Go Home, Lady

Yesterday the Fort Worth Weekly posted an article about W7th, and it’s got me bit fired up. My contemporaries and I hear nearly constant attacks on the W7th entertainment district, and some of the criticisms are fair, occasionally spot on.  

But this article is lazy journalism. Written by a self-proclaimed home-body with no interest or desire to leave the house, let alone go to the busiest bar district in Fort Worth. She starts by rating the Bruschetta at Social House a 6/10 and this felt like a personal attack, that bruschetta is one of my favorite foods in the district. She then specifically tells us not to expect her to remember the names of the bars she went to, because there are too many and they run together. Keeping track of where you are, and have been for an assignment feels like journalism 101 to me, and not all that hard considering the bars in W7th are so well branded they give the Dallas Cowboys a run for their money. She goes on to complain about the migraine-inducing house music and uncomfortable barstools, and an Irish Pub with Notre Damn fans being too exited about the game for her comfort. 

The plot really starts to unravel for me as she starts to shoe-horn in a story about feminism in the work place (an irony considering she was too afraid to tell her presumably male editor that the assignment wasn’t for her, because bars are not for her) and the general safety of women in a bar district. She talks about the uniforms she saw at many of the bars, scantily clad women, their male counterparts in comfortable pants and branded t’shirts. This line isn’t a new one, and I’m absolutely not going to tell you that these women aren’t overtly sexualized, or that harassment doesn’t happen. I’m going to push back on the idea that these women don’t have a choice in the matter, the author is placing these women in the object category as much as the men who tip them more because they’re wearing a leotard and contoured their boobs. Every woman I’ve met on 7th street is smart and talented, you have to be to work in a job this physically and mentally demanding, especially at this level. A woman working on 7th street can get a job at practically any bar in North Texas, they have the skills, and the powerhouse of recognition in the industry to claim any bar job they want, but they choose to stay, for the money or the vibes, I’m not the one to say for them. 

The author made some okay points like how she wasn’t harassed, how the drinks where better priced than she anticipated, and most importantly that she’d be more comfortable on her couch with a bowl ice cream than in any bar ever at all. She missed a thousand and one hot takes a person could have about 7th street and jumped straight to making a half-baked statement about the autonomy of women in the industry, or the intersection of feminism and clubs. Points that could be argued, but not by the self proclaimed mom-friend who went home at 10pm visits four bars.

P.S. Bottled Blonde is not for people who want to dance but don’t want a full on club, that shit is the club.