Push or Pull: A Matter of Gender?

The other day (and why is it always the other day, not that day?) for reasons I can't go into (i.e. National Security purposes) I found myself at Wal-Mart with a few idle minutes. Before I knew it I was knee-deep in a curious study of shopping habits that might just reveal some deeper male-female differences. In an admittedly small sample group (and anyone wishing to fund further study, let me know) I noticed two men pulling their shopping carts through the aisles. There were certainly a few men who chose the more traditional method of standing behind the cart and pushing it, but I saw no women pulling carts--all the women were pushers. Got me thinking, as most such nonsense does.

Could it be a macho thing? Does standing beside your shopping cart at the front and pulling it create a greater feeling of masculinity than standing behind it and pushing it? Not to my eyes, but then again, the few times I shop and require the need of a shopping cart, I'm always partial to pushing. It brings me back to my younger days helping mom at the grocery store (we never used the term supermarket). Usually I was the gofer, being sent into the thicket of Heinen's to bring back easily found items like a loaf of bread or a couple mega-cans of Hi-C. If mom didn't need as much help, or she wanted to be free of my pesky presence for a few minutes, she'd send me to get cereal. Now is there a greater small thrill or bigger conundrum for a little boy than choosing the week's cereal? My God sometimes I'd stand in the cereal aisle for minutes upon minutes weighing all the options, which basically boiled down to balancing two important but not always mutually inclusive factors--taste and prize. A not so scrumptious cereal may come with the most awesome prize. Can I tolerate eating that cereal for a whole week or maybe two (sometimes it seemed the best prize/worst cereal came in the largest box) just for the thrill (usually a pretty momentary one) of digging down into the box, claiming the prize, and then seeing if it actually worked or matched the fun promised on the outside of the box? Little did I know such philosophical thought-juggling at such a young age was the seed-sowing for spitoutyourgum. Anyway, sometimes mom let me commandeer the cart and navigate through the aisles. In those instances I took great pride in obeying all traffic customs, like I was some big rig driver (I even signaled my left turns with an outstretched arm and made beep beep sounds when I had to back up). Time passed, though, and I realized I was ready for bigger challenges when I flipped off two old ladies pushing their carts the wrong way in the frozen food section.

But back to my point. Is there something inherently masculine about pulling and feminine about pushing? Would men rather pull, women push? Does childbirth naturally incline women to push? Is there anything similarly unique to males that inclines them to pull?  It seems that only wives get stuck with the "pushy" tag, not husbands (although I'm sure the phenomenon exists, and maybe is not really such a phenomenon). Is the phrase "pull your own weight" essentially a macho one? I don't know the answers, but watching two guys pull shopping carts, which seem to be made to push, has me wondering.

Would you rather push or pull? Of course, context is required to answer that question. Most doors, it seems to me, are more convenient to push than to pull. For a couple years now I've been bothered by a door in a remodeled place. It's a pull door but something about it makes me think it is and should be a push one. Every time I have to use it I'm jolted a bit. Turns out, I realize now, it's a men's room door; maybe the remodelers were trying to make a point (I'll have to check out the adjacent women's room door next time I'm there to see if it's push). In considering all of this I came upon the beatific realization that homes offer the ultimate balance of masculine pull and feminine push--going in, the storm door pulls, the big ornamental door pushes, how quaintly balanced (it was a full five minutes before the beatific gave way to the practical and the mechanically disinclined engineer in me realized that two pull or two push doors in such close proximity wouldn't make any sense). Why don't all those "strongest men in the world" competitions have guys push airplanes instead of pull them? Wouldn't it seem more appropriate to push rank on someone rather than pull rank?

Well, I believe I've pushed this idea further than it warrants. Time to pull myself out of this morass and push off. Two guys in a Wal-Mart can really push all the wrong buttons in me and pull me way off course.