Yo, Tech Answer Guy,
Is it my imagination, or have all the beautiful women disappeared?
Sincerely,Yo, Moonie,
Actually, it's somebody else's imagination that all the beautiful women have disappeared, but pursuing that brilliant idea would ensnare us in the deceptively attractive mongoose's web of a discussion of metaphysics. And, as regular readers know, metaphysics makes the Tech Answer Guy's brain hurt, his adenoids ache and his perineum pulsate with pain. Metaphorically speaking.
As it happens, it‘s nobody's imagination: the numbers of beautiful women have declined so precipitously that Secretary of Getting It On Larry Flynt has declared them an endangered species. And, an Iowa dentist named James "One Crazy" Knight is responsible.
"No" Knight "In Bangkok" fired his assistant, Melissa Nelson, on the grounds that she was "too doe-eyed for her own good." Nelson sued for wrongful dismissal on the grounds that "my eyes are shaped like everybody else's and, anyway, what does that have to do with my impeccable job performance?"
While Knight "of the Living Dead" admitted that he had never seen Nelson use her beak to burrow into trees for insects, he argued that her beauty was a threat to his marriage. "I told him that if that - hussy seems a little fussy, and harlot doesn't convey what she could do in a car lot - let's call her a slut - yes, the old terms really are the best - if that slut continues to work for my Jimmy," his wife testified, "I would divorce his sorry ass faster than shit through a goosed secretary!"
Legal arguments don't get much clearer than that.
By the time various courts had their way with the case, the legal precedent that a woman could be fired for "nimis dulcedo" (almost literally "excessive hotness") had been established. This led to purges of beautiful women by corporate managers eager to keep their "attractive in their own special way" wives happy.
Unable to support themselves (after all, there were only so many modeling jobs to go around), thousands of beautiful women fought one another for scarcer and scarcer resources. Although they had evolved in ways that allowed them to survive on a meagre diet that would have starved lesser women to death, their reliance on makeup and styling products made them vulnerable to sudden drops in income.
In true Darwinian fashion, this thinned the herd considerably.
Beautiful men did what they could to replenish the stock (mostly by just behaving as they always had), but without suitable mates, the beauty of the human race declined dramatically. Women who...se genetic inheritance tended more to "a great personality" stepped up in the crisis, getting plastic surgery in increasing numbers. Unfortunately, acquired traits are not genetically passed down from mother to daughter and, in any case, they never look quite real, do they?
"Why not just have a female employee wear clothes that cover her entire body so she won't tempt her employer?" you may well ask. And, if you don't, they guy down the street whose lawn is so unkempt you need a machete to get to the front door and squeals his tires whenever he drives past your house will, so you may as well save him the trouble.
BECAUSE THIS IS AMERICA, MISTER. OUR NATIONAL PASTIME IS WHISTLING AT WOMEN WALKING DOWN THE STREET IN SHORT SHORTS. OUR FOUNDING FATHERS ENSHRINED OUR RIGHT TO ENJOY WOMEN'S CLEAVAGE IN THE CONSTITUTION. OUR BRAVE BOYS FOUGHT AND DIED OVER THERE SO THAT WE COULD ENJOY WATCHING BABES SPILL OUT OF BIKINIS OVER HERE!
Besides, individual religious organizations are free to cover up their women as they see fit. And, if more of them did, perhaps we wouldn't be facing the crisis in female beauty that we have today.
As dire as things appear to be, there is hope. Scientists have mapped the genetic code of 10,000 beautiful women, and are prepared to resurrect them when the environment becomes more conducive to their species' long-term survival. There may yet come a time when this nation's natural beauty is there for all to see. And, I'm not talking about the Grand Canyon!
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 Tech Answer guy is under no obligation to answer questions from people who were named by hippies, rock stars or people who took the brown acid against the advice of the guy who hijacked the microphone. You got lucky this time, but, honestly, how can you live with the embarrassment?