We Have Met the Enemy, and She Is Us

By Heather Wilhelm

Thursday, August 10, 2023

 

I come to you today with disturbing news: In America, the ladies are in deep, deep trouble — but not in the way that Gloria Steinem or Megan Rapinoe or the evil geniuses who made the Barbie movie would have you believe.

 

According to the latest edition of the University of Michigan’s “Monitoring the Future” survey — a fairly rigorous endeavor that dates back to the 1970s — twelfth-grade girls are increasingly veering into leftism, while growing numbers of their brethren lean conservative. “Twelfth-grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative versus liberal,” reports the Hill, while “the share of 12th-grade girls who identified as liberal rose from 19 percent in 2012 to 30 percent in 2022.”

 

Fascinating, is it not? At first glance, perhaps the explanation is simple: Young women are being driven stark raving mad by our bonkers, illogical, contradictory, and nihilistic gender-obsessed culture. Perhaps their male friends are simply exasperated because they can’t watch a movie or TV show without being bombarded by an endless number of 110-pound female characters who are utterly superior to all the clueless men in the world and mysteriously manage to beat up someone the size of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson with their skinny toothpick arms even before they earn their superpowers from some creepy resurrected Egyptian god.

 

Full disclosure: I watch a lot of weird Marvel superhero stuff with my three boys, but I’m also not always paying complete attention. Others, meanwhile, have also noted this flood of females into leftist country. Jean Twenge, the psychologist and author of the new book Generations, recently put it this way: “Among liberals, the future is female. And among conservatives, the future is male.”

 

As someone who is currently drinking coffee out of a mug with a picture of Margaret Thatcher on it — it’s a knockoff of that iconic Obama “HOPE” poster designed by Shepard Fairey, but it says “IRON” instead — I find this very disappointing. I mean, COME ON, ladies. What am I going to do with you?

 

To be fair, I don’t understand all the baffling events currently bubbling up on our wacky mortal plane. I am particularly flummoxed by the way many women react to one of the most polarizing, divisive figures in American society today. This is a person who has an outsize presence in the national psyche, lives rent-free in many people’s heads, is the constant subject of breathless news coverage, and is misrepresented on a daily basis. I’m referring, of course, to Gwyneth Paltrow.

 

You thought I was talking about You Know Who, didn’t you? LOL! Anyway, read any article about actress/influencer/marketing genius Paltrow, a well-dressed woman who is simply trying to enrich your life by selling you a groundbreaking $2,500 at-home face laser that will no doubt revolutionize your skin, and then read the comments. The hate from the ladies is startling! I mean, if you’re going to get mad at a rich person, why not try that creepy guy from the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, or the countless busybody private-jet billionaires who blow a bunch of unnecessary carbon into the atmosphere on their way to panicked conferences bemoaning climate change?

 

I personally kind of like Gwyneth Paltrow, because she doesn’t pretend to be something she’s not, which is more than you can say about many of the “feminist” heroines our society tries to prop up. Remember Lizzo, the formerly beloved pop star and icon of unapologetic overweight body positivity? At press time, she is in the early stages of being canceled due to multiple allegations that she fat-shamed her dancers. My friends, you cannot make this stuff up.

 

So do women need better role models? Probably. I would volunteer, but I don’t have time — I’m too busy lasering my face. But as far as I can see, today’s young women are getting terrible advice on an endless list of topics: marriage, children, career priorities, sexual ethics, the differences between men and women, and whether women should take personal responsibility for their decisions or blame every worldly shortfall on the sinister doings of some vague, shadowy patriarchy.

 

Let’s go back to the Barbie movie, because Lord knows we can’t escape it, and also because it’s being heralded as some sort of feminist masterpiece. I haven’t seen it yet, because I plan on hate-watching it at home with my boys once we can stream it on the cheap — but according to glowing press reports, the shining pinnacle of the film is a monologue in which an actress rants about how terrible it is to be a woman in American society today.

 

“It is literally impossible to be a woman,” the speech begins — and if you understand the definition of “literally,” you know we are already off to a questionable start. Next, we hear a clichéd laundry list of complaints about the world’s unfair expectations of women: “Be thin, but not too thin,” “Be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people,” etc., etc. And then the grand finale: “I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us.”

 

No offense to anyone brought to tears by this dumb speech, but these supposed problems are very easily solved with a two-word question: “Who cares?” Seriously, ladies: Live your life, think hard about what you should value, stop agonizing about what other people think, and move on!

 

That’s too easy, apparently. Manufactured misery sells, and so, alas, does leftism. Don’t worry: I won’t give up on you, fellow females! This has got to get exhausting.