In the factory we make cosmetics, in the showroom we sell hope.
… Charles Revson founder of the Revlon cosmetics empire.
Charles Revson understood his market and so do successful cosmetic companies who are able to charge multiples of 10,000% over the cost of their product.
In a sense Sandra Fluke also knows her market. When Republicans year after year lose the women's vote, it must be accepted that they do not understand their market. What Is Sandra Fluke Selling?
She to selling hope. If we understand that young women use contraceptives and abortion much the same way they use cosmetics, we will begin to understand why logic has nothing to do with their vote. The brutal truth is that young women are in the marriage market and they have sex to withhold or to confer and so long as the choice is theirs they have a marketable commodity. If they lose the power to confer or withhold sex because they are liable to pregnancy, they lose a marketable commodity in today's culture.
In times of old, that means before the pill around 1960, young women did not have actual sex but only the promise of sex as a marketable commodity unless there were willing to court substantial risks. Of course, many took risks but proportionately fewer did in those days than today. Before the pill, the culture frowned on sex before marriage and today the bastardy rates make clear that that is no longer the case. But despite the bastardy rates, indeed even because of the bastardy rates, a young woman's need for the pill is even more acute.
If the culture requires her to engage in sex before marriage, as ours virtually does, and if the culture does not compel the man to marry her on the occasion of pregnancy, as it no longer does, the young woman is extremely vulnerable without the pill.
Because of sloppiness and alcohol, she is also vulnerable without abortion.
The next observation will no doubt generate a negative reaction from many females but it is clear that many women get pregnant on purpose in the hopes they will be taken to the altar knowing that if there is no sale they can resort to abortion.
Those who react negatively to these observations ought to consider that it is young women, unmarried women, unmarried women with children, who vote against the Republicans and it is married women who vote for Republicans.
If it is folly to rely on hope over experience, it is equally folly to rely on logic over hope-at least where fundamental motivations of women are concerned.
