THE FAIRER SEX

Short Stories on Male Privilege

No. 21

An Object Lesson

'Beauty is rewarded and lack of beauty is punished.'

- Andrea Dworkin

I

The taxi pulls up in front of a ten-storey building. It's all glass and steel, with 'Grey Advertising, Inc' shouting from the summit. A patriarch, displaying his status. I enter an enormous, white-sandstone lobby. Another display of wealth - how typically masculine.

I check my watch anxiously: I'm on time.

A receptionist sits behind a big sandstone desk; she's strawberry-blonde, immaculate in her charcoal suit. A sex object; a male fantasy; a piece of meat.

She arches an eyebrow; scans me head to foot, then foot to head; and finally fakes her smile. I resent this. Don't judge me by my body.

This is smart - for me, anyway. I've worn my red leggings - I don't do skirts - with brown, knee-length boots; and my baggy-blue sweater.

I sense an escaped tendril, but stop my hand's reflex. I slept with damp hair - again. But the tendril's won its freedom. Don't judge me by my body.

'I'm here to see Mr. Grey', I say to the sex object. 'I'm Uglotta Steele, for Feminist Student magazine.'

'Please sign here', Ms. Steele.'

She gives me a visitor badge. I pin it to my baggy sweater.

'Please take the elevator to the top floor', she adds.

The elevator whisks me aloft.

I scowl at the face in the mirror. Damn my hair - it won't behave. Never mind; it doesn't matter; it's only hair. My face is pale and ghost-like - but makeup is a sexist snare; it's pandering to the male gaze. Don't judge me by my body.

Damn it, I should be cramming for my exams, not conducting this stupid interview. Never mind, I'll get some course credits - I'm majoring in feminist journalism.

The elevator pings; I find another giant lobby, also brilliantly lit - another tiresome display of male status. There's a second strawberry-blonde; I tut-tut silently to myself. She's also dressed impeccably, in pink Versace. Another woman objectified; another one of the patriarchy's hapless slaves.

She rises to greet me.

'Ms. Steele, could you wait here, please?' She gestures to some white-leather chairs.

I sit down, fish my questions from my bag and go through them.

Would I like a coffee, asks the sex object.

'A glass of water, please'.

She's a receptionist; but like most women does double-duty as a servant.

A third flawlessly dressed, strawberry blonde enters via a large door on my right, walks across the lobby, and exits by the large door on my left. What is it with these strawberry blondes? Click-click-click she goes in fuck-me shoes, sounding out her percussive lament to subjugated women the world over. Well, I expected Stepford Wives, and Stepford Wives is what I got. This, after all, is Grey Advertising, Inc.: employment for sex objects - strong, independent women need not apply. At Grey Advertising, Inc., women are the decorative and ornamental sex. But, then, the whole world sees women that way. Bring on the feminist utopia . . .

The future is female!

Silence for a few minutes.

A buzzer sounds.

'Mr. Grey will see you now', says the sex object. 'Do go through.'

I stand up, walk to the big door and enter.

I find an enormous office - it's far too big for one just man. Status, as usual. A huge, wooden, antique desk. Men like showing off their big phallic desks in their swanky, show-off offices. Nothing but a dominance display. Look at me! Look at me! Look at how much money I have!

'Ms Steele', a man says, standing up and walking toward me. 'I'm Christian Grey.'

Oddly, he doesn't subject me to one of those awful full-body leers, in which men weigh up women's bodies, sexually. He's probably waiting until I look the other way. Don't you dare judge me by my body.

I offer my hand vertically, like a man - a horizontal hand invites a patronising kiss. We've moved on, thankfully. Chivalry is sexism; the same shit in another bucket.

Our hands shake; and I feel a weird shiver run through me. It's as if an electric current is passing between us. Why do I feel this way? Our eyes meet. Why are my legs jellified? I feel something. This feeling, what is it? It seems to bubble up from some deep, instinctive, primordial well within my being.

I feign nonchalance.

We sit on an L-shaped sofa of white-leather.

I look around. I see several paintings of famous Hollywood actresses - I mean actors - from the golden era. Ingrid Bergman; Paulette Goddard; Hedy Lamar; Lana Turner; Joan Blondell.

'I admire female beauty', he says, smiling. 'I commissioned the artist. Well, as we agreed, Ms. Steele, we will record this interview. Just in case your article doesn't . . . erm . . . well, just in case we disagree about what I actually said.'

'Feminist journalists still have principles', Mr. Grey, I say curtly, a little offended.

'Oh, of course, I know I can count on a feminist to tell the truth.'

I freeze briefly, and wonder if he's laughing at me. I examine his face carefully; his expression says 'ingenuous'.

We set our phones recording.

I hardly recognise my own voice - it's feeble and too high. Why?

I know I do not like this man; but some uncanny feeling within me says that I do. I fight it; I suppress it; I shove it back down the primordial well.

I feel my face blushing. What is happening to me?

He is sitting close. I must not look at his mouth. I must not look at his mouth. I must not look at his mouth.

'Shall we be on first-name terms?' he asks.

'By all means.'

'Please call me Christian.'

'Uglotta.'

'Uglotta - that's a pretty name.'

I freeze briefly, and wonder if he's laughing at me. I examine his face carefully; his expression says 'ingenuous'. And yet, men seldom take women seriously; still less, when they're powerful. He probably sees me as a plaything.

'Perhaps you could start with a brief description of the business?'

My voice is croaky. I clear my throat.

Again, I shove that uncanny feeling back down the primordial well.

I settle back for the usual mansplaining monologue, yawn-inducing and full male braggadocio.

'Well, I run the country's third-largest advertising agency, which I founded myself - I've built Grey Advertising from scratch, although admittedly I've also made several acquisitions. I also own the business outright, which means I don't report to a board. I employ thirteen-thousand people in fourteen offices, mostly in the UK and North America.'

'Even so, like all men you've benefitted a lot from male privilege.'

'Yes, I know. I've worked sixty-hour weeks for the past fifteen years - that's earned me quite a lot of male privilege. Do you know, the harder I work, the more male privilege I seem to get. In fact, it's starting to look a little bit like male achievement, don't you think?'

He smiles, and gives me an exaggerated wink. I was right - he is not taking me seriously.

'And you're still quite young.'

'I'm thirty-five - although it certainly helped that I didn't waste time at university; today's students are being educated into imbecility. I am however rather well-read in psychology - that's certainly of central importance to advertising. I pioneered evolutionary psychology in advertising. That's been responsible for my success, if anything has.'

He gestures to the large bookcase behind him. I spot Gad Saad's The Consuming Instinct, and Catherine Hakim's Honey Money - The Power of Erotic Capital.

'Erotic capital', I say. 'That's behind a lot of your advertising, is it not. Women are ornamental and decorative. Sex objects, in other words.'

He grins, but not to hide embarrassment: he's an unrepentant chauvinist.

'My first big success as you probably know was with a restaurant chain - Buffer's.'

'A breastaurant.'

'Yes - they only employ curvaceous waitresses. My commercial kept watchers guessing for a whole thirty seconds - just footage of railway carriages, and zooming in on their buffers. The ad then ended with the slogan - '

'- "Buffer your Buffet" ', I interrupt.

'Yes.'

' "Come to Buffer's - we've got more curves than a scenic railway!". '

'That's it', he says, laughing.

He's one hundred per cent misogynist.

'But', I say, suppressing anger at his blatant toxic masculinity, 'don't you have any qualms about this kind of establishment? I mean, scantily-clad waitresses turn the establishment into a kind of strip-club lite, where women's bodies are sexualised and commodified. Get objectified; get paid.'

'Exactly', he says. 'The girls are there to be objectified, and they're paid to be so.'

'And there are no Buffer's Boys, only Buffer's Girls.'

He laughs again, and says: 'Try opening a restaurant in which skimpily-clad men serve the meals. If a business violates any fundamental tenet of evolutionary psychology, then it'll fail. Beautiful women are used to sell so many things. They are used to sell things to women; and they are used to sell things to men. Sell cosmetics to women? Use a female model. Sell motorcars to men? Use a female model. It's been that way since the beginning of advertising.'

'Sex objects', I say. 'It's a type of dehumanisation, is it not. Arm candy. Dolly-birds. Bimbos. Dumb blondes. Objects of male desire.'

He laughs again that sexist laugh of his, and replies: 'Well, I'm glad you're using those terms. If I said them, you'd call me a sexist. We work closely with modelling agencies; in fact, I acquired a couple of them. We also work closely with the motor industry in this respect.'

'Yes, those poor models draping themselves over cars and motorbikes, usually in hot pants or such like.'

'They aren't exactly poor, those models. We had a successful campaign with the popstar Kylie Minnow - '

'Yes, the one in which her dress rode all the way up her thigh - '

'- and she got more for that single photoshoot than most people earn in an entire year! Male models don't come close in earnings to female ones, by the way. That looks rather like a pay gap, to me. Odd that feminists never complain about that; I thought they wanted gender equality. Anyway, our subsidiaries also supply grid girls, podium girls, ring girls, calendar girls, walk-on girls, that kind of thing.'

'But these are outdated practises' I say. 'Gender stereotyping. A woman's value should not come from her sex appeal. You treat women as depersonalised objects of desire, rather than real humans in their own right. Just a thing to copulate with. This attitude contributes to gender inequality.'

'Women's bodies are designed to be attractive to men - so that men will want to impregnate them. That's the way the system works.'

'Feminists will put a stop to it.'

'Well, good luck with that. I think a good litmus test is whether women boxers, racing drivers or athletes could be presented with bouquets and champagne by scantily-clad men. I doubt it. Women are valued more for their looks than men. There are sound evolutionary reasons for that. The physical traits valued in a woman's body are also indices of her health and fertility - that's not at all a coincidence.'

'These women are exploited' I say.

'On the contrary, I've spoken to many of them myself. None of them think their jobs are sexist, exploitative or demeaning. They love their jobs, and they enjoy feeling glamorous.'

'Well obviously they'd say that - there's a power differential. That's how the Harvey Weinsteins of the world get away with it. Some of these outmoded jobs - grid girls, especially - have now been shut down. These poor women don't know right from wrong.'

'I see - and feminists will decide that for them.'

'Yes, because feminism opens up jobs for women.'

'By shutting women's jobs down.

There's no doubt about it now; this man really hates women.

'Beauty is rewarded and lack of beauty is punished', I say.

'The way I see it is this', he says, leaning back in his chair.

I have a kind of spider sense for mansplaining, and I brace myself. I am not disappointed.

'There are four types of capital', he says. 'Financial capital; social capital; cultural capital; sexual capital. And they're all fungible. If social or cultural capital can be traded for financial capital, then so can sexual capital. Women are endowed with far more sexual capital than men - there are sound evolutionary reasons for that, and society reflects it. Is that discrimination against men? No. It's just a fact. Like men are taller than women. A fact. You say there's gender inequality. Well, there is, but not the sort you mean.'

'Several of your advertisements have fallen foul of the Advertising Regulatory Authority - they were deemed sexist.'

'That's the work of the feminist anti-sex league.'

'The what?'

'I mean the feminists who claim that sexy images of women are in fact sexist images. It's a new form of prudery - or perhaps the return of an old one that the Victorians would agree with. The Advertising Regulatory Authority has been captured by feminist nutjobs. The ARA was originally formed to ensure that businesses don't lie in their advertising - that's necessary, I accept that. But today, the ARA are setting themselves up as guardians of public sensibility. They have arrogated this power, and it won't do. Grey Advertising will challenge them in court.'

Another one of those tiresome male power-plays.

'Men are so hierarchical' I say.

'More than women are, yes. At least, they are so when it comes to status.'

'Because of the patriarchy.'

'No, because of women.'

'How so?'

'Sexual selection. For several hundred-thousand years, women have picked the winners among the men. This makes sense, because successful men are better providers - for women. In this sense, women have themselves created the patriarchy that feminists decry. If women want men to stop being so hierarchical, then the solution is simple: stop hanging out at the finish-line to pick the winners. Instead, be attracted to losers. Be attracted to men who don't want to do anything with their lives; those with no get-up-and-go. Be attracted to lazy or unambitious men. Be attracted to idle, shiftless layabouts. Be attracted to penniless, unemployed wasters.'

II

When Christian Grey finally left work that evening it was 8pm. The receptionists had long since left; they would return tomorrow morning at 9am, at which point he'd have been back at work for two hours.

He waved to the security guard on the way out.

He gave little thought to the interview. He knew that Feminist Student were planning a hit-piece: the interview was just a necessary pretence; the article was probably written beforehand.

Well, he was about to make a large donation to the university's business school, part of which would fund a new professorship in evolutionary psychology, as it pertains to advertising. He'd call the Vice Chancellor about it tomorrow.

He got into his Aston Martin, and drove down toward the main gate. A couple of women turned and waved as he passed them. He'd never seen them before.

On reaching home he poured himself a whisky, sat in his study and reflected.

Idly playing with his phone, he found a voicemail from his mother: it betrayed the usual black-ops mission. 'Ms. Hopeful is coming to dinner, perhaps you'd care to join us?' Just by happenstance, Ms. Hopeful was single. He laughed, throwing his head back. Ms. Hopeful would hope unavailingly.

Christian Grey had two brothers, both of whom were now divorced. Their marriages had followed predictable trajectories, when seen through the lens of evolutionary psychology. 

Warren Grey excelled in football, basketball and lacrosse. Already a star fullback when in high school, he won a full college scholarship. As a sophomore, he was the leading rusher on the team, and set a college record for highest season rush average and most touchdowns in a single game. At the National Football League Draft, he was taken on by the Mudville Pirates. He was even featured, albeit briefly, in Time magazine, as the most promising rookie. A stellar career with associated riches beckoned.

Warren never had trouble meeting girls, because girls sought out all conceivable opportunities to meet the players. He'd once said exactly this: 'whenever there's a football or basketball team in town, the lobby of the hotel starts to resemble a modelling agency. There are all these chicks hanging about in low-cut tops and slit skirts, stretching out their long legs.' Cheer-leaders were also superabundant, and, when Warren decided to marry, he chose the hottest of the hottest - who, as it happens, was a pre-med at that time. When his wife began her career as an obstetrician, their respective incomes were comparable. But after a year or so, tragedy struck: a sporting injury put paid to Warren's professional career; and now he scraped along with coaching jobs that were poorly paid and insecure. His wife's career, on the other hand, had an upward gradient; and when their salary differential reached a factor of three, she divorced him.

Christian's other brother, Dwight, was the intellectual of the family and determined to make it as a writer. He therefore led a hermit-like existence, supporting himself from time to time by low-paid jobs with little responsibility that would not detract from his art: he was the proverbial 'poor scribe', starving in a garret. When his first two novels failed to find a publisher, he risked a lethal fall from poverty's bleak cliff. His third novel, however, titled Second House, Third Wife, turned out a smash. Several literary prizes followed, and, at one such award ceremony, he met his wife.

His next novel, however, was badly received by critics and public alike; the novel after that was not even reviewed; he was then dropped by his publisher; and his latest manuscript had only been successful in the thick layer of dust it acquired. The royalties from his successful novel were, of course, finite; and the day he returned to a job on minimum wage, was also the day on which his wife filed for divorce.

If women are judged by their bodies, then men are judged by their achievements. A beautiful woman almost always marries above the social class of her origin; but manhood must be earned. This discrepancy, Christian Grey knew, was entirely consistent with evolutionary psychology; understanding it, had even been a cornerstone of his success. A woman's beauty is evidence of her ability to conceive; a man's wealth is evidence of his ability to provide. These preferences, operating over thousands of generations, allowed humans to survive and prosper. Consequently, a man's lack of success - failure, especially - is soundly punished.

But how about Christian Grey? As a teenager, he'd been invisible to girls: he was feeble academically; he was pathetic athletically; he was shy socially. He was, however, exceptional in another, latent and untested sense. Only when he won his first award, and only then, had things changed - when he stepped out of his chauffeured limousine and walked down the red carpet, into the glitter and the glamour; the razzamatazz and the paparazzi. And nowadays, when he held those monthly parties on his yacht, his security-men were besieged by women. But, in night clubs or cassinos, women still avoided eye contact, or stared surlily at this short-statured, unattractive man, until someone nudged them, and whispered that money and status came through him, lots of them in fact; the ice then melted, and they made themselves so achingly lovely.

It amused him, however, to keep his floorboards safely nailed down. Yes, he went out with women, occasionally. On parting, he shook their hands in a coldly business-like fashion and walked off, leaving them standing there, astonished that he urged nothing further. Why did he do this? MGTOW, or Men Go Their Own Way, was much in the news. Christian Grey had been such man before the acronym was even coined. He had no problem with wealthy men marrying beautiful women for their beauty; nor with beautiful women marrying wealthy men for their wealth: this had happened since for ever. Divorce-rape, however, was entirely different - all the millionaires he knew had suffered from this State-assisted theft. He resolved again to keep his floorboards firmly nailed down.

He turned round, read the framed text on the wall behind him and laughed. It dated from the time he started out in business, fifteen years previously. It was a personal ad, posted by a woman on Craigslist, followed by a man's response.

I'm so tired with all the pretence - let's be honest and say what we really want at the outset. I'm a 25-year-old New Yorker. I'm slim, leggy, classy and really beautiful. I'm looking to get married to a guy who makes at least a half a million a year; preferably a million. I know how it sounds, but I know I'm gorgeous and I don't think I'm overreaching at all - I needn't waste time on average guys with average incomes.

I'm a 35-year-old Wall Street banker and I make a million a year. I'm also an appreciating asset: my earning capacity will continue rising as I gain experience and seniority - in a few years I may even make partner. You, on the other hand, are a depreciating asset - you may be a hottie for a few more years yet, but then your looks will fade quickly, and meanwhile there'll be other hotties coming up fast behind you. I always say this to women who see men like me as success objects.

Endnotes

·        Entrepreneurs in Cars, (2555) Women Are Beauty Objects, Men Are Success Objects - YouTube

·        Hakim C., Honey money - the power of erotic capital, Allen Lane (2011).

·        Saad G. (2011), The consuming instinct - what juicy burgers, Ferraris, pornography, and gift giving reveal about human nature, Prometheus Books. 

(c) Cufwulf Montagu

Cufwulf@aol.com