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January 12, 2005

Columnist Astrid Wilde thinks testosterone is getting in the way of more serious questions.


What women really want to know

Oh how I hate it when an otherwise decent newspaper suddenly decides to blossom out and print a woman’s page. They call them all sorts of course, so as not to fall foul of the Sex Discrimination Act, but by their fruits ye shall know them and you can’t fail to recognise yet another dose of quack medicine, fraudulent beauty treatments, and so-called fashion items no living woman would want to be seen dead in.

Womens’ pages my foot; they’re nothing of the sort. Its all a load of masculine propaganda so that male editors can tell women readers what they think they ought to want.

'How to cook delicious dishes to please your partner'. Yeach; aren’t we allowed to cook what we want to eat occasionally?

Then what about 'How to look stunning on £20', the implication being that we’re supposed to look stunning all the time (do they?) but they’ll be blowed if they’ll give us the money to do it with.

And as for the stuff they want us to wear; just look at it! Nasty scratchy lace underwear that brings women up in a rash: why, they’re even trying to persuade us to bring back suspenders. I’d like to see them getting romantic if they had to wear something that itched.

A proper women’s page would be full of things we girls really want to know.

'Interesting diseases your husband can get', would be useful for a start; and if fully illustrated, could save thousands of lives. In view of men’s notorious reluctance to take their pants down in surgeries, well-informed womenfolk could be all that stands between them and a lifetime affliction with something they won’t even be able to mention, let alone complain about.

There are one or two other things we’d like to know too, like what songs do they sing in the showers after rugby matches. And we’d all love to know exactly what goes on in the Freemasons.

Then there should be a panel of woman experts so that we’d know we’d get a truthful answer to important questions. For example: is there a reliable remedy for snoring? How hard can you actually hit the kids without being prosecuted? How do you go about arranging your own divorce without using a solicitor? How did Michael Jackson get like that?

And please can we have an article, with photographs, that explains exactly what it is that farmers have to do when they want to breed dairy cattle nowadays? I’ve been dying to know that for years.