THIS is a wake up call for women who really believe they are closer to having equal rights in this modern age of clones and clowns. After all, we have the United Nations now and Bush, the crusader of the West, who has come to eliminate all who don’t listen to him to create a brave, new world.
But that is an entirely uncontroversial subject which needs less time and effort. The far more worrying issue is of us, women, becoming invisible in a man’s world, or rather being fooled by various women’s lib organizations run by women, fighting for women’s rights but actually posing as men. The proverbial chip on our shoulder remains in place and it is going to take a long, hard and brutal look at our place in the world to believe that we can function as effectively as men.
We are drowning, ladies, and most of us still don’t even know it. Let’s review the weekly magazines published in the US. Almost all of us have read them from time to time, or at least flipped through them occasionally. These intellectually inspiring publications that come from the ‘civilized’ world of the gloriously rich and famous, where even the streets seem to shine, are on our local supermarket shelves every day of the year. Check out the cover, I guarantee you nine times out of ten it will be a scantily-clad young woman posing seductively for the camera. Oh no, do not be fooled by that smile, someone knows exactly what’s happening. Sadly, I don’t think the woman on the cover knows the extent of her degradation, or what she is inadvertently taking part in.
The editors of these so called glamour magazines have also conveniently failed to recognize the fact that a majority of the female population is above Size 6 and there are old women on the planet, too. Say we ignore the latter and the fact that such a highly youth-oriented society is sending out the dangerous message that things they sell are eternally satisfying and that the utility of a thing will last forever, just like the women on their magazine covers are always young and slim. I suspect their older models are quietly discarded when a wrinkle or two starts to appear. However, we cannot ignore the fact that women are being used as pawns in the big marketing game. They are simply a marketing strategy and from there stems the problem.
Almost every billboard and poster advertising a mobile phone, electric heater, washing machine and even toothpaste has similar pictures. Let us even suppose that the women in question know what they are doing — fully aware that they are being exploited — and they don’t care as long as they make money out of it. That is even worse because that means they think they can do no better. Their self-esteem has fallen so low that they do not mind selling an image of themselves that doesn’t even vaguely resemble who they are.
This is a problem deeply embedded in society and one that is a threat to all women. With all the education and social services that the western world has to offer, they are no more the wiser. In fact, Noam Chomsky observed, talking on the subject of this kind of unawareness: “Education is a form of enforced ignorance.” The so-called developed countries have merely cloaked the problem by trying to glamourize the image of women in order to sell their products and services more effectively. They have defined the concept of glamour and beauty for us.
Ladies and gentlemen, have a mind of your own. Do not be fooled, our dignity is being threatened and we cannot take this for granted. It’s time to wake up!
THIS is a wake up call for women who really believe they are closer to having equal rights in this modern age of clones and clowns. After all, we have the United Nations now and Bush, the crusader of the West, who has come to eliminate all who don’t listen to him to create a brave, new world.
