This post might rub a few people the wrong way, but look, this is really just my personal opinion. It's not a commentary on how I think things should or shouldn't be, it's just a write-up on the way I see it. Please don't hate me!

The concept of the bachelorette party (aka the hens do) is a wholly alien one to me. I have been to many and have had heaps of fun, don't get me wrong, and I definitely appreciate being invited and getting the chance to be a part of it! But the fact that they are a thing remains personally befuddling.

Historically, my friendship groups have been predominantly male. That's not to say I didn't have friendships with girls or aren't close to girls, it's just that for the most part, I hung out with way more guys than girls. Generally speaking, in a big group of people, I tended to gravitate towards talking to the guys. This isn't because the girls were bad or mean or anything like that. In fact, if you know me at all, the reason seems obvious: the majority of my interests tend towards those "traditionally" viewed to be held by guys.

More accurately, both my sister and I were raised in an androgynous way. We explored interests because we found them interesting, and we seldom noticed (or cared) what genders explored them alongside us.

The example I love to give is that we had far more Hot Wheels cars than Barbie dolls, and frequently tried to find ways to attach the Hot Wheels cars to our Barbies' feet as roller skates. We loved Lego even before the Paradisa set came out, and we begged and begged for Nerf guns from a young age (we got Super Soakers instead, which I think is my mum's way of making she never had vacuum up the odd Nerf dart). We just didn't see gendered stuff when it came to what we liked. Neither my sister nor I wore or had any interest in makeup until our late 20s; it's not that we thought makeup was bad or that it was too girly for us (and there's nothing wrong with being girly, either!). It's more that we just weren't interested in it; it wasn't on my radar and I'd spend my money on magic tricks and video games rather than foundation or eyeliner!

But as we got older and the gender divide seemed to broaden right around the puberty mark, we did begin to notice that we were making friends far more readily and quickly with boys than with girls.

I don't know if it's my age group or the local culture, but since moving to Perth I've found that you're kind of "expected" to get along better with people your own gender. I find this bizarre and perhaps worthy of its own sort of exploration. I don't have a problem with it necessarily; it's just been far more noticeable in Perth than it ever was in the US or anywhere else I've lived. Whatever the cause, it does mean that the gender split across my friendship groups is a bit more even these days than it ever has been.

As you can predict, the idea of a bachelorette party to celebrate my last days as an unwed woman with an all-girl cast creates a weird cognitive disconnect for me. Like, I get that it's a bit of fun with your mates before you enter married life. On that level it sounds awesome, because it's sort of true that the dynamics in a given group change as people start getting married. But I don't know why it's been defined as an all-girls (or all-guys) thing.

An all-girls hens party would exclude some of my best mates, which gives me the sense that this is one of those wedding things that just isn't for me. It's great and excellent if it's something anyone else wants to do, and I am 100% supportive of those for whom it is important! No complaints. I just won't be having one of them for myself, is all.

That's not to say I'm against a pre-wedding bash at all. As a guest, I do totally get the idea of meeting other people who will be at the wedding before the day itself; that sounds like a cool plan. I reckon a Nerf war or laser gun fight sounds pretty freakin' fun, but I might scrap the idea all together given that we have very little time left in which to plan a bash at all.