Once upon a time, there was a place. We'll call it society. And this society was kind of fucked. Half of the people who lived in it were told what to wear, what kind of job to have, who and how to fuck, and, well, just about everything in their lives came down to fulfilling the strange vision that had emerged from their bizarre little world like some kind of alien bursting through the abdomen of some kind of late-70s actor in a science fiction flick starring some kind of Sigourney Weaver and a totally awesome android that you'll never convince us isn't real. We'll call this half women.
And the other half? Well, come to think of it, they were controlled in the exact same way, except they got to get away with a bunch more cool shit. No, we don't mean just off-roading in ATVs. We mean cool shit like making more of the money and being considered the default for humanity. These ones are called men.
And everything that one half of the society did was compared to everything the other half of society did. It wasn't very nice for anyone, seeing as the line drawn between the two groups was based off of silly unfounded notions instead of reality.
Women couldn't do anything cool without most people thinking that it really for real actually belonged to men. The women who did those things were just special exceptions who could be partially allowed into the men category. But only partially. It always needed to be acknowledged that a woman had done it. Just so people wouldn't get confused and think it was real. Write a book? Well, it's pretty good. For a girl. Build a dog house? Not bad. For a lady. Discover uranium? Oh look! It thinks it's human!
People seemed to think that the things became different when women did them simply because women were the ones to do them. Because apparently women are fucking wizards who change the fabric of reality by having lower levels of testosterone and mostly internal reproductive organs.
But it wasn't just women judged by men's standards. Men could get thrown into shit creek if they did something that wasn't considered manly. Do some laundry? That's woman's work! Wear pretty clothes? That's what girls do. Express the full range of human emotion? Pussy! They also had to do Man Things whether they liked them or not, or people would treat them like women.
And no one wants that.
And so, really, even though the men had things a little better, everyone was fucked. No one could do all the things. Some could do some of the things. Others could do others of the things. But even if they wanted to and they would be really good at it, they could still only do the things that were allowed, not the things that were possible.
And that's just fucking stupid.
So we made a pageant.
This pageant is a place where women can do all the things. It's only one night out of the year (usually in August or September), and it's only in one place (Tulsa, OK), but the Queen, Ms. Center of the Universe, gets to rule all of everything*. And if the magic works, all of the contestants get turned into real people for a whole night (sometimes even longer).
And while we don't live happily ever after, we do have some good clean dirty fun. And everyone can remember that for one magical evening, women were humans, not just the creatures who aren't men.
The End(ish)
P.S. If you want a place where men can do all the things, make it yourself. 'Cause we're not your effing servants.
*It's called hyperbole. Look it up.
