Ladies, stay young regardless of the recession

And it helps to be thin, able-bodied, mentally healthy, white and rich enough to afford all the youth-making treatments recommended by Orna Mulcahy in today's Irish Times. Here are a few snippets:

If the budget doesn’t stretch to that may I recommend an old remedy: a body brush ... will remove dead cells from the skin in a jiffy, while a whipped-up egg white, if allowed to set on the face for 15 minutes, will produce a surprisingly taut result,

That terrible photograph of Carla Bruni ... she looks all pale and weirdly frozen... she looks less like Carla, the free spirit, and more like the free spirit’s witchy mother.

But one thing that an older woman cannot do is look like a far younger woman, and that is her tragedy, particularly if her man likes far younger women.

The ideal woman for any man is half his age, plus seven years... Explain it to a man and you watch his face puzzle for a moment and then clear before giving in with a graceful smile... Your 40-year-old man realises that indeed it might be nicer to be with a 27-year-old rather than with someone his own age, who might be losing definition in all kinds of places.

[Sam Mendes]’s trading Kate [Winslet] in for a younger model, to be perfectly blunt and horrible about it.

Scientists have established that men seek out women with clear skin and shiny hair, two attributes of a healthy body, ie one that can still bear a child.

Ok, Ok I quoted more than snippets. But I almost got a bingo on the evo psych card by Aerik.

I will resist the temptation to fisk the entire article. And just say that women are people. You cannot reduce a person to a shell. Staying young is impossible. Grasping at straws and using 'miracle' treatments to stave off age ultimately ends in failure. Women are always judged by their looks: whether fat or thin, tall or short, TAB or disabled, conventionally attractive, with or without body hair, piercing, tattoos etc.

I think that Mulcahy's article was meant to be tongue in cheek or "all us girls together" but fails. Being a humourless feminist I wouldn't laugh anyway, on principle! Women are not a monolith. Amazingly, some women are attracted to other women; some women are not attracted to anyone; some women are attracted to younger men; some women opt out of participating in the patriarchal Olympics etc

Anyway, you can diet, botox, wax etc., but it is never enough. Is your vagina tight enough? Is your mons sparkly enough? Vajazzling takes care of the latter but the former requires surgery. Are your breasts big enough, small enough, perky enough...? Do you earn enough but not too much? Are you a free-spirit but not too opinionated? Do you wear revealing clothing but not look like a slut? It is never enough. It is never enough. The patriarchy will judge you and still find you wanting. Just look at the judgment leveled against Carla Bruni, considered to be one of the most beautiful women in the world.

This word does not mean what you think it means

Today's Irish Times has a piece of the increase of Irish women turning to and returning to sex work in part because of poverty caused by the crash and subsequent mismanagement of the economy.

In the same article Gerardine Rowley, spokeswoman for Ruhama, talks about the increasing number of underage girls and young women that are being trafficked from the developing world into Ireland for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

It is great that this issue is getting some coverage in the press but I have very unimpressed with the title of the article.

"Increase in Irishwomen engaged in street vice"

It is classic victim-blaming in our little Irish morality play. "Vice"? Really? That's the best the Irish Times can come up with. I think the IT needs to consult a bloody dictionary.

Vice
Etymology: Middle English 14th century, from Anglo-French, from Latin vitium fault, vice

1. moral depravity or corruption, wickedness, a moral fault or failing, a habitual and usually trivial defect or shortcoming
2. blemish, defect
3. a physical imperfection, deformity, or taint
4. a character representing one of the vices in an English morality play
5. buffoon, jester
6. an abnormal behavior pattern in a domestic animal detrimental to its health or usefulness
7. sexual immorality

So either the editor who inserted the headline needs a dictionary instead of a payrise or the IT is attempting to shame women who engage in sex work both voluntarily or not or someone on the IT staff is an old fashioned misogynist who is trying to enact a morality play.

The headline could have read something like this

"Increased demand for paid sex from Irishmen leads to sexual exploitation and trafficking in underage girls"

But we can't have a headline like that, can we. In the same way that women "get raped", sex workers "engage in sex work". The role of men is obscured.

Twas ever so in green old Erin's Isle. Blame the women and girls. Lock them up in the Magdalene Laundries, to labour without pay for the rest of their lives, while the men and boys went free.

I know the editors write the titles so I'm not slamming the journalist but I think that the paper of record needs to understand that disappearing men from an article on sex work is not acceptable. Nor is it acceptable to moralise about how some people make ends meet.