Is chivalry dead?

The female perspective of a male-female debate over the health of chivalry.

I groaned under the weight of a 24-case of water bottles. There was a click sound and the flame of his Bic lighter flashed across his face. Our eyes locked as he shoved the lighter into his pocket and shuffled past. I moved the case to my left hip and got the door myself.

When a friend said she would have been surprised if he had gotten the door for me, I realized she was right. These days, there aren't any gentlemen opening doors for us ladies or pushing the buttons on the elevator when our hands are full. Instead, there are dudes who wait for you to open the door and dudes who push the door-close button just as you finally reach the elevator, out of breath.

It made me wonder: Whatever happened to good old chivalry?

"Guys on [Temple's] campus rarely hold the door for you when you're leaving the Student Center," Madison Carter, 20, said. "But my all-time favorite pet peeve is when you drop your books or need some kind of assistance and guys look at you for a split second and then proceed with whatever trivial task they were doing."

Chivalry, once the mark of a well-raised catch, is rarely done for chivalry's sake. Whereas, in the past, it was common for a man to lay down his coat over a puddle to protect a woman's skirts from mud, guys today seem to only think twice about their manners when it could help them get laid.

Consider the catcall epidemic. When someone in my dorm burned popcorn at 3 a.m. and my friend and I went outside to wait out the fire alarms, every man who passed us asked how we were. I've had 20 minutes of sleep and I'm wearing flip-flops and socks -- am I supposed to swoon at you because you were polite enough to ask how I am?

These shows of "politeness" -- and crudeness, in the case of whistling -- make guys seem like male peacocks spreading their tale feathers.

Sure, there is the occasional polite young man who knows how to treat us ladies and doesn't want anything in return. But, for the most part, chivalry is going the way of the Bali Tiger.

I guess the question is really whether or not the fact that a guy boards the bus before you is enough to make or break the attraction. The answer to this depends on the person, as my friend Michele Hannon, 20, and I concluded one night.

If you and a guy share the same passion about something or if he brightens every day you're with him, it just might be worth giving up those traditional shows of chivalry.

I wrote this 500-word piece for Fourteenth Street magazine's May 2010 issue.