The Woman's World: A Praise-ful Satire

One word: Vague.

Everything is kept deliberately vague and noncommital. That's how the Woman's World functions. What do I mean by the Woman's World? I mean, the current culture that promises The New American Dream: whatever is possible, women must be permitted the reputation of already having achieved it. The sleight-of-hand required to convince everyone that this dream is good and virtuous, is the Cult of Mediocrity. Don't smile at the capitalisation: Vague is also capitalised. (It's super-vagueness.)

Let me explain. The way the masses are convinced that feminism has finally achieved its stated goal of equality for the sexes, with the triumphant successes of leading businesswomen, stateswomen, female bankers, female Nobel prize winners, female literati, etc., is through consumerism. That is, if you desire it, you may have it. This is the American Dream per se: the free-market as the essence of personal freedom. Thus, it is extremely easy to move every achievement worth noting, into the realm of dreams and desires. To dream is good. To dream is virtuous. To hope is praiseworthy. To aim and aspire is awe-inspiring and motivating.

But to do anything is tedious and boring, requiring effort and time and repetition, and bringing failure and disappointment. To actually have to slog through the long, arduous, private, long, unnoticed, dirty, painful, long, repetitive, uncertain, unfinished, long process of gradual alteration, of learning and self-correction, is totally devoid of any sense of finality and achievement. More often than not, the utter relativity of one's states of progress become very obvious, so that if one ever does seem to be achieving, even relative to one's past, it all crumbles into nothingness – because where is the ultimate standard? If one looks to what has been already achieved and standardised by men, the realisation by women is that they have come nowhere near the goal. And thus, instead of this effort, we get dreams and a rejection of standards and absolutes. We get a rejection of individuals competing against other individuals. Instead, everyone is a winner.

Consumerism teaches instant gratification, sensationalism, sensory overload, superlatives, false ultimates (The Ultimate in Sportwear), false absolutes (Absolutely the fastest car ever produced), fast-talking and cunning deceit. Everything is presented in such a way as to avoid consciousness. Television presenters are smooth with their spiels, gabbing incessantly to avoid contrasts and sharp edges. It is precisely the method used by crocodile handlers, who maintain a harmonious vocal patter while tapping the crocodile repeatedly with a long stick, to mesmerise the crocodile with musical patterns into an expectant and passive trance-state. Consumerism hypnotises, creating the same glazed-eyed passivity. Everyone is a winner. Everyone deserves what they need. Everyone is equal. No one should be lacking. No one should be any different to anyone else. Everyone should be treated equally. Everyone should be treated the same. Everyone should be smiled at in exactly the same, bland, personality-free way. No one can stand out. No one should be trusted who is different. No one is any better than anyone else. But then, no one can be special. And, oh dear, we all want to be special!

The cult of mediocrity is born. And how popular it is - of course it is. Yet, within the apparent safety and happiness of immediate gratification, there is also a deep-seated, intrinsic anxiety.

Women suffer more from anxiety and nervous tension than do men. Why? Because of their 'egalitarian', personality-less ideal. Precisely because they believe they are (read: should be) just as good as anyone else, no different in the slightest, women have no personal groundedness. They judge themselves relative to others......ad infinitum. They lack individuality, meaning: soul, centredness, an inward thinking-focussed life. To hide this personal vacuum, the Woman's World dictum is: march on, shop, stimulate your desires - enter the eternal and endless chase for MORE! ---- and you hope you will never wake up to hear the mind-numbing roar of the vacuum. Oh, keep it vague, don't worry about it. It'll pass. Stifle it.

Existentially, this Woman's World has actually vagarised the individual's existence, at the same time as making it the centre of attention. Vague: the individual must be clouded over, so that it is nothing but a blurry fog of uncertainty. Welcome to Post-modernism: the blather of nothingness enshrouded in a sophisticated verbiage of fog.



— Kelly Jones