It is true that as technology takes this world into unfathomable places there are other places that are painfully developmentally delayed.  One of those delays is lack of fresh treatment of both women and men in messages from media. 

            Men still have the positive message of strength, roughness, toughness, fearlessness, decisiveness, a man of action.  Women for the most part (unless a special part is written for her as heroine) weak, indecisive, confused, ditzy, a wife, mother, girlfriend, sticks by her man, a toy, an object, sexy, wild, brainless, person who has babies.  She is often times made by men to please men, “Tell me you like me, you don’t have to mean it!” 

            These are still some of the roles we are fighting to outrun today.  If we look at the “hip Hop” generation and their videos, until recently most of them were “girls” dressed provocatively, and scantily, with no more than a role in the DVDs to stand wide legged, with their breasts showing, and behind hanging out.  Oh, don’t forget the gyrating all over everywhere.  So if this is meant to titillate, then who – you guessed right men! 

            There is no envy or flat out jealousy of men and their manhood, it is the privilege they have acquired for themselves at the expense and sometimes on the backs of women that has become such a stench in the 21 Century’s nostrils.  There were women from the 20^th Century who worked tirelessly for women’s rights, thereby gaining a new scale for men to ride upon, but it has met with heavy artillery from Left Wingers who do not believe women should work, or if she does it should only be as a secondary income to her husband’s because “we are still on the make a baby, stay home dribble”.  Women who were and still are by their legacy, Barbara Jordan a U.S. Congresswoman, Pauli Murray who was an attorney, priest and civil rights activist are seldom heard of in our world today, Lilian Welsh and Mary Sherwood both medical doctors and life partners, were instrumentally helpful in the women’s movement.      

     Stubbornly, in 1933 New York Times Magazine article said that “The College Girl Puts Marriage First” and quoted young women who said “most of us would chuck everything for marriage”, in 1980 “Many Young Women Now Say They’d Pick Family over Career,” A poll was taken of over 3,000 college students in which 77% of the women and 84% of men said they believed that mothers should not work with small children.  But in reality by 1998 46% of working age women was employed.  The more success women found in the 1980s and the 1990s the more articles were written about how women really could not have it all and showed women who had joyously given up high powered executive employment.

            Women are often found as objects and their bodies are objectified for TV and movies, even commercials.  If we look at Popeye and Olive Oyl we find Olive being treated as an object by both Pop Eye and Pluto while she is being pulled both ways all she ever does is moan and wail, she never decides who she wants, she always goes with whoever wins in the fight.  I do say the fight is never really about Olive Oyl, but it is about two men who are competing, might as well be a hunting match. 

            Where do we go from here – we should begin to look at our local newspaper and find ways in which women are given a back seat and complain about it.  We need to become much more vocal and air our grievances with media even our schools so that we begin to treat our children fairly.  I believe it is time we grew up and faced whatever consequences may come and run not walk run to the nearest hope and shout!