Superficial women

Superficial women Among the many observations our French aristocrat makes are these ones; ‘I have often had occasion to observe that there are more ceremonies than compliments in America. All their politeness is mere form, such as drinking toasts to the company, observing ranks, giving the right of way, etc. but all this comes only from what has been taught, none of it arises from feeling; in a word, politeness here is like religion in Italy, all in practice and nothing in principle’ It was for me an Oscar winning performance of acting: The scene in the movie where the acclaimed actor Leonardo Dicaprio moves into a ‘bucket shop’ ‘boiler room’ operation of selling for fifty per cent commission cheap and going to be worthless stocks. And his sales pitch is just like that which is described in the above quote from nearly three hundred years ago- for the person handing over the money- convincing, yet the smugness and the corruption revealed in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ maybe indicates a superficial ness and perhaps insincerity of an actor just saying the right words in the right way. Look I honestly don’t know! I would as a matter of principal never hand over money to an American businessman. If I need to purchase goods from America I always work through a local middleman and that way the come back is on someone I know and trust- But what about American women- what does he have to say about them? ‘Unmarried women were allowed to be high spirited and even publicly affectionate towards men but married women were expected to be plain dowdy and domestic’ ‘American women are very little accustomed to give themselves trouble either of mind or body; the care of children, that of making tea and seeing the house is kept clean constitute the whole of the domestic province’ Again I have little direct experience of observation to go on. But when in Hong Kong my wife and I visited a friend of hers at a missionary base where in a governors mansion rented from the governor for a dollar per year a number of young single American missionaries could be seen. And in the cramped women’s quarters I was stunned to see small suit case sized make up bags as prized possessions or the next year at Bible College we again watched similar American women turn up made up for breakfast. Now with my wife spending maybe less than a hundred dollars on those sorts of things in 50 years- the obsession with superficial appearance is indeed deeply puzzling. But it goes deeper than that. What he seems to be telling us that American women he observed aspired to being empty headed! Contrast that with the conduct of our French aristocrat’s mother. Daughter of the ruler of France and the person who developed within him his wide ranging and deep love of life and observation of it- Our author wants to respect women to talk with them- and instead they are in his experience just shuffling around dowdy, looking after the children making cups of tea and saying nothing worth repeating to us! Our author is a prototype feminist. I as your blogger come from generations of feminism- we seek out and marry the smartest most dynamic women we can possibly find- and then give them lots of space to develop even to our own detriment. So USA what is going on? Are the comments timeless?