Horses Sweat, Men Perspire, Women Merely Glow

Sitting in the meager shade afforded by our listing grape arbor, sweat running like a slow-moving river down the boney plate of my spine, the temperature gauge—surely broken?—hovering near 105•, I recall the sage counsel of my mother: ladies (who wish to be seen as such) don’t sweat. Never. Ever. It’s unseemly; a deliberate treading on sanctified male turf; an encroachment of a rank reserved for others. A sweating woman is, in a word, icky. Ladies, she told me, simmer. They smolder. They flush, or they blush, but they do not, regardless of the temperature, independent of the heat, sweat.
A red-faced man can be endured, the bleeding crescent of sweat staining the armpits of his cotton shirt like an endearing tattoo, a symbol of strength and power, irrefutable proof of his efforts on our behalf. But a lady, sitting primly in the shade, a glass of iced-tea perched prettily on her knee, legs crossed daintily at the ankles, has no reason to produce these slick, salty summer waters, no cause at all to require a hasty swabbing. It’s beyond the call of her chemistry, apparently.
Sitting in the one hundred and five degree Sonoma shade, producing enough water to single-handedly sustain a crop of tomatoes through the month of July, I recall my dear mother’s finishing-school advice once more. Sorry, Mom. Again.