The Original Reality TV Show

The first "reality television" experience started back in 1861.

Civilians and journalists alike from the north were pressuring newly- elected President Lincoln for a swift end to the Civil War, which had begun in April with the attack on Fort Sumter. As the north was comprised of his most supportive constituency- and purchased many goods from the south- Lincoln thought it prudent to prevent the country from splitting in two.

By July, troops were dispatched from Washington D.C. under the inexperienced command of Brigadier General Irvin McDowell. His troops were unseasoned, and often strayed from formation to gather berries and seek shade from the blazing sun while en route. Their intent was to cut off the supply of goods and information from the Confederate capitol of Richmond.

By the time the Union reached a small creek known as Bull Run, they were tired, and their supplies were near exhaustion. It wasn’t the greatest show of force in the first land battle of the Civil War.

The Confederate spy network had kept secessionists in the know; southern reinforcements, equally inexperienced, made the journey north of Richmond in an attempt to surprise the invading forces.

They came with a fresh supply of food and munitions. They came with motivation and full confidence of their victory. They came under the command of the unpopular- among- his- peers Brigadier General P.T. Beauregard.

Despite the chivalry often associated with the Civil War in movies and textbooks, Bull Run marked the beginning of the bloodiest war on American soil, made possible through industry; the army now had railroad and telegraph at its disposal, and armament had become more efficient than ever.

Small arms had evolved: flint muskets of the Revolution had been replaced with rifles, side arms and grenades which had a greater range and were more accurate.

Howitzer canons used something called a “grape shot”: small iron balls were wrapped in cloth or canvas and tied with string, making it look like a bunch of grapes. When fired, the wrap disintegrated, releasing a spray of iron, much like a sawed off shotgun would today.

The brand- new Gatling gun was the first rapid fire weapon- the grandfather of the modern machine gun- and was operated by a hand crank. It could fire 200 rounds per minute.

Stunning weaponry of the day, and so it was fitting that both sides of the battle had an audience; Bull Run was the first war in American history with a cheering section.

Historical accounts attribute nearly 500 excited spectators having drove carriages to watch the stand- off, having been much talked of by the media and in taverns, and it was presumed to be an easy and sweeping victory for northern forces.

With the audience, believe it or not, came vendors; earth- hardened families who pushed carts filled with apples and baked goods for purchase among the crowd.   

The carriages ranged from the humble wagons of journalists, farmers and rope makers to grand stagecoaches owned by politicians, mayors and their opera- glass toting wives: all curious, all completely unprepared for what they witnessed that day.

Bull Run was the bloodiest war ever fought on American soil up to that time. Some 4,700 men lost their lives during the 5 hour battle, and nearly 3,000 others lost an arm, a foot or an eye to a little iron ball.

The crowd saw it all.

But that’s not what bothered the crowd the most.

That Union forces lost wasn’t the first outrage for many spectators, either. What bothered people more than anything else they say that day was how they lost.

They ran away.

Northern forces had been completely unprepared for a battle. Out of sheer panic, and due to poor leadership, the Union soldiers retreated with manic temperament. Many left pouches, weapons and clothing on the field. 

Some even stole horses from carriages so they could escape. Several civilians were knocked over by evading troops, who were met with a flurry of boos and insults from the crowd.

They wanted more.

The south won that day, but that’s really not the point. Bull Run was that first car wreck we slowed down to gawk at in fascination.

We’d tasted blood. And we wanted more.

And then there was Cops.

Combining the humor we saw in the “gotcha!” candid camera shows of the 1950s and 60s with suspense of a police drama, this television show was born thanks to a Writer’s Guild strike in 1988. It left a watermark on society; our guiltiest voyeuristic pleasures had gone public and were becoming socially acceptable, and our culture completely redefined what it meant to go dumpster diving.

Nothing was private anymore: bathrooms, having evaded years of Soft Scrub use, would be harboring fugitives behind the bathroom curtain. Gay lovers were arrested after fighting over another man in a gas station. Naked drunks dancing in the street. Hookers hiding in dumpsters behind hotels.

All paving the way for even darker secrets to be exposed; once- shameful labels of “slob” and “bad parent” were now sources of entertainment. Instead of shaming the guilty, we embrace with understanding and gentle reconditioning.

Soon, femininity took over reality TV as well, shaking its finger at anyone who can’t control their children or wash their clothes. Admittedly out of sad necessity, Super Nanny schooled parents who really should have never had children in the first place.

While I’ll never understand why anyone would appear on this show willingly, or under their real names, it’s a perfect look at how poorly maintained the American family structure has become. The show revolves around a British nanny who dismounts her high horse for a few days to follow the movements of an American family with disrespectful, violent and snotty kids. Behavior is dissected and faults of the parents are broadcast and then corrected.

Of course, after one week, the children have been magically transformed into angels because the nanny comes from a country with a deep history of compassion.

The British.

The same people we fired 230 years ago.

And now we’re asking for their help.

Talk about tail between the legs.

Our maddening lack of shame has also driven up the ratings of other self- improvement reality shows like Wife Swap, Hoarders and Clean House. Because nothing in the world makes us feel better about ourselves than seeing the filth someone else lives in.

Even the once- snooty, high- cultured A&E channel jumped on the sewage bandwagon with shows like Intervention. This is a television show that videotapes addicts shooting up crack and smoking meth and winds up winning an Emmy award.

And it’s all under the guise of wanting to make people better.

Reality TV is only one example of how feminism is ruining our lives, but it is most candidly obvious by listening to some of our nation’s most popular women from throughout time:

“If we (women) mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.” ~Abigail Adams, wife of John.

“Remember; Ginger Rodgers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels.” ~Linda Ellerbee, NBC journalist and Washington D.C. correspondent.

“Everybody loves you when they’re about to cum.” ~Madonna

“You can have sex with hundreds of people with a condom on and get nothing.” ~Lady Gaga

Since the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never wrong, shocking feminist remarks of today are protected under freedoms of expression, speech and art.

We’ve become a culture that celebrates immaturity and bitchiness.

We’ve become a culture insisting our demands are met immediately, no matter how ridiculous.

We’ve become a culture of waning social skills.

We’ve become a culture that has forgotten any understanding of the opposite sex: women want a man who’s both sensitive and a little dangerous.

Men want a woman who is part librarian, part hooker.

These characteristics have attracted us to one another for thousands of years. We’re breaking our own fingers trying to reinvent the wheel.

Meanwhile, men are left alone on their couches and in their bedrooms with the likes of Jenna Jamison, a bottle of hand lotion and a box of Kleenex.  

I’m sorry- I mean facial tissues.

How the Vibrator Helped Women Take Over America

Thank God for Hamilton Beach.

The company known today for toasters and coffee makers invented the first retail electric vibrator in 1902.

Some three hundred years before Christ, the Greeks recognized what would come to be called “female hysteria”. They considered the condition to be horrific, the onset of which was of no fault to the victim: the uterus wandered listlessly throughout the body, strangling the victim and soon she succumbed to all manner of disease.

The word hysteria even derives from the Greek “hystera”, meaning “uterus”.

The prescription for these poor women was simple: have sex immediately. Women already married were encouraged to have intercourse, while single gals were advised to get married as quickly as possible. If neither means was available, a midwife would be contracted as a last resort to perform the arduous, often hours- long task of “pelvic massage” to assist the patient in achieving orgasm, therefore relieving her symptoms.

Thus, the first noted girl- on- girl action in the history of mankind.

Victorian England, on the other hand, describes the afflicted with all the compassion the age of proper society has ever displayed for women: she was certainly a deranged person who suffered as a result a mental problem, likely due to her inability to attract a man.

The list of symptoms was, at one point, 75 pages long; nearly any sickness could fit the bill, making it a very lucrative business for physicians of the day, as ongoing treatment was often necessary. Among the recognized symptoms were sudden fainting, nervousness, insomnia, shortness of breath, irritability and “tendency to cause trouble”,

The affliction prevented, at least in the eyes of the medical community, women from functioning in daily society.

And if the description of these symptoms didn’t keep women off the streets, its initial treatments surely did: afflicted women were primarily prescribed bed rest, bland food, seclusion and sensory deprivation.

It was the perfect way to keep women quiet, unlearned and out of the way.

But if women’s needs couldn’t be met on some regular basis, proper Victorian society would come to a standstill: there would be no women on the arm at public appearances, housekeeping or child- rearing, and women would soon break from their proper unobtrusiveness and turn into flesh- eating maniacs, unless a convenient solution was found.

As the treatment was very labor- intensive on the physicians’ part, doctors came up with all manner of inventions and procedures to “assist” women, lest lose them to midwives, (who took money from the male- dominated medical community) until finally, a handheld device could be used in the privacy of one’s home- a subtle beginning of what would become the feminist movement.

The vibrator was the 5^th household device to be electrified, behind the sewing machine, fan, tea kettle and toaster.

So it would appear women’s needs had already been deified for centuries before the 1980’s, when vibrators (and an amazing array of other sex toys) became more accessible in mainstream society, but were still hidden behind blacked- out windows of something called an “adult bookstore”, a misnomer made popular because women are masters of bullshit.

Our country forced an evolutionary change in an unnaturally short order as the male/ female roles of hunting and gathering had swapped: women hunted for pornography to admonish during the massive anti- pornography movement of the 1980’s. They hunted for corporate deals and clothing sales, and began to tout some of these hunting events as holidays like Black Friday. They even hunted for themselves; hence the popularity of self- help books; hence the rise of “Women’s Studies” sections in libraries.

Men became gatherers of NO MA’AM memberships. They gathered around Cliff Clavin homilies. They gathered up their own balls out of sheer panic.  

There is no section, however, entitled “Men’s Studies” in any library anywhere in the world.

The changes even became apparent in the way each gender does it shopping: women hunt for deals, men gather whatever package is closest and shiniest.

Ever see a man compare prices in a store?

That’s because it doesn’t happen.  

Women only just received the right to vote in 1920, and many still don’t earn equal pay as their male counterparts.

So, how did this change all happen?

Simple: breasts and Anita Hill.

Words never before heard in the same single sentence, I assure you.

Yet the thought of either one brings a man- willingly or begrudgingly- to his knees in utter subjugation.

Breasts arouse men; want of these controls their purchases, self- confidence, gym schedules, hairstyles, ring tones and choice in car air fresheners.

Anita Hill makes men scurry and scares them stupid, fearful of approaching any woman unless she first overtly displays physical interest. This process does, however, totally confuse a man’s super ego, which deems her aggression as a red flag, and his id, which tells him to spread his seed and go for it.

In late 1991, Hill was called to testify during a Senate confirmation hearing for her former boss Clarence Thomas, who had just been nominated to the Supreme Court. While any confirmation hearing is an automatic dirty- laundry fest, this was one for the books- quite literally.

Hill claimed to have been victimized during her employment as a legal advisor to Thomas nearly a decade earlier, when he barraged her with sexual remarks and stories of his own prowess.

Historically speaking, bragging is often how a male found his mate; a woman spurned or embraced a man based upon an emphatic wardrobe (codpieces, anyone?) or his stories of victory. Unless you were Sir Lawrence Olivier, in which case you’d need only to grab a woman and kiss her hard.

But Thomas never grabbed Hill and kissed her hard. Hill’s claims didn’t include any physical abuse. It didn’t include rape. It didn’t include unwanted physical contact of any type.

Her claims did, however, forever change the landscape of male/ female relationships with two little words: sexual harassment.

Two little words that forever changed the way we counseled executives, the way we taught health class to junior high students, and the way we qualified soldiers; because being a trained killer doesn’t mean you can’t be posh.

Two little words created an entire industry on the dangers of dirty talk.

Two little words that completely outshined the details of Hill and Thomas meeting, dining and talking on the phone on various occasions after Hill claims she was harassed, and subsequently fired.

Thanks to the Hill debacle- and with the man- hating support of Ms. Magazine and Barbara Boxer- women have become conditioned to feel threatened when a man opens a door or offers to pay for dinner.

It leaves women with little choice but to portray a biologically unnatural aggressiveness, and leaves men feeling unnecessarily un- masculine because he no longer has a bear to kill or a log cabin to build.

The importance with which masculinity is held by society had become clear once television shows like Ice Road Truckers or Dirty Jobs began to air not on regular television, but the pay- services of cable television’s Discovery and History channels; because masculinity is modern day oddity to be gawked at right after the documentary on the world’s oldest conjoined twins.

Think about it- what’s the last Dirty Harry movie you saw that wasn’t a Dirty Harry movie?

Die Hard: With a Vengeance was way back in 1995.

T2 was even further back.

And John Wayne is dead- along with any male character who kept his house in order in such fashion.

Women saw to it.

Women didn’t like rock music that portrayed sexual acts they themselves weren’t willing to participate in. So they hopped on the Tipper Gore band wagon and labeled them as dangerous and Satanic.

Women don’t like the smell of smoke. So they banned smoking in public places.

Women don’t like what processed foods did to their bodies. So they insisted on nutritional labeling; even on bottled water.   

Women didn’t like their husbands looking at other women’s bodies, but they enlist the pride into seek and destroy missions with the oddest inconsistency.

A Seattle area drive- thru coffee shop called Knotty Bodies was forced to close down after several parents complained their children could see the bikini- clad baristas as they walked to school. This calamity was, however, utterly void of any supporting studies showing the damage bikinis can have on children at the beach.  

Then there was Super Bowl 38: Janet Jackson’s breast, despite being covered with a pasty, turned into a fiasco designated “Nipplegate” that resulted in half a million complaints to the FCC, who launched an immediate “investigation” to determine how many people were offended by the snafu.

The investigation resulted in an increase in the allowable maximum fine for indecency- $550k fine for CBS, who was then kicked out of Viacom, and MTV being banned from further involvement in production of future NFL half-time projects.

Talk about overkill.

Later that same year, the sexual depravities of Draw Together or Desperate Housewives premiered on primetime television. Local and national news shows plastered the obscenities of Abu Ghraib and footage of terrorists beheading hostages.

The morality attack dogs barely raised eyebrows.  Not even for the “GoDaddy.com” Super Bowl ad, which I’m still too young to watch.

Women missed the point of the GoDaddy.com commercial, by the way. Sure, it was appealing to men, but it was also a message to women: flaunt what ya got for your man.

But years of feminization has taught women to dress for themselves, not their man or anybody else. Modern women have been taught to dress for their taste and comfort, and they do at great length. But instead of taking initiative to spice up the bedroom once things get stale, the problem is quite literally laid in the man’s lap. If a man isn’t capable of rising to the occasion, then screw him if he can’t get a boner right.

It’s an insult thinly disguised by Smiling Bob.

Why advertisers couldn’t find a more heterosexual- looking male will probably never be clear, but quality family television time has been inundated with Enzyte, Viagra, Cialis and Entenze commercials ever since the FDA relaxed prescription drug marketing in 1997. These spots undoubtedly did more to create more questions for the “Under 10” group than it did to answer questions of men wondering, “What kind of guy would ever sit in a bathtub on the beach?”

Women are often stereotyped as a “ball & chain” for berating their men when he stinks up the house with his cigars. They get angry when he leaves his beer cans on the floor next to his Lazy Boy. They criticize his shirt & tie combo, his friends, his job and his mother.

Now his penis isn’t even good enough.

At the rate we run these commercials, you’d think the extinction of the human race was right around the corner.

But these commercials aren’t for men, though- they’re for women. Sexuality was the last uncontrolled area of human existence: it was now, just as bike helmets and car seats for 8 year- olds, a controlled substance. Gone was the passion created by spontaneity that is became such a peculiarity so revered and sought after, the success of reality TV was just a huge mistake waiting to happen.  

How Kleenex Destroyed American Masculinity

I've referenced the shopping habits of the elderly in my previous post, "The Maddening Lack of Shame in Women", and it is with this thought I'd like to begin this post. 

We've all seen old folks shop for groceries at 5 in the morning, and the reason behind it is very simple: modern parents drive them absolutely mad. They understand these people who stumbled upon parenthood merely by getting too drunk one night indeed have a communicable affliction. It goes by many names, but for now let us call it "obliviousness". 

Older folks have been around long enough to know how quickly this affliction can infect one another, and it is why they distance themselves from large crowds. 

They also know the culprit for this whole mess is Kleenex. 

At one point in our country’s history, schoolchildren were expected to carry handkerchiefs on their person. It subconsciously made students aware that personal hygiene was their own responsibility, and taught that privacy and discretion were quality traits expected by society.  

These ideals carried over into adulthood: men carried practical handkerchiefs in their pockets, and often fashioned silk into a breast pocket as a sign of social stature when they dressed for an occasion. Women carried lacy versions in their purses, though it was understood this was meant to be used only as a last resort, because runny mascara is simply impossible to get out of eyelet seams.

The measure of offering a hanky to a disparaged woman, as was expected of any gentleman, was a universal sign of chivalry, sympathy and goodwill. It was the ultimate speed date: whether or not a handkerchief was monogrammed, the quality of the stitching and the type of fabric he’d chosen told a woman how financially well- off her potential suitor was. The brush of a man’s hand when accepting the hanky gave women a hint of his hygiene and profession. And how long he allowed the woman to hold his hanky told her a great deal of his patience and interest in her.

In turn, offering a hanky allowed men to begin an otherwise very personal conversation. Since a handkerchief was offered in emotional situations, it gave men the chance to gauge how dramatic a woman might be in high- stressed situations, or even what she deemed as stressful, often very telling of her childhood and family values. 

Once she accepted the hanky, he might sit next to her or place a hand on her back as an additional means of support: if she allowed this, it could be a sign she’s single. It could also give men a better idea of her style and fabric preferences, and how expensive she might be to maintain.

Following this experience, chemistry could be assessed and an invitation to coffee could ensue. If all worked out, they would be married in a year.  

Try pulling a crumbled- up Kleenex from your pocket and offering it to a crying woman.

Not quite the same gesture, is it?

For that matter, try finding a man who carries Kleenex at all.

Kleenex goes back as far as 1924, when Kimberly- Clark began to offer women a disposable tissue to remove cold cream and makeup. Before long customers began to comment how convenient these were for wiping noses and the company’s market went in a whole new direction, and the product flew off the shelves.

It paved the way for the Q-tip, which came along in 1926, and later, the paper towel, an absorbent tissue paper intended for use only once before it was discarded. This replaced the unsightly household rags we’d been using for years to clean our windows and walls, which despite repeated washings kept the thought of our home’s filth at elbow’s reach and therefore always in our minds.

That’s it: the cleanliness of our households, and our persons, used to be always on our minds.

But as appearances would become so vital in proper society of the 1950’s, discarding our waste was deemed of higher importance than ever before.

Housewives of the 1950’s had an easy life compared the struggles of their mothers, who suffered the Depression and the subsequent Dust Bowl, but these women would have deemed even the rationing of the 1940’s as better life.

World War II efforts were so extensive our government limited the amount of various items one could purchase because of high military demand: coffee, tea, butter and meat were rationed so deployed troops could eat.  Even sugar was rationed, because its byproduct (ethyl alcohol) was turned into fuel for gunships and dynamite.

Thanks to this, mothers had become creative: enter Spam, Jell-O pie, fortified margarine, and the old standby in times of hardship, chicken pot pie.

Women gave up nylons as silk; wool, rayon and cotton were collected from neighborhoods and used to make parachutes, tents and military clothing. People were even encouraged to donate scrap metal- even brand new car bumpers- for the building of military hardware.

Though the government encouraged women with young children not to enter the workplace unless they’d exhausted all other options for means of survival, 19 million housewives and mothers flocked to replace men called to kill off Nazis. Many worked long hours in dirty, hot, unventilated factories building tanks, planes and ships- all without the many comforts we enjoy today under the Family Medical Leave Act (1993); the Civil Rights Act (1964, 1968); the Age Discrimination Act (1967); the Sex Discrimination Act (1984).

But in the summer and fall of 1945, men returned home to their families and sweethearts, creating a marriage boom, a baby boom, and an economic boom. We’d beaten the Nazis and saved the world: morale was at an all- time high.

Now that the men were back to take the reins, women returned to their kitchens and household duties; some, happy to be rid of dreary and dirty factory life; others, sad to be going back to the grind after having a life and a voice- some for the first time- outside the home.

But they’d have to deal with any perceived demotion some twenty years hence during the Sexual Revolution: now they had shiny new… well, everything they’d never had before.

Suddenly, women all over the country had their first house during the “white flight” to suburbia. Every family would own a brand new car in short order. Soon, women who grew up knowing strife and want would own new furniture, a television, washing machine and toaster, and would decorate their kitchens in soothing blues, yellows and greens.

They had new shiny appliances: food mixers, hair dryers, electric sewing machines, fridge/ freezer combos. With the advent of saran wrap, nonstick pans and instant ice tea, came obligatory fondue and Tupper wear parties and church socials.

Now that rationing was over, Americans had everything they never knew they wanted at their fingertips.

And they had to do it with perfect hair.

At least that’s the way it seemed in Look magazine and The Saturday Evening Post.   

But common of the day was kind of female servitude deemed laughable and even offensive by today’s standards. Conditioning for being a “good wife” began in high school, as shown in the following excerpt from a 1954 home economics textbook:

·         Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal, on time. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome needed.

 

·         Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so that you'll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your makeup, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a little gay and a little more interesting. His boring day may need a lift.

 

 

·         Make the evening his. Never complain if he does not take you out to dinner or to other places of entertainment. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure, his need to be home and relax.

 

According to the now- defunct magazine Housekeeping Monthly, a good wife’s goal should be to make the home “a place of peace and order where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.”

These “duties”, of course, were not for want of nothing; husbands, in turn, were expected by their wives, their children, and certainly by society, to maintain fulltime employment and pay all the household bills. They were expected to make all the arraignments for little Johnny’s college tuition and annual family vacations, and deal with plumbers, electricians, noisy neighbors, crank callers, insurance agents and car problems. 

All in all, it’s not a bad trade- off.

But the stresses of that homemaking, mixed with the very relevant red- baiting and blacklisting of feared Communists, the threat of nuclear fallout, not to mention girdles, petticoats and corsets, crying babies and now the  f*!&ing cookies burned, caused total mental meltdowns, and wives felt distant from the outside world, lonely and overanxious.

Their husbands had his nightly Gin and Tonic to relieve his stress.

Women had valium.

What become known as a “mother’s little helper” kept women calm and quiet for most of the 50’s, until its affects were replaced by the socially- friendly marijuana in the late 60’s.

By then women had spent a decade stoned out of their gourds.

But 1960’s society freed women from the oppressive duties of baking casseroles and waxing floors: The Beatles, The Graduate and The New Left gave birth to a braver, looser and more vocal society. Men burned their draft cards as women worked to change their status as a mere homemaker.

And they did it without their girdles, their curlers or their bras.

Today’s “people of Wal-mart” ought to take note: not wearing a bra was meant as a social statement, symbolizing freedom from rigid 50’s life. It is not an option if you are larger than 200 pounds. And it should be an offense punishable by public stoning if you’ve had more than two kids.

That once- revolutionary social statement has since morphed into a new kind of overpowering feminism that permits hairy legs, unwashed hair, pit- stains and ill-fitting clothes. And by “permits”, I mean “burns holes in our corneas every time we turn a corner but we’re not allowed to say anything”.

By the time the 1980’s rolled around, pot and valium had moved to the backburner as means of recreational entertainment (though clearly not used enough) thanks to numerous anti- drug programs publicized by Nancy Reagan and the Rockers Against Drugs PSA’s.  Besides, the new threats of Russians lobbing nukes at the Heartland clearly outlined the dangers of being mellow.  

Were women to not have given up their drugs and provided such incredible upheaval, the great social changes of that decade might never have happened. By this time, women had found a new drug, and it has proved more addictive than any other the country had known: pity.

The term “feminism” goes back as far as 1895. It is defined as an “organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests”, and it began as a spearhead for the woman’s voice in a world of suffrage and domination.

The cause began with women gaining employment in fields once dominated by men, went on to provide anti-discrimination support and equal rights under the law, then on to break the glass ceiling, and eventually peaked with feminine- laced legislation we are likely to suffer for years.

Through the struggle, what did women find?

They found a louder voice, and greater influence over office politics, business policy and legislation than ever before. They found greater affluence, greater pull over household decisions and finance.

They found Victoria’s Secret, Maybelline and the Power Suit.

They also found themselves negotiating hostile takeovers 50 hours a week. They found themselves out of touch with their two kids, their two cars and their two televisions.

They also fell out of touch with their traditional place in the home: cookbook sales plummeted while frozen dinners and fast food- early precursors to the obesity phenomenon 20 years hence- found a new place at the kitchen table.

Family finance began to include buying everything on credit; and now that many women brought home just as much, and sometime more, bacon than their husbands, newly fangled superstores enjoyed a surge in sales as in- store plastic saw a peak in popularity.

What women forget during all of this was the honor once found in homemaking.

Women forgot that ruling the home was just as important, if not just as life altering, as the good ole boys club that debated war and trade in smoking rooms and Senate halls. After all, the home is where future leaders are first suckled, reared and taught. It’s the one place that gives the men that go on to rule councils and nations their first spanking, first taste of a chocolate chip cookie and first definitions of comfort after mom tucks them into bed on crisp, freshly- washed sheets.  

Women forgot that ruling the home is not a perpetual state of infancy or second- class citizenship.

Women had begun to turn their husbands into sniveling Al Bundy’s who tiptoed around their wives’ monthly cycles lest they be faced with another self- help book or women’s group meeting in the living room. Children began to turn into gelatinous masses demanding more of everything, as they sat in awe before the birth of MTV and Atari.

And then there was the music: a scene dominated by spike heels, lipstick and lots and lots of hairspray.

And sometimes the women dressed up, too.

But women had finally done it: they had effectively turned their men into women, and no genre was immune: Michael Jackson, Motley Crue and The Oak Ridge Boys all adorned their album covers dressed like dolls and in rouge and eyeliner.

Television shows of the 1980s should have erased any doubt that feminism also had begun to take over the FCC either by direct involvement, or through any number of watchdog groups like the PMRC and Parents Television Council.

Hardened John Wayne- types that stared in Bonanza and The Untouchables had virtually disappeared from Hollywood. Instead, even the most intense cop shows were replaced by inticing studs of 21 Jumpstreet and Miami Vice and the female- friendly Cagney and Lacey.

Funny men Jackie Gleason and Red Skelton were replaced with the sexier Dennis Miller and Eddie Murphy.

Matriarchy overpowered male- geared advertising with the saturation of tampon and shampoo commercials, Golden Girls, and the precursor to sensitivity training, the After School Special.

Even the NFL suffered a feminine overhaul with the introduction of ridiculous- sounding penalties that included ‘grasping a facemask’, ‘taunting’, and ‘late arrival on the field’, and later, feminine- laced products endorsed by the league, the latest of which includes Febreeze, the “official air freshener of the NFL”.

Feminine values have even infiltrated the DMV: the Department of Transportation is permitted by law to refuse issuing any license plate that could be deemed offensive to good taste, whether a requested personalized plate or a random combination of letters and numbers.

Feminization has also invaded nature: male fish in several major river basins throughout the nation are exhibiting female characteristics, to include laying their own eggs.

Even our cars are feminized; nagging one just like a wife with loud buzzers and bells that ring for every little discretion from leaving the lights on, to failing to strap your 8 year- old into his car seat within an inch of his life.

Black studies, women’s studies, children’s studies and media studies were new fields gaining credibility in matters of legislation and society. Women ruled the country.

The only bastion of true manliness to have survived is the jock strap aisle at Dunham’s.

It became a world unlike any humans had known before. Trends began to turn towards public welfare, as seatbelt, helmet and child safety seat use became mandatory though out the nation. Cigarette ads began to disappear from magazines, billboards and television. After school specials taught our kids to Just Say No to sex- because you’ll surely get AIDS and die- and drugs, because they come from places like Columbia, and once we declared Satan having left Russia, it was surely the only place he had left to go.

Conservative Christians, also known as the Christian Right, also rose to popularity in the 1980’s. Hardly fast friends with feminists, they did at least agree on the evil of sexuality during the anti- pornography movement. 

But the similarities ended there: the Christian right was terrified of feminists, simply, because they spoke. They didn’t stay home to take care of the children. The asserted their own thoughts and insisted on recognition. So when AIDS gave these puritan values a shot in the arm, it seemed to prove them correct: sex had become dirty- and not the good kind.

And so, enter the stereotype of the frigid feminist: a busy body so eternally turned off and uninterested in sex with men that her only emotional release is in supervising the lifestyles and choices of other people. Modern women had been raised to be sexually independent, but the fear of STDs and seemingly the reasonable religious and feminist arguments, coupling would just have to wait.