Discovering the fact that Tibetan women often take two or three husbands, frequently brothers as a sort of job lot, is surprising. (It’s called fraternal polyandry, by the way.) That’s understandable. It’s a remote area of the world, so obviously, things might be different. Discovering that teenage girls, right here, right under my nose, consider being ‘tall’ as simply the worst thing that could befall them, is stunning.
We’re talking average sized girls. We’re dealing with a situation where being in the back row of the school photo because the teacher’s arranged you in height order and exposed you for the gigantic freak you are is a nightmare you’ll never live down.
What happened?
Being ‘tall’ (read: not short) is ugly and bad.
Standards of beauty fluctuate notoriously between eras and locations. We all know that. But one thing we haven’t seen until now is the emaciated model of perfection. Women and girls with their knees buckling under them, posing as if they’re too weak to even stand, let alone act. Certainly not offer any resistance. We haven’t seen starvation to the point of destroying tissue and organs – until now. It’s been going on since the 60s, essentially worsening with time.
Why?
Consider the 60s. A blossoming of feminism. ‘Liberation’. Consider the intervening years until the present. Still massive inequality between the sexes but power, privileges and potential our mothers and grandmothers could never have imagined. Wonderful! Carry on the good fight! But can everyone deal with it?
What happens to all the unemployed Prince Charmings?
Sometimes, they get scared. Then Sleeping Beauty sees them backing away and says No, wait, I feel a migraine coming on, I’d better lie down. Prince Charming approaches with trepidation and starts with the wake-up-kiss routine. Beauty sits up and says Ooh lovely, I’m fine let’s go for a jog, Charming says holy moly hang on I’d need to take my armour off or I won’t be able to keep up with you. Beauty says, Oh, never mind then, darling.
After a bunch of exchanges like this, Charming starts to think Hey up, actually Beauty looked pretty good when she tried on my armour and she’s not half bad at fixing the tower walls. This lying about on her bed is kind of comfy too. But he doesn’t actually say this to Beauty, and when visitors come in they both leap into position, him with his visor down and her on the bed (flowing dress fetchingly arranged).
Meanwhile Beauty reckons re-pointing the tower bricks is all well and good but Charming probably doesn’t find it attractive, so she’d better stop. She re-applies mascara and swoons.
They carry on in this manner and end up hating each other’s guts for no reason they can pinpoint and blame each other for everything under the sun.
This is why teenage girls want to be short. They don’t want to make themselves unattractive by presenting as too powerful. They want to be starved and helpless and offer no resistance at all, and encourage all the Charmings to an easy picking. And it kind of works.
The problem is that we forget: EVERYONE needs looking after. We can take turns. We don’t have to allocate tasks by gender, as we did in the 50s. It always ends up being unfair – to both sexes. Charmings are very good at amusing toddlers and Beauties make mean electricians. And vice versa.
Which brings me neatly to the case of the Pakistani doctors.
70% of students qualifying as doctors in Pakistan are female. They’re more studious – simply a case of the better candidates winning. But very few of them go on to practice. Instead they use their qualifications as bait to attract a man, chuck it all in and become housewives. So the government sees a huge waste of resources (true) and wants to limit the number of females going in to study medicine. JUST A MINUTE THERE.
A quota on candidates? How about encouraging them to stay on and practice? Why would you take the path that throws away a portion of the workforce that has proven itself superior?
That’s a question for the Pakistani government and society to sort out. But perhaps the most shocking thing for me was the final question the (female) BBC interviewer asked the (female) medical students. ‘If you had to choose between a practice and a family, which would you go for?’ All of the interviewees said ‘family’.
When did she last ask a male medical student which one he’ll choose, a practice or a family?