Thursday, March 06, 2008
Tommorow is International Women's Day but it seems like things haven't changed much.
Pei and I were chatting in the Hons Rm yesterday afternoon and we came to the topic of boyfriends. I remembered reading in a newspaper column some time ago where the columnist lamented how one of her girlfriends had a pig of a boyfriend who dumped her simply because she put on a bit of weight. And then I remembered reading an article in Urban in the morning on the results of a poll conducted by the newspaper on the ideal qualitites single Singaporean men look out for when they date women. And the results were thouroughly disappointing. The top quality picked was (perhaps, not surprisingly) "takes care of her appearance and dresses well". Ok, I do agree that one, whether man or woman, should dress appropriately and look presentable when going for a date, but surely that shouldn't be the most important quality one uses to judge someone? What about intelligence, wit and good conversation skills? What about warmth and sincerity? Well, these qualities didn't even figure on the list of options given by the people conducting the poll.
One relationship 'expert' quoted by Urban justified the men's choice of appearance as the top quality with the easy biologistic answer that "men are visual creatures" and therefore they have to be attracted to a woman's looks before they get interested in knowing her. Sure, blame evolutionary biology and distract attention away from the real issues of gender constructions and social conditioning.
It's times like these which make me wonder why women put up with men like these. It's ridiculous that people are now measuring gender equality by checking whether the woman offers to pay for her own meal and carries her own handbag when the fundamental relations between men and women haven't changed at all.
Thank goodness I know that there are some guys out there who are far more enlightened than the neanderthals Urban surveyed. There aren't many, but they are guys worth celebrating.
kaoru said at 6:08 PM
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