During the weekdays, while I'm getting ready for work, I watch a certain morning program. I'm not a brand-name person or someone who is particularly soothed by rituals, a groupie or lacking inspiration, I turn on channel three for lack of anything better to watch. All week long I watched a different news show because there was this one Valentine's Day commercial running on my regular program that was driving me nuts. It was for a national jewelry store, and it featured a glycerin stained sobbing female, gazing at her male counterpart with what I suppose were to be big soulful eyes, touched to the core because he had given her a diamond something or other. Cut to the jewlery, cut back to the couple. She's still crying! Did he poke her in the eye? No, she's still SO HAPPY!
Ahem. Let me clear my throat.
Does the way this represents women bother anyone else but me? Just because I'm a women, I won't have a standing orgasm because you give me something shiny. I am not bauble hungry monkey, I am not impressed by money spent nor do I think it is in direct proportion to how much you really love me. I will never break down sobbing because you went to some overpriced, half-rate store mall and bought me a grand gesture that never will replace all the little things that you missed. Just because I'm a woman, I won't be dazzled into thinking that gifts replace all the things you don't know about how to be good to yourself, or any of the times that you could of chosen not to fight and didn't.
On the pratical side of things, if the bottom fell out of the diamond market we'd all be screwed. Diamonds are five times more plentiful that sapphires (beryl) or rubies (corundum). The only thing that keeps the Russians from flooding the market is a flimsy piece of paper that says that they won't do it. Chances are they never will, it would just be shooting themselves in the foot, but stranger things have happened, no? You want to make me so happy that I cry? Here's a suggestion: let me get off first AND don't fuss about how long it takes. That would be nice. Take the money you were going to waste on jewelry, dead flowers and candy, because you've been brainwashed by big business, and put it into an IRA for us, so we can eat something besides Ramen noodles when we're seventy.
I know that I don't speak for all women and all men aren't sold on that particular line of bullshit, but it seems that way more often than not.
Happy Valentine's Day.
