Valentine's Day & The Fairer Arms Race

Dear Avid Reader,

It's Valentine's Day. Again. Seems like there's one of these every year.

I won't bore you with a post on how Valentine's Day is a sham. How it's nothing but an excuse for some company to cash in on men who feel guilty and women who feel trapped in a passionless life. How we swagger up to the bar and say, "Please bartender, please. Give me a dose of cards and dinners that might give me enough romance to keep my tepid relationship plugging along for one more year. Please bartender.*"

*(No, this doesn't apply to me. Quit reading too much into things.)

No, I won't go there. We've been there. Let's go somewhere else. Or somewhere that I want to go. You may have been here before, and if you have, don't ruin it for the others.

Battle Of The Sexes

There is this thing that exists between women. It can accurately be described as an "alpha lady complex". It's similar to the very well-know phenomenon called "alpha male complex". This is where men are always trying to one-up each other to assert their dominance. This leads to erratic driving behavior and the purchase of camouflage and vehicles with king-cabs among other strange habits.

With the ladies, it is the same but different, ifthat makes sense. See with men, it's men competing with men. The prize of the competition is of course women. The dominant men possesses more women. This is universally understood as fact in the terms of alpha-male complex. But with women it is more complicated.

Women compete with other women, just like men. But what are they competing for? No, not men. In fact, from what I can gather, women don't much care for men. No, women compete for the ATTENTION of men.

I know it sounds crazy, but that is the goal: to have all the men looking in their direction. Not to posses them, just to have them looking. This is why women take offense when men are checking out other ladies, it's because the other ladies are winning. But I digress.

Getting The Right Gear

Women will employ all manner of devices to ensnare men's attention. They will use clothing, make-up, hair styling, etc. Here is where I should put the cliche' about women taking too long to get ready. But I'd rather not so I'll let you come up with one. Use your imagination and make some old joke up and laugh at it. I'll wait...

Hey, that one was pretty good. Ha-ha.

Now, I'm married and I have waited for the wife to get ready (Don't worry, this isn't going to descend into a lengthy complaint about my wife). And as I was waiting one day, I decided to ask my wife, "Why don't women just get together and stop wearing make-up? Think of the money and time you would save. Men would then adapt their expectations and women would have a healthier image about their own bodies."

My wife humored me and pondered the idea. I imagine that she envisioned a world where she didn't have to design and style herself every morning for work or on the evenings that we went out. How she could treat the selection of her clothes as insignificantly as I do. In this world, she probably had the time to learn three foreign languages and could play a new instrument. With the money we'd save we could invest in the stock market or maybe even buy local real estate.

But then reality came crashing in. "No," she said gravley, "Some woman out there would try and get an edge and start using make-up. It would never work."

And then it all made sense. Women, it turns out, are just as competitive as men. And maybe they are even more so because of the daily money and time commitment that women invest to the competetion. All of the effort spent meticulously shopping, investigating, gossiping, all of it was a huge shadow, war-game that involves every women on the planet.

Scorched Earth Policy

All of the "Gone Wild" videos make sense in this context. All of the huff over men looking at other women. All of the desire to pay attention to what is being said. All of it is THE competition, and all of woman-kind is involved. And there can be no truce.

I think most women would like to call a truce, but they can't because some women "play dirty". Take the "Gone Wild" girls. Being on these tapes is akin to using biological weapons. It gets the job done, but it is considered immoral to most of the combatants.

Continuing in analogy, internet pornography is like terrorism. It's an enemy that exists, but it can't be dealt with in the traditional manner. Women used to be able to see the opposing woman and deal with her one on one, complete with declarations of war and a capital to destroy. But with the internet, women are faced with an enemy that has no capital and has cells stationed all over the world.

During this revelation, I realized that women have it rough. They are born into this battle. Men are born into battles too but I don't think we have one that rages on 24 hours a day and consumes every waking hour. With this thought, I was then compelled to act.

I would like to extend the olive branch and open peace talks between the women. We should try to reach for total cosmetic disarmament between all women. I know this is a difficult task, but I think we can achieve it. For the betterment of all mankind, there should be peace. It can be done, we only have to believe.

The Next Post Promises To Be Better,

James