In the canon of popular culture, the offenses of feminism have ranged entire the access from man-hating apt hairy armpits, but 1 particular sin has all been singled out because unrivaled derision. It is often said namely feminists can't take a compliment. They can't eligible into size naught jeans, either, and probably can't even cook. But aggravate than always of that - they can't take a joke.
The charge of humorlessness has stalked the women's activity from day one, and it is, in my experience, a uniquely effective weapon. The most committed feminists I understand tin resist anybody sum of damage - ideological, private, political. But shriek them po-faced, and watch them dissolve into girly froths of giggles, desperate to testify they're no. It was in this strategic spirit that many women, myself included, decided a while antecedent apt detect the phenomenon of the footballer's Wag not offensive merely amusing.
Blanket coverage of the Wags' World Cup excesses last summer familiarized us all with the central tenets of Wag-world - the insatiable shopping sprees, the catty rivalries, the coldly thought shape combats. But we told ourselves it was equitable a morsel of harmless fun - a tongue-in-cheek self-parody. If we still skirmished to summon many plausible affection for Posh, there was always Coleen McLoughlin to fall behind above - Liverpool's rags to riches girl-next-door who drives a Bentley, marts for a alive, but is universally adored for having remained, so it is said, "down to globe".
So we maybe shouldn't be also surprised to study that the Foreign Office has employed Spurs striker Jermain Defoe's fiancee, a prototype called Charlotte Meares, to jot A Wag's Guide To Travel for the FCO website, dispensing valuable tips to the petticoat traveler. It covers every believable emergency,
moncler men's down jacket, from damaging a Jimmy Choo heel to packing the erroneous in-flight beauty productions.
With their unerring instinct to bark up the wrong tree, the Tories have condemned the guide for "a waste of taxpayers' money", and "frivolous". As Meares's fee was "nominal", this is scarcely a public financial disgrace - and whether it really were "frivolous", it would really be nice. But in truth, as the FCO itself reports, "These pages are the maximum accustom portion of the website, getting hundreds of thousands of kicks. We are trying to reach juvenile travelers, of special note young women. We ambition to get their attention, and this has proved quite successful."
I wager it has. For a lot of aspirational young women,
Herve Leger bandage dress harness, the Wag identity and lifestyle represents the final in petticoat achievement, and as such their maximum aspiration. In reality, Wag mores is not that diverse the globe of the 18th-century coquette - a ruthlessly aggressive commerce between loveliness and ######, and asset and situation - and merely confirms many men's long-held misgiving that women can be bought, and are only really good for shopping.
Roy Keane got it quite wrong final week, while he claimed that Wags were agreeable also mighty. A reserved woman who depends on her man for everything, and on her looks for keeping prop of him, is fewer mighty than virtually anybody I know.
Wag civilization can be peruse as the rational conclusion of a entire scope of trends - guy mag ########, celebrity culture, rampant consumerism, commercialization of football, and so ahead. But it is, above all, a course in what happens while we don't take ourselves seriously enough, for terror of looking uptight.
At some point we ambition have to stop laughing. When teenage girls can nightmare of not higher achievement than to be someone's girlfriend, and the government issues advice on how to perform hence, it's not funny anyone extra. If the alternative for women have to be to lack both a sense of humor or a sense of their own dignity, it ought be beautiful easy to choose. I would preferably, on balance, be humorless than vacuous.
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