Venus 2006

"I" has lived in me for the last 30 years or so by now and knows no other body but mine. My mind operates in female packaging, adapts reflexes and movements for female attire and reacts in a female way to both fellow females' and males' actions and remarks.

To date women are still striving to understand men with a woman's mind and men are still striving to understand women with a man's mind. Women's bodies, mainly covered in soft and vulnerable fat tissues, may well be representative of their easily-hurt emotions or "heart". Likewise, men's bodies, covered in muscles and a strength superior to that of women, may well be representative of their not-so-easily penetrable and enduring emotions or "heart".

With the issue of gender and equality on paper we still hang around in a society where women are destined to face challenges such as life-long employment with a male boss, fostering their husband's children and doing their utmost to keep their husband home after years of marriage.

Although nothing near the "innocent" sex, a woman's life, from a legal procurator's desk, is still harder than that of a man. Blame it on nature, emotions, biological and psychological challenges, child-minding, social restraints, educational and employment opportunities and pennilessness, women always seem to be at the losing end when compared to men. Although some might be fooled into thinking that this is a negative way of looking at things, it might well be that it is a realistic point of view.

This article is inclined towards the anthropological observation of the interaction between men and women and outlines the fact that a woman's success in life is intimately tied to her physical appearance (liable to change as time goes by); a man's success is intimately tied to his social status (liable to betterment as time goes by). This could be at the root of the obstacles faced by women in obtaining or retaining a career and of their life tragedies.

A woman's life cycle starts deviating from her male colleague's destiny as soon as maturity is on the horizon. Young girls are usually hit by instant romance. Young boys are usually hit by a sudden attraction to destruction and experimentation. While girls start drawing love hearts at the corner of their copybook during their early teenage years, boys start dreaming about car crashes and looking at girls' bodies the way they eye automobile models.

Later on in life both sexes have an amount of years wherein they can fall in love and start a family. Come the 30s, most married couples start missing the unmarried days and some are attracted to extra-marital relationships. Women are particularly protected from such possibilities by the fact that most of their time is employed in the care of children while men are more free to run around shopping for adventures.

No matter what status a woman has reached, her love life starts getting difficult in her 30s. The three main categories at this stage are : the married woman holding her husband's arm (usually she would have also undergone the giving birth bodily challenge), the already separated woman who returns to the market, or a budding spinster. In all three cases, keeping up appearances is a stressful exercise and jealousy vis-à-vis well-trimmed fellow females becomes a sentiment hard to ignore.

Men don't go through very stressful bodily changes of the boa constrictor type. Their obesity usually arises out of over-indulgence in earth's gastronomical delights. Moreover, physical appearance is usually rated second best in a woman's choice of her partner. In contrast, a woman's strong point - no matter the level of intelligence or personality she enjoys - can only be her appearance. Intelligence hardly counts when it comes to the selection of a good chat at a pub from a man's viewpoint. Physical appearance however also matters when choosing the right secretary at an interview, or the right salesgirl.

What a man looks for usually stops at the surface and the apparent - the instantly and readily available. This is partly due to the fact that women are the only sex that can improve their appearance through cosmetics and hairdos and resorting to most imaginative clothing. Men end up having at their disposal only a few looking-better techniques and some do not even have the tools to have a proper hairstyle.

On the contrary, women tend to go deeper and look for additional, not so readily decipherable assets, whether this is done voluntarily or because they just have to (in order to compensate for the not-so-good looks). Most of the time their opposite sex can still afford beer-bellies of various sizes, apart from the fact that most men occupy social positions and own cars that might entrap some women.

A complex formula of pluses and minuses is usually worked out in any woman's mind upon the first encounter with a man.

It is ironic that the sex enjoying the longest life expectancy - women - should get married to an older member of the sex enjoying the shorter life expectancy. This is quite a good guarantee that a woman will also have to put up with bereavement in her older days. Yet, such a traditional set-up is too hard to dismantle anyway. Most women are rather attracted to sugar daddies. This, of course, also has its consequences.

As they grow older, men start realising the ever-increasing number of possibilities as more females reach the age of maturity while older females engage in a continuous battle for looking younger. Women, on the other hand, start seeing their possibilities always diminishing due to ever-increasing competition and a dwindling supply of older men.

When it comes to promiscuity, it has been scientifically proven that men are way ahead. Men are the naturally promiscuous sex trained to be faithful. Women are the naturally faithful sex trained to be promiscuous. The result is unavoidable. It's either making men faithful or making women unfaithful. Whichever the easiest. In this day and age, we know which are the prevailing tendencies of which sex that have won over.

By time women seem to have become as promiscuous as men, either in a "if you can't beat them join them" fashion or in a vindictive move. Some men even opt to generously go out with more than one woman not to break their hearts, and some women hang on to their men fully knowledgeable of his active promiscuity. Obviously, this does not make the Church's preaching in favour of faithfulness in Maltese non-divorceable marriages any easier. One regular question to ask an old acquaintance when you meet him/her at 3 a.m. in a dark pub in Paceville is: Are you still married? This does not really augur well for a sound society. However, morality apart, I have seen too many women suffering at the other end of my table, just as Appogg people see every day.