Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 38, No. 18. July 23rd 1975

Culture

Culture

In this consumer society, women are made the major consumers to keep the purchase of goods going. Initially, the rich ladies were the victims. But to strengthen the economic stability of the form of society we are in, female workers are influenced through yellow culture to buy make-up and dresses so that they may appear charming and feminine to the male onlookers. Annual parties organised by managements reinforce this concept. Beauty queens and best couples are chosen on the basis of skin-deep beauty and sexual attractiveness. This is the greatest insult to the human worth of women. They are invested with such glamour, fame and material rewards. Without these, such contests are not much more civilized than the parades of captured women in concentration camps during 2nd World War.

Many women are implanted with the idea that they are fated to lead a miserable life if their husband marries a second woman. This happens more in rich families than poor ones. Poor women have to support the family too and their social value will be different from that of the rich class although they are also subjected to cultural and social repression.

Quite recently, the phrase 'ladies first' was imported from the west. Men usually will open the door of a car for women and let her enter first. Is this a form of respect for women? No, such habits only perpetuate the myth of women being weaker than, and dependent on men.

It deprives a woman of true liberation and of respect by men. It also contributes to propagating a wrong image on women's liberation which is fighting for equality of mankind, and not the subjugation of one another.