Feminists

I remember one of our textbooks (for Health and Family Living or some other garbage course like that) included passages about how important girls' appearance was, how to be well-groomed, how to choose complementary colors for our outfits, etc. Another book described how doctors sometimes knew that there was something really wrong, when a patient no longer seemed to care about how she looked, etc., etc., etc.

A few years later, I was in a class where there was a group decision-making exercise, where we pretended to be marooned on a desert island, or something like that. Soap and water were among the 15 items that we had to rank as to importance as to what we would keep from our shipwreck. The instructor pointed out that girls were very superficial in wanting rank those high on the list because they just couldn't imagine going through a day where they couldn't bathe, etc., but that there were some other items that were more important (including some devices that you could jerry rig to produce water, etc.).

Now, which is it...women are bad because they don't work hard enough to make themselves attractive, or women are bad because they get distressed when they can't make themselves attractive?