On the Addictive Seduction of Tools

Hot chick plus tools equals even hotter chick.

It's not even really additive, it's more like exponential, HC+T=H3. Don't believe me?

Okay, it's not a power tool. Gets the job done, though, DOESN'T IT.

That's what I thought you said. 

Hollywood uses the trope of the "hot-girl-who-fixes-stuff" to make otherwise unrelatable ridiculously perfect model/actresses seem more like the girl next door, which to guys means "I could talk to that girl and therefore I could possibly get that girl" and to girls means "I could possibly be that girl". Take the Transformers franchise. Right off the bat we see gorgeous, almost impossibly sexy Megan Fox playing what looks to be the token hot screaming girl along for the ride so she can get with the hero in the end--except about five minutes later, she fixes the hero's car for him. Instantly girls like her because she's not afraid to get dirty; she's not just ornamental, she has interests. She's smart. Instantly guys love her because she's not afraid to get dirty, and she's not afraid to get dirty in that tiny mini skirt. And we have buy in.

We could talk particle physics if you'd rather.

Transformers audiences really liked that Hot-Fix-Stuff-Girl archetype so for Transformers 4: Age of Extinction they trotted it out again with Nicola Peltz inexplicably playing Mark Wahlberg's daughter (she'll probably play his love interest in their next project). About five minutes into our introduction to her character, we see what looks like the set up for the Hot-Fix-Stuff-Girl--she goes to check a mailbox full of junk with a sign that says "Repairs" and she loads up all the mechanical looking metal stuff into a wagon that she totes home. She quickly dispels our illusions, though, when she drops off the stuff for her dad without touching it and goes inside to change her clothes into another revealing, impossibly impractical outfit and touch up her lip gloss. Not even her absurd hotness was enough to keep guys from thinking she was annoying. A hot girl in booty shorts is nice; but a hot girl with a drill? That's the whole package. There's a psychological thing when women are using tools; it's an empowerment, a feeling that we can do anything, conquer anything, that we're completely able and independent, that we are the masters of our own universe. Confidence, in short; confidence ramps up our own mental hotness, translates into physical attractiveness (some of the science behind why confidence trumps attractiveness in the first place) and voila. Hot Fix Stuff Girl.

It's seductive. For us, I mean. I want to feel that way all the time. Even Regular Fix Stuff Girl has a power of her own.

So this weekend I was looking at the half-finished chicken run in my garage; then at the half-grown chickens hopping up on top of their feeder to peer at me over the top of their box. They want out and they want out NOW and they don't care if they have to lay eggs under my car to do it. Problem was, with the man of the house out of town, there was no one to finish the run. 

I looked at the chicken wire. 

I looked at the staple gun. 

I'm not going to lie. I put on some flats. 

I started with the chicken wire and the staple gun, covering the sides of the chicken run; except three staples in the gun ran out of ammo. This, in case you were wondering, is my greatest fear--find the right staples, find the right driver bit, choose the right tool, use the right screw--but I took a deep breath and crossed my fingers that maybe there were staples some place nearby and that I could figure out how to combine them with the gun. Yes on the staples! No on the being able to load the staple gun. Alright. Have master's degree. Can load simple tool. Faugh! Cannot load simple tool. Can't be this hard. Must be me making it harder. Possible just dropping the staples into the gun is the loading procedure? Success! And shame, as that was stupid. Staple chicken wire to frame. Hmm. Went quite quickly. Could...possibly...use circular power saw thingy, conceivably to cut wood, to actually and literally cut wood to finish sides? Peer at power saw thingy. Where is "on" button? Decide this is doomed to failure since am not even enough of a Hot Fix Stuff Girl to turn power tools on. Call actual Fix Stuff Girl to ask her to come do it for me. She laughs and refuses but tells me where to find the "on" (a squeezy handle thing, hurrah!) and tells me to summon up my inner Rosie-the-Riveter and do the job myself. 

In the next two hours I used a staple gun, cut chicken wire with wire cutters, pre-drilled holes, used an electric screwdriver, and (after a call to a friend to bolster my courage) used a compound miter saw. When I stood up my back and legs were aching from bending and kneeling but I hadn't even noticed; the two hours had passed and the light had almost completely faded without me even realizing it. I felt amazing. I used a power saw to cut wood! I made that wood be the right size and I put it together with other wood! I didn't have to have someone from the hardware store cut it for me, I used those tools to mold that galvanized steel and pine into a thing to hold my chickens LIKE A BOSS. I basically called everyone I knew. I took about forty pictures and messaged them to everyone in my contact list. Stinking of galvanized steel and sawdust and my own sweat, I felt like I was glowing. I want more. I need to use that saw again. I start looking at the scrap wood and imagining planter boxes. I have an urge to go to the hardware store. 

And that's when my neighbors started wandering over to ask what I was building. Bubbling over with excitement I showed them the chicken run and showed them the chickens, talked all about how easy they were to care for and all the great things there were going to do for our compost, our weeds and our garden, the different colors of eggs they lay, the construction of the coop, and basically preached the chicken chapters of the Gospel of Urban Farming. 

"I've been wanting chickens," he tells me. "I've been wanting them for a while. You're telling me it's this easy?" I realize as he looks at the coop and the drill at my feet and my sawdust-covered hands the subtext is if this little Fix Stuff Girl can do it, I sure as hell could... and that doesn't bother me a bit. In his Ted Talk "My Subversive (Garden) Plot" Roger Doiron calls the Urban Farming/Food Gardening movement "Where the Boys Aren't"; while taking men to task for allowing the burden and responsibility of feeding the country and the world to fall on the women, he challenges women to find inventive ways to bring the boys to the yard. This might just be it, a language that both genders can speak, a language of building and simplicity and straight-forward tasks, and maybe a little competitiveness to empower both sides to pick up their power drills, whether to fix a cabinet or a car or to build a raised bed or a beehive. 

I hope so. Because actually, Hot Fix Stuff Guy?

That's...like, definitely a thing.