The Maddening Lack of Shame with Women

Women have a secret agenda.

Or, at least, we used to.

The color and choice of our underwear used to be a private, yet subtly alluring, affair. The products used to “put on our face” were once a source of mystery for men and a traditional rite- of- passage for young girls. 

The trials we endured to produce the oft- illusion of an hourglass figure and large breasts were known only to the women of the family. 

Today’s women have managed to completely dissolve that feminine mystique by forgoing all the ritual. They wake up, roll out of bed, wash their face, and brush their teeth and…

Well, I guess we’re lucky some of them bother brush their teeth.

But some don’t.

Many more don’t trade out their jammies for day clothes when they leave the house; and I’m not talking about that midnight run to the corner store, having thrown a ratty coat over nighttime unmentionables, because you need milk for breakfast.

I’m talking high noon on Monday.

Wal-Mart. 

I’m talking women walking around in mixed company as if she were behind a closed door in her own bathroom.

I know you’ve seen her- she could be a young lady or a middle- aged mom, but she’s wandering around the frozen food section wearing oversized Mountain Dew men’s lounge pants, free- range breasts bouncing under a two sizes too- small nicotine- stained white tank top and pink fuzzy house slippers- sans socks.

Look closer and you’ll see that tank top started out life as a camisole; the Christopher & Banks logo is hiding under the ketchup and coffee stains. Trust me.

At first, she appears to be shopping alone, but upon further inspection you find anywhere between three and five youngsters under the age of 7 straggling some twenty feet behind her.  Every once in a while she’ll stop her cell phone conversation and yell for them to hurry up.

The youngest daughter pulls on her mommy’s shirt to get her attention, to which the mother rolls her eyes and responds, “Shut up! Mommy’s on the phone.”

Then she sighs loudly, rolls her eyes and mutters, “God.”

At some point in her shopping trip her cell phone conversation becomes impassioned to the point where she can’t walk and talk at the same time. So she stops her cart smack in the middle of aisle eight and starts flailing her sailor talk even louder, forcing the 73 year- old lady who was trying to compare bran cereals to scurry away in fear.  

I know you’ve seen her.

You want to smack her profusely about the head and neck. You want to shake her. You want to knock the phone out of her hand and slam her up against the Fruit Loops and scream at her to cover herself and pay attention to her kids before they pull down the oatmeal display at the end of the aisle.

But you decide not to. Instead, you try and pierce through her protective shield of selfishness with an angry glare. Cuz that’ll get her off that phone and stop her kids from climbing into the milk coolers.

But you can’t. 

You know the second she catches your dirty look, she’ll have no problem at all not only returning the look, but pausing her phone conversation to ask you what your problem is.

And you know it’ll only escalate from there. And the last thing you want is to wind up on an episode of Cops  because her irresponsibility turned you into a criminal.

So you deal with it, right along with three hundred other people in the store. And right before you pay for your purchases, you pick up a bottle of aspirin and a pack of condoms- because you’re beginning to have second thoughts about having any kids- and decide to stop at the liquor store on your way home because you just wrap your brain around the idea we live in a nation that requires a license for driving, hunting, teaching, catching a fish- even building an addition to your garage, but we let anybody at all have a child.

It’s no wonder old folks always look so frail and timid when they’re out in public; they’re terrified of these people.

Remember that scene from Witches of Eastwick when Susan Sarandon’s character does her grocery shopping without a bra? She’s shamed and shunned by the neighborhood women until she leaves the store.

We don’t shame anymore. 

We don’t shun.

And we should.