GENDER SELLS

The other day I was in another town [the "big city" actually] and I picked up one of the "alternative press" weeklies.  This is the one that is second in circulation in the city.  I like them both because they are both free.  Imagine a city that can support two major weeklies that are distributed to the public at large at no cost to the reader.  EFR Dion didn't live long enough to enjoy this.  The more prosperous one has a fabulous crossword puzzle too.  I suppose that I should have a "thought" about that phenomenon but actually I don't.  It is because I know exactly how they do it.  I didn't say I can do it, I only said that I know HOW they do it.  I am sure that I told you that old man Socrates said that knowledge of moral good does not insure that the person with the intellectual knowledge of it will act on it and be a righteous person.  So, the same is true for me.  I know how they do it, but That's their "gig" and I have mine.  Period.
There is a point to this article.  Yeah, really.  So I better get to it, right?  So I picked up this newspaper and on page three I saw the picture that you see in the upper left corner.  I figured that they were selling ... No, it couldn't be that.  Besides the heading says Sunglass Optical.  "Oh," says I,  "Now I get it.  It's her eyes I'm supposed to be looking at."  Hmmm.  "Nah, I wanna see about the gift cards."  So, I'm still checking out the gift cards.  I still don't know what the gift is.  I'm afraid that they're going to take the picture away from me and give me a gift card for sunglasses.  I'm saying, "No way."
I have this "thought" now because I am an adult and I have lived long enough that I can remember my mother, yep, good ole MJT Dion herself, asking why they had these shameless women sitting on automobile hoods in the ads.  She always wondered if the gender connection had anything to do with the quality of the internal combustion engine or some other such essential thing.  I remember this even though it was in the 1940's.  There are some of you whose eyes are traveling the electronic images here who weren't even born yet.  I guess I have to write it because things haven't really changed too much.  Yes there are all kinds of crusades about not objectifying women, but there are still ads out there, few but still out there, that do just that.  Frankly, I think I know what happened.  In the passing of time, the fabric that was supposed to be hiding the essential parts of the star of the ad shrunk and the paint on the cars was suffering from human skin contact.  So they had to back off from doing that.  Probably better.  I sure would never buy a car that had female skin hormones all over the hood.  Would you?   Hmmmm.  I figured.
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Now, this is a thought.  Human beings, dogs, cats, horses, cows, ducks, song birds, snakes, honey bees, monkeys and yes, even the TASMANIAN DEVIL do not have "gender." All we animals are either of the "male" or "female" sex.  That's the joke in the title and in other places in the post.
There is not an individual or group of individuals on this planet who is ever going to be able to change that.  The other day someone made the mistake of asking me what my gender is.  I told the idiot to go look me up in the grammar book.  
No, I'm not interested in your 21st century philosophy about the matter.