Just a long vent
Among animals, males tend to be more beautiful. This is called sexual dimorphism and an example is how male ducks have vibrant colors compared to the muted browns of females, or how male lions have thick manes while females don’t. This is so common among animals and in contrast, I find it so odd that with humans, males are… Rarely nice to look at.
Male animals look beautiful and impressive for that specific reason - to impress females. It’s how animals were built, for males to try to impress females and for females to be (hopefully) impressed. That is the natural order: males are beggars, females are choosers.
Females of any species have many options but also take on a higher risk and burden, so naturally, we should be picky and choose whoever impresses us the most.
Yet we live in a world where that natural order has been flipped upside down. Men all over the world roll out of bed and go to work after doing the bare minimum of a “get ready” routine (and many not even that), whereas we women spend our entire lives chasing beauty. We’re trying to impress men, whereas men are waiting to be impressed. We are the beggars and men the choosers in today’s society.
Imagine all the beauty products you’ve bought that a man didn’t have to buy - every hair tool and product, every skincare product, every hair removal product, every pantyhose and every bra, every makeup product, every jewelry piece, every laser or Botox or facial treatment, every manicure and pedicure, every single little thing you’ve paid for in order to make yourself prettier. Imagine if every single payment you made for these products was returned to your bank account. You’d be able to buy a house with it, pay for an expensive education, some women would be able to never work another day in their life. We pay so much in order to look beautiful, in order to ultimately… Impress men. Whether we want to do so directly or we just follow the status quo, the ultimate reason “why” is to impress men.
They’ve turned the natural order around. They’ve brainwashed us into doing the work of pursuing them and have therefore freed men of their natural role, while also making us pay expensively to do the pursuing. Society has forced us to take on a role we’re not even supposed be in, and instead of getting a reward for doing the work we shouldn’t be doing in the first place, we’re made to pay for it.
Imagine this scenario as a job ad: you’ll be employed to work and on top of that, you’re expected to do all the tasks that belong to your coworker. Your salary is that you every month owe the company money and have to pay to remain employed, so that you can keep picking up your coworker’s slack. Would you accept such a shitty deal?
On top of this, women are expected to be incubators, to do the childcare, the cooking, the cleaning, to carry the mental load of running a household, and to be both a therapist and a sex slave to her male partner. All of this, while we’re also expected to respect him as the leader of the household and expected to give the children his name.
All of this is so absurdly wrong. We’re not supposed to be the beggars, yet here we are, collectively working our asses off to impress men who don’t even deserve to be impressed. Men should be the ones changing their faces and bodies, squeezing themselves into shapewear and heels, being shamed for their hair growth (or lack thereof), panting their faces to look beautiful before they feel able to walk outside the door. They’ve fucked up the natural order for all of us and now we’re paying for it, and I’m livid.
And while I’m livid, I’m also elated. I might not be able to opt out fully (going to work without a bra would get me sent to HR because apparently my natural body in its natural state, clothed but not restricted, is inappropriate?), but I’m so relieved I don’t have to view men as an audience I need to impress. I don’t even want them to impress me either, I just want them far away from me, and apparently that’s too much to ask for.