women's pleasure

Do a pair of Vivienne Westwood shoes really drive a sensible man wild? I guess I am old fashioned, but I thought physical attraction was, well, physical.  And shoes are not physical.  I mean their only value is in getting knocked off and sent flying across the room.  So when a friend posted that her new pair of shoes possessed the capacity to seduce - I corrected her that men are not interested in shoes or diamond handbags or expensive watches.  They are interested in the bottomline, not Carrie Bradshaw.  But, I am confounded at how naive I had been.  Yes, there are cavemen amongst us, but even amongst the caveman hiding demurely is a metrosexual man.  A man who notices a woman's perfume, and gets excited not by the sight of curves, but the designer labels accentuating and covering those curves.

Now, it'd be fine to call this man metrosexual; it would be tasteful, perhaps charitable.  Or in economic terms, you could call him an ultra consumer who must spend his excess wealth, drawn from the sweat and toil of the workers, in indulgent possessions.  And his ability to tell a fake posing as a top 100 label, a vile talent to distinguish the real women from the fake.  The real women are the financially viable ones. They are the ones who will continue to enact an opulent lifestyle, by wearing the very best, and driving in the newest cars - adding to and celebrating their husband's wealth.  And when they go shopping, they'll even pick out a pair of designer boxers for him.  

Cynically young girls are given few options, but to aspire to follow their footsteps - they are discouraged from study away from home - they get their hair set by the big names - they press the keys of fine cell phones and blackberries - they receive orthodontics and other cosmetic assistance - they lust for the big wedding with a marquee, and elegant lounges set up for her guests.  They breathe in henna and dreams of gold dowries.  They are but a sad carcass of womanhood.

But shit, who am I to judge them?  

Romantically speaking. I'd rather girls fall shit faced in a pool of love, read a lot of somber stuff, theory and physics, and snap out of childhood in a fall down a slope covered in snow.  And then find themselves in a quicksand of half baked jobs and ideas. And then at some later stage, decide whether they want to have the next ten years of their lives obliterated by motherhood (which is a joy but it does erase the half of our former selves). And then go spend retirement with the maoists on some hilly station in South Asia.  Of-course owning politics does not mean denouncing fashion, as a Naomi Klein type said in a college lecture, "I wear low cut blouses because I want to."

I am obviously biased.  What I really need to know is where now is women's pleasure.  And the famously hackneyed, what do women really want?

Surely not to be harlots of consumerism.  Hopefully not catwalkers for names in lawns.  Certainly not reproducers for an industrialist class.  Maybe not geeks reviewing 15 page papers at 5 am.  Maybe not the aunties in sunglasses and gigantic handbags protesting against karo kari outside the high court. But then, maybe, what?

Define thyself young woman!  (The ladies have uncrossed their legs.)  

Okay, now you are wondering why this feminist rant was titled the titillatingly misleading "women's pleasure"...Because I recently read a khatmal's blog that said if you make your title dirty, more people read. Laugh out silently.  Harlot indeed.  Sorry if this piece if incredibly tilted towards the non working class woman.