Shannon decides to be mean to other people. Beauty=power? It's a trap ladies! While you're wasting a hundred smackers on lotion that isn't any better than the lotion you could buy for 2.99 on sale, somebody else is spending that cash learning some skills. Do you think anyone got to a high position on the world stage(including the ugly as sin Dick Cheney) just by being a pretty face? The reason why the women political leaders who have today(think like Hillary or Condi) aren't the hottest women ever is because to develop one's self politically you need time to develop skills and connections. Condi may be evil, but she got to where she is by being the provost of Stanford, not by brandishing an eyelash curler.

It's sad that even now women think they don't have real power and need to rely on beauty. Why do I say this? This sort of rhetoric is woman specific in our culture and serves to limit us as well. Ok, imagine my dad writing a blog post: When I put my hair grease in my hair, I feel so powerful! My shaving cream feels so good on my stubble! I feel I can engineer any obstacle when I use this shaving cream! Ok, I'm laughing, but apparently this is supposed to make sense for women somehow.

The reason women get fed all this bullcrap(and we feed it to ourselves too) is to substitute for actual power. We'll giggle and have slumber parties and be unhygenic with our beauty products while you guys go and rule the world now. It's not right to have friviousity assigned to one gender, while the other gender gets to do the good meaty stuff like being President. The first step is to recognize this in ourselves, and thus we can teach folks coming up that they don't have to believe this bullshit.

Teach girls that accomplishing difficult tasks is a worthy use of their time. Help them to gain skills so that when they grow, they'll have a rich and successful life long after their beauty fades(seriously, what's with the mess about beauty when we all know women get paid less, get mommy tracked, are pressured to waste their money AND often live to be 80 years old?)