Читать книгу What Makes Women Happy - Fay Weldon - Страница 26

The fight for gender equality is bad for the looks. It makes no one happy, unless you find some reward in struggling for a justice that evolution failed to deliver. It will just develop your jaw, wrinkle your brow beyond the capacity of Botox to unravel, muddy your complexion so much that no amount of Beauty Flash will clear it, and in general do you no good.

Fight for political justice by all means – join the party, reform and re-educate. Fight for domestic justice – ‘Your turn to clean the loo’ – if you must, though personally I don’t recommend too much of it, it’s too exhausting. But do not fight for physiological equality because it does not exist.

If you have a period pain, you have one. Accept it. Don’t fight it. Sit down. Take a pill. A male voice raised is impressive; a female voice raised creates antipathy. Accept it. You are not trying to be a man. You are proud to be a woman. Do not shout your enemies down at the client meeting – leave that to the men. Get your way by smiling sweetly. The end is more important than the means.

Accept that for women happiness comes in short bursts and the ten-minute rule applies. For men it can last as long as a football match before they realize they’re late picking up the child from school.

So is the sum of human happiness greater for a man than for a woman? I suspect so. Lucky old them.

Be generous. You can afford to be. At least you occupy the moral high ground, and they know it.