Power

I have to admit that a guilty pleasure of mine - OK a massive obsession! - is the TV show Desperate Housewives. There was a scene in last night's episode that stood out among all the scenes and  reminded me of why I love the show so much. In the a scene a young Bree - one of the main ladies - is helping her mother make a pie. Her mother tells her that she has to teach her to be a woman and one aspect of being a woman is "wearing the mask." "The mask?" asks the young Bree. "It's the face you wear when you don't want people to know what you're feeling," replies her mother. And so the young Bree, under the orders of her mother, twists her face into a "hint of a smile", revealing nothing - no emotions whatsoever. This action thereby puts her in power over her husband and all men because "when men know how much you love them they'll hurt you - carelessly, cruelly, constantly." 


As I watched the scene I found it quite harrowing. The way this young girl was being morphed into this shell of a woman, this unreadable person became almost sinister. But that's, of course, why I love the show. And of course, like all good pieces of art, it got me thinking of writing and what I could do with this idea. I wrote a story about the power of men and women not very long ago, a fable called The Apple Cart and a big part of the horror novel I want to write Cupid's Obsession - which I am now doing research for - is about men and women - who has power, who doesn't have power. 


The idea I want to explore in that novel is "are women truly the downfall of men?" Of course it gets very biblical - and therefore very murky - but that idea is an interesting one. If men have power over women stereo-typically e.g. being stronger and having better jobs (not now but before), then what power does a woman have? The mind? What I gathered from the scene is that women have to use their minds to keep men in check, to stop them from "slipping" as has been said earlier on in the show. Of course this stuff is all very controversial and could be debated but one thing I did hear - one thing that has always stuck in my mind - is that when it comes to leaving, when it comes to the end of love, men leave women mentally - they cheat, they become distant etc and women - usually - leave physically, they're the ones who pack the bags and leave.


So, who has the power then?