Crossing The Female Picket Line
The Attractive Girls Union has declined my request for comment.
Cartoons Hate Her (CHH) quipped, in a recent piece: “Realistically, women just need to unionize. Luckily, it’s super easy for women to unanimously agree on things, especially deeply personal things.”
What CHH doesn’t want her male readers to know is that women have, in fact, unionized.
The Onion tipped the public off to this fact in 2008.
NEWSCASTER: “The Attractive Girls Union has declined to negotiate with Mr. Greenman, or even smile back at him when he smiles at them in a bar. Let’s go live to that press conference now.”
ATTRACTIVE GIRLS UNION REP: “The Attractive Girls Union has resolved to continue ignoring Mike Greenman and will remain firm on that stance until such a time as Mike starts dressing better, or at least gets rid of that goatee.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The Attractive Girls Union has declined my request for comment.
Shortly after a girl hits puberty, she receives a knock on the door in the dead of night by a group of women clad all in black. These are representatives of the United Sisterhood of Women. They come bearing paperwork.
These union reps explain to the girl that she is, like it or not, an actor in the Sexual Marketplace. That she is in intrasexual competition with women: Who gets the best man? That she is in intersexual competition with men: Who gets to decide which traits are attractive in a mate? Who gets to do the bulk of the mate selection?
Luckily, the United Sisterhood of Women has been hard at work on the behalf of women everywhere. They’ve negotiated a nice package of benefits for union members.
For example: A woman may have explicit and stringent standards for a man’s physical appearance. She may openly discuss rejecting a man because he is too short, too skinny, too fat. Men may not discuss their physical standards in explicit terms — And if a man is suspected of discriminating against a female prospect because she is, say, an ill-distributed 200 pounds, that man will be censured in the strongest terms.
A woman may tell her boyfriend, or husband, that she’s venturing on a cross country road trip with her “guy best friend,” who is “really more like a brother.” Yes, they had sex once or twice or ten times a few years ago, but what does that have to do with anything? Are you insecure? Is that why you’re so controlling?
Belonging to a union isn’t without sacrifice. There are dues, of course.