Hag Dos: Should You Invite Women On The Do?
Progress has its upsides and downsides, doesn’t it. On the one hand, high-speed trains, penicillin and left-handed can openers. On the other, iPhone bores, antibiotic resistance, and the problem of women on stag dos.
Staggered is broadly sceptical of the “hag do”, as mixed stag parties are sometimes known. The men are resistant to a spy from the enemy camp being allowed in, and the women are well aware that as a result they’ll probably be about as welcome as an outbreak of herpes.
There are, nonetheless, grooms who want to celebrate the end of their single days with their female as well as male friends, and we always like to bring you wedding solutions, not wedding problems. So is there a way to make it work?
Noooooooooooo, says Chris, 38, from Essex. “I went to a stag do where the groom’s twin sister was allowed. A lot of us had known her for years and thought of her as one of the lads. To be honest, she was quite rough so it wasn’t like she was going to be pulling anybody or any of that.” (It’s not the most delicate way of putting things, ladies, but that’s what Chris said. This is how it is among men sometimes.)
“We played a bit of golf, then went out for a few drinks in the evening. It got a bit messy, the usual drill, and we ended up in a lapdancing club in the early hours. Nice enough place, and this girl seemed to be cool with it – until she went on the hen do a week later. All the other women were asking her for details about the stag, and she ended up telling them that we’d got the groom a little dance. My missus hasn’t let me go on a stag-do since.”
Women, of course, do talk. Strippers, mankinis, Thai ladyboys – it’s all likely to get passed on and even if the stag hag is cool with it, it’s more than possible that your own more sensitive hen will kick off when she finds out. Under the circumstances, it’s not unreasonable to ask a stag hag to choose between the stag and the hen – otherwise what’s the point of having them separately?
But, but...ping pong...use a bat...
You could also draft an Official Stag Secrets Act encourage her to think before she rats you out to your wives and girlfriends later. It might be that she just doesn’t realise how much you value the “what goes on tour stays on tour” mantra. And thinking back to the great secret-keepers of the past, like the KGB, Staggered is reminded that intimidation can be a great tool to enforce silence. Perhaps if you tell the stag hag that you know where she’s staying during the wedding weekend and if she has blabbed you will stop at nothing until you have sneaked into her room and Immac-ed her eyebrows she will think twice.
Another option to make is simply to tone things down from the textbook booze-and-women festival; it might be that if your groom is the type to have lots of female mates he’s not particularly into laddish nights out anyway.
It can be hard, though, not to make hag parties all about the women – particularly if they’re not hags (or if they are but you’ve passed the number of beers at which you can tell). The point was supposed to be to go off together as men, commune together in the caves and come back as men with hangovers, but mixed gatherings do become more about flirting, about competing for attention, chivalry or whatever – things change.
A lot of the big, old-fashioned public schools, though, have managed to keep the benefits of an all-male environment by letting girls in at the later stages of the party (the sixth form) only. This is a tactic that can be adopted by the stag organiser. You might like to have a daytime activity that’s just for men, and invite women to whatever you’re up to in the evening – or vice versa. There could be an all-male Friday, and a mixed Saturday (ten to one you’ll have a hangover by then anyway and be ready to settle down a bit). Or you could string the whole thing out and have two entirely separate parties, one hag and one stag.
Whether women will actually want to participate is another matter. In some ways it’s flattering to be asked to be one of the lads, and of course if a really good mate asks her to be there on his stag do, she may feel that she shouldn’t say no. In others, it’s perhaps inevitable that she’ll feel a bit of an outsider, and not sure of how to behave.
“I was nervous about being one of only two girls on my friend’s stag do,” says Cumbria girl Anj, 29. “In the end, she and I stuck together a bit. I think we were also a bit more laddish than we might normally be, drinking pints and stuff like that. But after a few of those it all felt quite natural.”
For the hag party to work, there has to be an alliance between stags and hags – to make it work no matter what. A bit like a marriage, only (hopefully) over a lot quicker. But really, in this day and age, with kitchen gadgets for lefties and everything, it should be possible for us to co-exist.
Have you been on a hag do? Tell us about your experiences in the forum, comments field, or at info@iamstaggered.com
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