Ask the Tech Answer Guy: How Do They Do It?

Yo, Tech Answer Guy,

I work in the fulfilment department of National Squidjelim and Dreams, Inc. This year's ChristmaKwaanzUkah had a festive "Gender Reversal" theme, where everybody was supposed to dress up like a member of the opposite sex. The fact that the company has only three female employees, and one of them, Agnieszka Maderios, was in charge of choosing the theme, should have set off warning bells in somebody's head, but it was a bad year for Dream fulfilment, and I guess we were grasping for whatever small measure of joy we could get.

A lot of people wore floral print dresses and called it a party. However, when I got my MBA, I had a minor in amateur theatrics, so I was steeped in Method Partying. I decided that if I was going to play the part of a woman for ChristmaKwaanzUkah, I was going to do it right, I was going to go the full Hoover.

What was I thinking? Being a woman is brutal!

They smear greasy goop all over their lips. They wear panty hose, which itch worse than army ants crawling between your thighs. They walk in six inch heels - I felt like the 57th floor of an office tower in a windstorm the whole time! They carry around one pound melons on their chests and wear constricting harnesses for them - I stooped for days after my ordeal! Not only that, but the things they do to get rid of unwanted hair would make Caligula run for his mommy!

How do they do it? I mean, I wept for three days, and I was only a woman for four hours. Day in and day out, year after year, for decades! CAN ANYBODY PLEASE GOD TELL ME HOW THEY DO IT?

Yo, Dory,

You know, if you wanted to find out what women go through, you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you had just watched Tootsie. Not that I've ever seen it. Or, for that matter, What Women Want. Not that I've ever even heard of it or knew it existed.

How do women do it? Painkillers and millions of years of evolution, I would suspect.

That was pretty glib, wasn't it?

Evolution isn't really an explanation for why women spend so much time and energy on their looks. Men of the remote Appalachoogie Tribe in the Allegheny River basin paint their faces with jam made from the red Floozleberry and walk around on six inch stilts; in fact, the size of men's stilts is often correlated, rightly or wrongly, with the size of their noses. Then, they post pictures of themselves on Farcebook to attract mates.

Nor is this the only example. The wild bankers of the Plains of the Wall Street have elaborate costuming rituals that signal their status in the community. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, and sometimes that's gaudify himself to attract women.

This is a reflection of the natural world, where the males of species as wide-ranging as peacocks, bonobo monkeys and Ford Impalas use colourful displays to attract females. In fact, the burden we place on women to look a certain way in order to attract potential male mates is a social construct, not unlike stock markets, tenant associations and the infield fly rule. Especially the infield fly rule.

In fact, some argue that the amount of pain society demands women suffer in order to be "beautiful" is related to how insecure men in that society feel about themselves. (That would be members of the Some Institute for Sociological Panjandrummation.) Given current economic conditions, and their attendant social upheavals, it's a miracle that women aren't required to wear rouge on their cheeks that's a mile thick!

As for painkillers, I prefer a good belt of Scotch in the morning, even though it's hard to drink off of - I can't begin to tell you how often I have poked myself in the eye with the buckle! My point is that men have our own methods of escaping the pain of our existence.

Yo, Marky,

Glib is the new black.

The Tech Answer Guy

If you are a dude with a question about the latest technology, ask The Tech Answer Guy by sending it to questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Just remember: the future is now...but it's all going wrong. Bodies good for nothing, but it's to nothing they - sorry. I was channelling my inner The there for a moment. Which The? The The? *SIGH* The Tech Answer Guy longs for the days when bands had simple, easy to comprehend names. You know, like Tangerine Dream, Fairport Convention or The Nazz...