WRITE ON: The Day The Women Said: “NO!”

Did you ever look inside a model’s refrigerator? I have, and I was amazed at what wasn’t in there. Let’s go back in time. In the years before I met my wife, I lived in two centers of fashion: New York and Hollywood. Those are places I came to know quite well. While there, I supplemented my income by performing in the street with my guitar, harmonica, and whatever storytelling skill I possessed.

Because the street is not a place people generally expect to see a show, I had the element of surprise on my side. A street performer’s art is to turn a sidewalk into a stage and pedestrians into an audience. So I played as loudly as I could, sang at the top of my lungs, and tried to come up with patter—stories and observations—that could build and hold an “audience” which had never intended to see me perform.

What being a street performer allowed me was the chance to meet literally thousands of people over the years I did it. Among those were many models and aspiring (and occasionally successful) actresses. Not ever having been taken for a model myself (Just look at me!), the world of fashion and beauty is one I only learned about through others I knew who worked in it.

It is my belief that the fashion and beauty business is actually run mostly by people who hate women. That may seem odd, but let me see if I can justify that claim. Look at the models at almost any contemporary fashion show. Never mind what they are wearing. Instead, ask this simple question: Do they look healthy? If you think they do, then you need glasses more than a new wardrobe.

The wife of CBS founder William S. Paley, a woman who went by the name “Babe,” once famously said: “You can never be too rich or too thin.” Of course she was both, but I’m not sure it made her happy.

Never mind being rich. Let’s talk about thin. The idea behind a model’s being so skinny is that her body won’t distract the viewer from the clothing she’s wearing. Anyway,that’s what the designers say is at the heart of the current super skinny fashion scene.

It wasn’t always that way, of course. A stroll through any fine art museum will reveal the changing ideals of womanhood throughout the ages.

By today’s unhealthy standards, the women painted or sculpted by artists from the ancient Greeks and Romans to Renaissance masters like Peter Paul Rubens and Titian were anywhere from pleasantly plump to chubby to downright fat. Never mind that men throughout history have found such women very attractive. Today’s fashion police would tell those ladies: “Lose weight, honey. You look like a fat cow!”

A question I always ask myself is: “Who’s telling me this?”

I wish women today would ask that question of those who dictate what passes for defining today’s “beautiful” woman. Who are the people making these decisions?

A second, and perhaps even more important question women should ask is: “Why should I listen to them?”

What if women just decided one day to say “No” to the whole lot of fashion designers, hair stylists, make-up artists, cosmetic companies, shoe creators, hat fabricators, accessories peddlers, and all the other “experts” who tell women how they should aspire to look? What would happen if women just did what they liked, dressed however they wanted, and became comfortable in their bodies just they way they are?

Whatever the economy might suffer from all the fashionista’s being suddenly out of work would be more than compensated by the reduction in health related issues arising from women trying to look like the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine. Gone would be the sad, anorexic scarecrows of the fashion runway. The women-hating sadists who designed spike heeled shoes and boots would be out on their bony behinds. The laboratory chemists who come up with all the chemicals that become lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, blush, toner, and all the rest might have to go back to trying to find a cure for cancer or the common cold.

The effect of a women’s revolt against the fashion and beauty business is dizzying to contemplate. But remember ladies—you do have the power. All you have to do is say “No!” to those who make their fortunes by making you feel inferior for not looking like the ridiculous “ideal woman” they foist upon you. If women were ever able to tell the misogynistic, woman-hating gurus of fashion to take their cruel, crazy, freakish concepts of women’s beauty and stick it where the sun don’t shine—we would live in a brand new and better world.

The proof of the secret hatred designers have for women is that they don’t ever apply the same rules to men. Look at a fashion show sometime and ask yourself why the women look like they have just been released from a concentration camp like Auschwitz while the men do not. Why the difference? Why don’t male models have to be as skinny, hollow-eyed, and emaciated as female models? Male models look as healthy as female models look starved.

This sexist difference even applies to colors. Why do men generally wear clothing in drab earth tones and shades of black, gray, and white, while women are forced to coordinate wild color schemes and get stressed out over things “matching?” In nature it’s the reverse. It’s the male who has to look splendid to attract the female. What happened to that idea in fashion?

I remember dating a model once whose refrigerator I raided one night for a snack. Inside were some bottles of water, a couple of containers of non-fat yogurt, one small, half-eaten piece of skinless grilled chicken, and a jar of olives. I noticed that whenever we ate at a restaurant, she always had to use the powder room after eating. I discovered that instead of eating her food, she was only “renting” it until she could get to the bathroom and get it out of her body. Like most models and actresses, she viewed food as a necessary evil to be taken in the smallest quantities needed to sustain life. Yum!

A model’s or actress’s life is, in a way, a study in misery. You are not allowed to eat. You are judged only by your appearance. You are made to feel bad should you ever gain any weight. “The camera adds ten pounds.” You must be “perfect” in the eyes of someone who doesn’t really love women anyway. This bizarre sickness of spirit is what is passed on to an ever younger audience of girls who are told to aspire to this look on every magazine cover relating to fashion, beauty, or being sexy.

It’s all so hollow and sad when you really look at it.

The result of this mass-indoctrination is a vast legion of female “slaves” to impossible and unhealthy “ideals.” The role models for today’s women are sick, starving, and—to me at least—ridiculous looking. Most of this foolishness comes from designers who don’t love women anyway. What they do love is the money their little con game generates for themselves. Like so much of what dictates how we live, the fashion business is really only about the money.

I say spend your money on things that are healthy and fun and necessary.

My message is: Ladies, why not just let it go? Stop trying to look like something Nature never intended you to be. Don’t take your cues from phonies who don’t like you, and who make their living by making you feel inferior. Deny the fashion business all their destructive power. You’ll live a longer, happier, healthier life. This world will change dramatically for the better on the day women summon up the courage to say “No!” to all the crafty parasites who get rich making women feel inferior and unhappy with how they look. Curves are beautiful, which is why there are no perfectly straight lines in nature. Can’t we let women look like women for a change?

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