Who speaks for Ken?
Let me try.
More than a decade ago, on a train from St. Paul to Chicago, a young woman boarded wearing very short athletic shorts. Emblazoned in the back, across her ass, was a single word: Pink! It was a challenge to men, a call to battle even, but little did she know that men and women see pink differently.
Once, walking with a male friend, after we had just received verbal abuse from a feminist or feminist-like chick, which was doubtless deserved? To set the scene. My friend moaned about our sinking status as men. We were sure then and are still sure today that women are superior beings. Increasingly, they don’t need us anymore, even for procreation. Me and my buddy knew that already back then. But, he smiled ruefully.
“At least,” my friend said, “we don’t have to wear makeup.”
No less an authority than the Washington Post recently pointed out that men are lost in today’s society. This is a new mantra and, basically, it's true. Violence, drug abuse/alcoholism, education levels, employment—whatever the measure, we’re either too high or too low, compared to the chicks.
The New Yorker just ran a painful story about men, who are less well-endowed than me for example, who allow themselves to be butchered by doctors in order to enhance their hang. Can you believe that shit?
All in service of a yawning great, unsatisfiable and pitiless vagina. Not to raise a male call to arms or anything, but many men—not including me—find theirselves inadequate when it comes time to satisfy the unsatisfiable Barbie or Black Barbie. Chinese chicks and Latinas, not so much.
It isn’t pretty.
What about makeup? Why would a sentient human being spread petroleum-based products across her cheeks in our present enlightened era?
Women will tell you without hesitation that they do not dress or apply makeup just for men, indeed women say that they do not have to explain their choices at all, “Our bodies, ourselves,” again a feminist call to arms.
But who is it for if not guys?
Isn’t turnabout fair play? Aren’t health issues fair game? Paying a surgeon to slice open your breast, or your ass, and implant bags of saline, to give you more bounce walking down the street? Isn’t there something pathological about that? Especially if you don’t care what others think.
It's mind-boggling, bro.
False acrylic nails, half-an-inch or more, like ancient Chinese mandarins. False eyelashes, again half-an-inch long, doesn't that interfere with driving? And every other manual task, right? Hello!
How much money goes to a cosmetic and fashion industry that uses laboratory animals for testing and requires petrochemicals for production?
Who wants to wear all that shit, in this heat? That's Ken's question. Especially when the heat index is enough to kill? Pink! What exactly does that mean? Get your hair cut and move on. Yes, like a guy.
Ranting aside, you have to respect Barbie nonetheless.
During my childhood in the Sixties little black girls played with Barbie, if their families could afford her. Barbie was not black but dolls were not black and the little girls who were my sisters and my friends played with what they had. The magic of playing with Barbie, that you could imagine her doing anything, was felt by little colored girls too.
She was impressive, she could pose to fit any narrative, much more than G.I. Joe for example, who only played tough guy and is long buried now and forgotten.
As a feminist, Barbie knew what she wanted and when boyfriend Ken first showed up she had him right away by the nuts.
Is that a cry for understanding that we see forming on his speechless plastic lips, as he rides in the passenger seat next to Barbie with the top down?
Later, he is posed at the restaurant—while paying for dinner. Together with a hefty tip, in order to show that he would be a good provider. Barbie is away in the Ladies Room powdering her nose and “freshening” her makeup.
What are we to make of Ken's scribbled note on the check, directed at the wait person, “Help! I'm being exploited!”
No comments:
Post a Comment