I sat in a mall today after finishing the last of my Christmas shopping. This is the first time for ages I'd sat in one and watched the people. As I did, I got more and more angry. What did I see?

I saw swarms of young women milling around buying plastic crap. I realised that about 80% of the shops pandered solely to young women by selling plastic clothes, plastic shoes, plastic trinkets, and stuff to make their faces look like plastic. You might have thought it would be pleasurable, watching these young things wandering around in their skimpy summer clothes, but most of them seemed to have those hardened, sour faces that most young women seem to wear these days. Girls are supposed to love shopping -- why do they look so miserable when doing it?

Several thoughts went through my head:

1. The magazine racks. Hundreds of glossy women's magazines devoted to trivial gossip about trivial people. Trees died to make those magazines. Habitats are endangered so that pouting chicks can read crap about other pouting chicks who happen to have made it onto the screen. Oil is pumped to make the chemicals that make the pages glossy. What a waste! That alone is enough to make me angry for several days.

2. The plastic clothes. Polyester fashions last barely months. Where do the discarded clothes go? Into landfills. Those tarty polyester excuses for clothes will be leaching toxic crap into landfills for generations. The same goes for the crappy plastic shoes that won't last a season.

3. Where were the plastic clothes made? China. Probably by children in sweatshops. Children are suffering in sweatshops so that pouting young madams can wear cheap, trashy plastic clothes.

4. Cosmetics. Don't get me started. The oil industry must love the cosmetics industry. Think of all the oil that has to get pumped to make that stuff. But I sat there and thought of all that crap getting washed out into rivers. The cosmetics industry is on to a cash cow of the highest order.

5. The air conditioning. All those chicks need to be kept cool while shopping, or they'll just flop down in the food court and stop shopping. What a waste of energy!

6. Financial "Independence". This is what financial "independence" has given us: millions of women with heaps of spare cash to spend on polluting, oil-based, plastic trivia.

Feminism surely has to wake up to its contribution to the ecological crisis.

(There were a few men there ... but what were they doing? Buying plastic crap for the women in their lives.

I ranted to my wife about it when I got home. Her view is that we need to become Amish. If only I knew how to build a buggy ...

I sat in a mall today after finishing the last of my Christmas shopping. This is the first time for ages I'd sat in one and watched the people. As I did, I got more and more angry. What did I see?

I saw swarms of young women milling around buying plastic crap. I realised that about 80% of the shops pandered solely to young women by selling plastic clothes, plastic shoes, plastic trinkets, and stuff to make their faces look like plastic. You might have thought it would be pleasurable, watching these young things wandering around in their skimpy summer clothes, but most of them seemed to have those hardened, sour faces that most young women seem to wear these days. Girls are supposed to love shopping -- why do they look so miserable when doing it?

Several thoughts went through my head:

1. The magazine racks. Hundreds of glossy women's magazines devoted to trivial gossip about trivial people. Trees died to make those magazines. Habitats are endangered so that pouting chicks can read crap about other pouting chicks who happen to have made it onto the screen. Oil is pumped to make the chemicals that make the pages glossy. What a waste! That alone is enough to make me angry for several days.

2. The plastic clothes. Polyester fashions last barely months. Where do the discarded clothes go? Into landfills. Those tarty polyester excuses for clothes will be leaching toxic crap into landfills for generations. The same goes for the crappy plastic shoes that won't last a season.

3. Where were the plastic clothes made? China. Probably by children in sweatshops. Children are suffering in sweatshops so that pouting young madams can wear cheap, trashy plastic clothes.

4. Cosmetics. Don't get me started. The oil industry must love the cosmetics industry. Think of all the oil that has to get pumped to make that stuff. But I sat there and thought of all that crap getting washed out into rivers. The cosmetics industry is on to a cash cow of the highest order.

5. The air conditioning. All those chicks need to be kept cool while shopping, or they'll just flop down in the food court and stop shopping. What a waste of energy!

6. Financial "Independence". This is what financial "independence" has given us: millions of women with heaps of spare cash to spend on polluting, oil-based, plastic trivia.

Feminism surely has to wake up to its contribution to the ecological crisis.

(There were a few men there ... but what were they doing? Buying plastic crap for the women in their lives.

I ranted to my wife about it when I got home. Her view is that we need to become Amish. If only I knew how to build a buggy ...

This isn't true, they can't afford these things. They borrow to buy; a problem in itself.