BC writes:
I am a 60 year old female who enjoyed (and agreed with) your column. When I was growing up in the 50’s, women were women and men were men. The feminist movement did more damage than good. Have you noticed that every single TV commercial makes the woman look smart, smug, superior, and sarcastic. Males are portrayed as dumb nitwits that are dependent on woman to make even the simplest decision. Why are men putting up with this? Where’s the outrage? Women in movies and TV shows are portrayed the same way. It’s sickening. Are women taking their queue from this propaganda? I have been disappointed to observe little girls as young as 5 acting the same way. Even the cartoons give little girls the stronger role and the poor helpless little boys are at their mercy.
Who said men are putting up with this? They’re not, and the television industry is panicking because the all-important 18-34 segment refuses to watch anything but sports anymore. And why should they, considering the choices are between playing Doom 3 and committing mass virtual mayhem or watching supercilious actresses spouting off unwitty dialogue written by self-loathing homosexuals to mock the poor helpless male characters.
Television is a weird little universe where a man will always lose a sports competition to a woman, where a woman always gets the last word and where she will always be loved for herself no matter what an unpleasant, unbalanced lunatic she is. The bizarre problem is that a young boy reading a Conan novel generally recognizes that it is not real, but a woman watching Allie McBeal, Sex in the City or whatever shows have replaced them in the female pantheon is all too prone to not only take it seriously, but to actually identify herself with and model her behavior on one of these fictional, fantastic characters.
If you ever hear a woman saying “I am SOOO [fill in the blank with fictional TV character here]”, run. I mean, it’s not like women take men who attempt to act like James Bond seriously either.