I've noticed a double standard with the sexes lately that made me go, hmmmm.

The women's movement opened doors to careers and choices. Then gender discrimination lawsuits followed by sexual harassment training gave women workplaces we could work with.

So now the sisters with desk jobs are working in relative comfort, free to see our ideas and dreams to fruition.

And a little reverse sexism.

It's no big deal, really. It's small things that women get away with that men wouldn't.

For example, I wrote a column about UCLA's win over USC in football last year that included a "shout out" on what a hottie UCLA coach Karl Dorrell is. I only threw it in there as a sarcastic nod to the notion that college football wasn't the sort of subject women usually write about — it is an "About Women" column after all.

Afterward, another Advertiser writer pointed out that if a male writer extolled the hotness of a female athlete or coach, he'd be called sexist.

Which is true. In fact, I think it's possible he would have been disciplined.

Around the same time, I was designing a gift guide that included a calendar featuring a man with one of those carved-from-marble kind of bodies wearing ... well, not much. The women of the office drew to my computer screen like paper clips to a magnet. A chorus of oohs and aahs erupted, percolated with giggles and funny asides.

Right then, a passing male colleague said that if a group of men were doing that around the image of a scantily clad woman, they'd get scolded or worse.

"It's a double standard!" he exclaimed.

Yes, it is. I admit it.

There are other examples around the newsroom. My girlfriend's picture of "McDreamy" on her desk. The "Calendario Romano" hanging nearby featuring stunning — but chaste! — men of the cloth. And, thanks to my colleague, I have a clipping of coach Dorrell cutting a dashing figure in Bruin blue.

Not much of that to be found on the desks of my male co-workers — though it may be hidden.

So where is this coming from? Maybe women are just exacting a little revenge for their lifelong objectification. It's fun to turn the tables a bit.

Or maybe it's because girlish cooing over cute guys is perhaps not as sexually charged as, say, the inverse — testosterone-fueled drooling over chicks in bikinis.

Obviously, if our behavior were widespread and more in-your-face in the office, it would have to be curbed. But we're just having a little fun. It's a small thing. We're not going to start promoting guys in tight jeans over frumpier, more qualified men.

Right, ladies?

Reach Christine Strobel at cstrobel@honoluluadvertiser.com.