There is a wonderful black-and-white photograph of my grandparents when they were a young couple in the 1930s. Grandpa Nat sports a confident Sinatra grin, his arm around the younger Barbara who stands thin and prim, wedge heels tight together and her body wrapped in a long wool coat. A man and the woman he courted, taking on life in the face of the Depression and the coming war that would draft him while she was left behind to nurse their newborn son, my uncle.
(left, flash ahead to the genus homo erectus, Portland variety)Eighty years later and we have the easygoing hipster couples I see here in Portland with nary an opinion or a spine between them. He has no muscles, she has no ass. He wears tight jeans, she wears tight jeans. He wears plaid flannel shirts, she does the same.
They both have tattoos that are more lifestyle accessories than signs of hard living or military camaraderie. They like the same kitschy folk bands that are not fueled by testosterone but accented by the pings of xylophones. The only way you can tell them apart is that he has a beard and she has bangs.
Meanwhile in the general female population seen downtown or in malls, they all wear the same provocative outfit regardless of age: tall hooker boots made of synthetic leather, sleek tights that show every curve and crevice in titillating detail, and some cute, cheap top from Target that accentuates the best features of their bust. From behind you can't tell if they're 15, 30, or 45. (If for propriety's sake you're "lucky," at least they'll be wearing a monochrome "skirt" made of the flimsiest t-shirt material.)
As a man you can't help but look at their exposed crotches and become aroused--it's an unexpected free striptease on a public street --but you will not be satisfied. Even though this is how prostitutes dress to sell their bodies, it's just modern women's way of feeling "sexy and empowered." Never mind that they're completely oblivious to the alliance between the gay fashion designer, the coked-up celebrity endorsee, and the gossip magazine racket that convinced them that the whole tacky getup was this year's trend.
Frankly, I'd rather see women in a (tasteful) dress or skirt than be subjected to this incessant barrage stimulation without release. It can be intimidating to encounter what looks like a dolled-up hooker on the prowl, easy to be fooled into believing that behind the catwalk strut isn't just another uncreative follower with no real identity or confidence. How do you in good faith hit on a woman dressed like this without treating her like a slut or exposing her as a trendy drone when deep down you can't take her seriously?
(left, average young woman today, not to be confused with a prostitute.)
Apparently today's super-empowered feminized women are oblivious to or simply don't care about the consequences of how their behavior impacts men. "Oh, my outfit provokes you? I and my female sisters will no longer be oppressed so deal with it!"
It's like we're living an inversion of Saudi Arabia, where it's the men who treat women with haughty disregard in public.
But to what end, ladies? You outnumber us in college, every desirable job is open to you, and now there isn't any shame in being immodest even while running errands around town. Look sexy on Friday night at the club, I get it--but showing me a topographical survey of your ass while I'm trying to shop at the goddamn grocery store?! Overweight fifty-year-old women in skin-tight black spandex and fuck-me boots babbling on their cell phones while ordering deli meat?!
Past oppression may be the eternal justification to fall back on in the case of any female act that comes under scrutiny or censure, but my god, consider the sheer banality and shortsightedness of a movement that finds it reasonable, courageous, or at the very least not questionable for women to be hoisting giant bottles of laundry detergent into a shopping cart while their labia is exposed through millimeter-thin gray leggings for all to see!!!
It's an obscenity, a parasitic termite eroding the last vestiges of decency that would make our culture worth fighting to preserve.
Women's whimsical needs are as insatiable as the locust, and since men have been virtually neutralized in our society no pesticide exists to check their blind and ravenous pride parade as it marches in shameless full regalia down every sidewalk from coast to coast.
(left, Walmart world.)Oh, the banality! I really don't think this is the type of zesty female empowerment that Camille Paglia had in mind. At least Hester Prynne and Lady Chatterley knew their society's conventions and understood the consequences their actions would bring. Today's women however are unshackled from cultural mores, liberated beyond the concept of shame, and unconcerned about the impact on others. "If it makes me look hot, propriety be damned!"
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Elsewhere Wyeth reflects on the war between the sexes:
How many of us men graze against woman's warm glow during pleasant exchanges with a female cashier, bank teller, waitress, or phone operator? Saddest damn truth in the wide spectrum of male suffering right there. A truth that is unknown, unseen, and uncomprehended by the so-called intuitive fair sex which lives like a celebrity in complete oblivion to how grueling each day can be for "the other half."
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Philip Wyeth is the pen name of an exasperated observer of the human condition. Having previously lived in Washington, DC, Miami, and Los Angeles, he now finds himself in Portland, Oregon--the spiritual epicenter of America's silent decline which he calls "The White Death."
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First Comment from Brian:
I live in Portland Oregon, and this article is too true. I have actually thanked random women for wearing a dress, by complementing them. The full beard thing I don't understand; perhaps hipster laziness? I sport a Van Dyke, but keep on top of it's trimming. I never understood the tattoo craze, especially a tattoo on a woman's chest; Yuck. You can't improve the beauty of breasts with tattoos.
Perhaps it's because I'm 44 years old, but perhaps today's youth have nothing wholesome to pursue? Everyone in Portland, but me, is in a band. And it seems that most of Portland's young adults want some sort of stardom and notoriety, with little of the effort and work required.
Portland is filled with Left-wing wishful thinkers, and they make me think about going to a church to be around actual different people.
DB said (June 8, 2014):
Wyeth is spot on. I cannot enumerate how many times I have been praised by males for my modest and feminine manner of dress. As a teen, the owner of the arcade always gave me free coins simply in appreciation of my full length dress. He said, "Too few females wear dresses these days. Thank you for dressing like a woman.'
I have received many similar praises over the years. At banks, groceries, when out to dinner... Men do hunger for what has generally been lost. As do women, who also yearn for times when both men and women dressed and lived in their proper roles.
More recently, I had an experience, in a Walmart parking lot. ( The irony!) A young man approached me in his car and rolled down the window. I expected he was going to ask me for directions. But he said, " You are a very attractive woman, I thought you should know that. Thank you for dressing in a manner that no one else does anymore."
This young man was not lustful, or disrespectful. Rather he appreciated my modest feminine manner. I thanked him for his kind words and we went our separate ways. That young man, is a quality person and seeing youth like this gives me hope for the future. Not all youth is lost.
This is my experience. Which proves that quality men are not extinct. Neither are old fashioned values.
BTW- My eldest daughter has followed in my footsteps and she receives the same praises. Oh, and we do not own any denim. :) We don't miss it!