't occur because -- uh, women need to be wily masters of non-verbal communication? by the time they're 30? idk, it just feel like it's the male-active vs female-passive thing again. women as subtle manipulators, men as sexual agents.

men as sexual agents

this is the best job interview ever btw

god forbid you want sex enough to actually say it. xp

lol dan

from the man no do >30 list:

41. Use Internet acronyms, especially ROFL and LOL.

otm

i used to subscribe to esquire in college. i must've been insecure about my masculinity (i was). it is truly one of the worst magazines.

That's OK, nobody buys it after they are 30.

hahaha

The only "lifestyle" magazine I ever had a subscription to was Men's Fitness, and that was solely for the workouts; once their editorial tone started shifting more towards "and here's how you should LIVE, brah" I canceled it (and then got fat, lol *sob*)

I decided never to buy magazines like that after an incident when I was 17 and a guy in my class had a copy of GQ and was like "Yeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaah this is how to be a man, snoball, betcha don't know anything about that, eh? Eh? Eh? Eh? Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh?!", all the while waving it in my face, and I realised that he was just a colossal twunt and the magazine may have only been partly responsible for that, but responsible enough for me to avoid that kind of thing.

Waving the magazine in my face, I should say.

this is gonna sound obvious but all these kinds of magazines tap into real concerns ppl have about who they are and how to perform gender roles in society. i'm speaking about men's magazines bc that's my personal experience, but i imagine there are similar dynamics at play in women's magazines. rather than try to open up the discourse about what it means to a man in 2012 and some of the many possible/legitimate ways to perform maleness, magazines like esquire tap into this fantasy half-cribbed from 1950s aesthetic-fetishism and half from fratboy prolonged adolescence and then sell them to ppl as the only real standard of maleness. even when the lesson is coming from the right place (cf 'treat women with respect'), it is still backed by this reactionary incoherence ('bc a strong man needs to take care of a weak woman'). i'm not surprised young ppl have latched onto 'this is how to be a man, snoball,' bc that's what is explicitly being sold and there is not enough to counter it. see also: men's movements blah, this man's blog teaches you how to live, grantland (lulz), etc.

I flicked through a copy of "Chap" magazine this lunchtime.

What's that all about, then?

That Esquire list is seriously "Traits 1-49 of people who read Esquire", also WTF at people shouldn't play fantasy sports after 30, I mean maybe "don't talk about your fantasy team like people give a shit" but seriously like 80% of the people I know who are into fantasy are 30+

My 40-something gf susbcribes to Esquire, oddly enough. I read it occasionally. I mostly skip the fashion and 'how to be a man' shit but there's occasionally a good article in it.

Magazines are largely just advertisements, anyway, just less obviously so in the 'content' so I largely ignore any advice or normative stuff as being slightly less than perfectly disinterested.