Shop Till You DropOut

what men need:
food, shelter, clothes/suits, shoes, soap, razors, deodorant/aftershave/cologne, bowflex+muscles, fancy car, presents to bribe women for sex

what women need:
food, shelter, clothes, shoes, soap, pink razors, pink deodorant/perfume/bodyspray, accessories, jewelery, more shoes, more clothes, makeup, hair products, decorations, lingerie, "help" fixing stuff/building stuff, low-fat food/diet food , diet pills/books/drinks, new clothes to fit after the diet, maternity clothes, children's clothes, children's toys, children's food, magazines to tell us what we need, fancy car, fancy wedding, "feminine" "hygiene" products

everyone, and especially women, faces a barrage of advertising telling her what she "needs." for women, looking "ugly" or "masculine" equates to looking "unprofessional" and "unlikable." so our list of "needs" just gets longer. my face isn't going to fall off if i don't put makeup on it, but i won't have a job for long- few men spend this kind of time or money on face paint. if you need "specialty products," say for the average female body size, or the vast majority of human faces that aren't white, the expense grows.
thing is, women already make less money than men. in canada, we earn 76 cents, working full time, for every dollar earned by men. in hamilton, where i live, it's 62 cents. since women are more likely to work in low-paying service positions, they're less likely to have benefits. i can't imagine trying to live with a disability or a child without public health care. so why are we giving the little wealth we do have right back to the men we slave away to earn it from? hmm.. or maybe that was the plan all along. *if we can't have women working for free at home, why not have them work for free by taking all their money back at the mall?*

even for necessities, like food and clothes, north americans of this generation are an oddity. people in developing countries don't have the option of depending on grocery stores for food, and (assuming their land isn't grabbed up by north american corporations) they use generations of wisdom to produce their own food. similarly, women, even in developed countries, used to teach each other to knit, crochet and sew.

we are the only idiots around willing to sell our security for the "luxury" of being useless and dependant.

and it's not like it's hard to get what you do need for free. buildings being torn down provide an array of free building materials for the willing woman. thanks to a few hours work and a helpful friend, my back yard boasts a reworked trellis, a brick and flagstone patio, garden walls, a rosebush and firewood: all free.
and have you actually looked in a grocery store's dumpster? There's a metro near my helpful friend's house with half a dozen bins of nothing but fresh vegetables. grocery stores have discovered that it's cheaper to raise the price of their food, knowing that no one's going to stop eating and few of us have the time to provide for ourselves (you know, cause we spend our time working, so we can depend on grocery stores instead), than to mark down older products when new ones arrive. cause then nobody would pay for the marked up new stuff. so they throw it out. fresh, crisp, green red and orange veggies. loaves upon loaves of bread. cheese galore. while people starve on the streets, they toss food out the back door.
i take men's money for a living- and i keep it. i don't buy wads of bleached cotton to cram up my vag. i eat free food from dumpsters. i can and do make clothes.
more importantly: i have the income i need to guarantee that i will never have to choose between being a victim of violence and being homeless. i can take care of myself and my family. i do not depend on the market for survival. and i have a lot of free time.