https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/the-texanist-mother-unhappy-non-texan-girlfriend/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Web Social&utm_content=texanist
I’m a senior at Texas A&M and I am happy to report that I have a girlfriend. She’s also a senior and we’ll both graduate this spring, at which time we’ll hopefully each have a job in our respective fields in Houston. The problem is, she’s from Wisconsin and my mom, a rabidly native Texan, sensing that things are progressing, has begun to put out subtle signals that she’d rather I marry a girl from Texas. In fact, she actually said this directly to me the last time I saw her. I thought she was joking at first, but she’s serious. This is crazy, right? How do I convince my mom that her feelings toward my Wisconsin girlfriend are wrong and that she ought to just be happy for us?
Name Withheld, College Station
A: It warms the cockles of the Texanist’s hardened old heart to hear about a budding love between two young Aggies. Congratulations to you both. It’s great to know, despite all the hurly-burly out there today, what with the political pandemonium, the climate crisis, and the general prickliness, that romance perseveres. And between two Aggies no less.
You know, time was, such amorousness amongst Ags was more of a challenge than it is today. Although Texas A&M University opened its doors as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas way back in in 1876, it didn’t begin enrolling women on an equal basis until nearly a hundred years later, in 1971. On a straight sexism level, the foolishness of this type of exclusion is, of course, well documented.