Joni was right – Sex Sells Everything – Sex Kills…..

You know, I wrote a poem back a number of years ago called, “I Don’t Understand Why Women Wear Make-up”, and I was being totally honest and truthful when I wrote the piece….because I have never understood the human penchant for decorating our bodies and sort of jazzin’ ourselves up. I think back in the mists of time, sort of at the beginning of everything, perhaps jazzing yourself up might help you get a better mate or something like that…..important stuff back when everybody was living in caves and fightin’ saber tooth tigers for dinner.

But something that shouldn’t be important in the least as we stumble through the 21st century. Life on the planet really shouldn’t have anything to do with image. But, the way we’re living, it’s got everything to do with image….I’ve read or heard a thousand times how hard it is to be a young woman in our society because of the monster pressure over image and body size and shape….all this kind of thing should be gone from our world. If we want any type of equality on the planet, we have to get beyond image and appearance….

What’s that I just wrote? We’ve got to get beyond image and appearance in our societies….wow….that actually includes stuff like skin colour doesn’t it? We need to totally and absolutely learn to respect each other’s differences – but, if we’re going to survive as a species, we need to totally and absolutely pull together like a collective. It may indeed be all well and good for us to live our personal lives as individuals and to be “different”, but, somehow, we also need to be the same. We all have to work together to solve the ginormous geopolitical and socioeconomic issues we are facing. Issues like climate change and poverty and hunger can’t be solved by people working alone, or even in small groups….it’s gonna take all of us.

I mean, there’s no doubt that there’s been huge oppression of all types of folks on the planet over the years. In fact, if you’re a student of history, or even if you’ve read and studied a lot of history, you know that pretty well every group and subgroup of humans has had the shit kicked out of them at one point or another….I, for example, am a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant….the common WASP…..my life has been one of privilege – I understand that…..but 1,000-2,000 years ago, my ancestors in the British Isles were raped and pillaged and murdered and butchered at an astonishing rate….my ancestors may not have felt totally privileged.

But back on point….anyway, it’s fine for people to get all jazzed up with jewellery and make-up and tattoos and piercings and trendy clothes and all that sort of thing. But it seems to sort of turn into a competition and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. We’ve managed to do away with or fundamentally change old-fashioned things like “Beauty Contests” because we realized they were so profoundly sexist….we’ve gotten rid of most “men’s clubs” and we’re working diligently away trying to bring more and more equity into our societies. But as long as fashion, makeup and image are such a huge part of our world, it’s very unlikely we’ll ever achieve much equity. Because everybody’s in this huge competition to see who’s looking the best….who’s the sexiest man or woman alive…..it’s really wrong-headed.

And, of course, the thing that’s totally surprised me about where we’ve ended up as a society is that I lived through the 1960’s – that decade of peace, love and violence….when quite a bunch of women in our society burned their bras, stopped shaving their body hair and also stopped jazzing themselves up…..because they wanted to be judged as people – humans - and not sex objects. Don’t really see hardly anyone living that type of lifestyle these days…..Women and, of course, men are all totally caught in the great contest to be the most gorgeous, or the most desireable, or the most something…..

Nope, I’ve been accused of being a communist on a number of occasions…..and in the area of image, I’m totally there. Image shouldn’t be something that sets us apart as human beings…..it’s all right, I suppose, to look good….but at what cost…..reminds me of a Kurt Vonnegut Jr. story…..it’s a futuristic story about a society where if you’re deemed too beautiful, you’ve got to wear a bag over your head, and if you can run too fast, you have to carry around a weight – just to even things out – so we’re all “equal”……remember, it’s okay for you to be an individual in society, but you must also be part of the collective – like the Borg…..resistance is futile…..