But I am supposed to be. And so everywhere I look I see stories about women who have hundreds of pairs of shoes. Shoes are a big deal on "Sex and the City" which I had never ever watched until recently. I don't need to watch a program that tells me what "women" are like; it wasn't even written by women. Now that I have seen a few episodes, it has only confirmed my impression that the show relies on negative stereotypes of women. And all of them are freaks in one way or another. Carrie's the one character who has some shot at being a reasonable human being, someone with a powerful voice and some authority--note AUTHOR is at the root of the word authority and she is a writer on the show--but she spends all her time and money on shopping for shoes and other crap like that. And on this one episode I just watched she had to be told that she had spent $40,000 on shoes because she was too stupid to figure that out for herself. No thanks.

Here's a nice ad for shoes. Look, it shows a corpse. Of a woman. In expensive shoes. Why aren't the people looking at the corpse reacting? They seem to be standing there casually. Hmm. Could this be because the corpses of women have become so commonplace in advertising that they are not suprised to see another one? Of course that's me trying to make sense of an advertisement, which is a lost cause. The advertisers just want you to notice their ad so you'll buy their product, and they need to manipulate you into doing this by any means possible because they sell you things that you ABSOLUTELY do not need.

Here's what this ad says: hey girl (because you are not a grown women with a life but a scared child who needs approval), you are valuable only because we look at you. You do not need an identity, or even a whole body, you just need to get attention. So be sure to bedeck your corpse in expensive and eye-catching accessories like shoes and you will be a success as we define success in feminine terms. If you just lie there quietly you won't say anything to offend us, nor will you have any desires that make us uncomfortable. Tom Jones' song "She's a Lady" notes approvingly that "she always knows her place." Well, we know what that place is, don't we? On our backs with our mouths shut!