GENIUS FORUMS

Female vanity a protector of profits
Blair Speedy and Richard Kerbaj
September 29, 2005

RETAIL giant David Jones is confident that women's vanity will help maintain its profit growth this year as women continue to pamper themselves despite tighter family budgets.

David Jones's chief executive Mark McInnes said yesterday that his company was well placed to weather a downturn in consumer spending because the majority of its customers were women, who would cut back spending on their partners in order to maintain their own appearance.

"What tends to happen during periods of economic slowdown is that our core categories of womenswear, footwear, accessories and cosmetics continue to get year-on-year growth and women continue to spend for themselves," Mr McInnes said.

"Women reduce their spending on their partners and their homes in favour of themselves as they become a little tighter in their considerations."

And after announcing a 19 per cent increase in annual net profit for the previous financial year to $77.86 million, Mr McInnes said higher petrol prices would have "no impact" on the department store.

"We're certainly not seeing any noticeable impact on our business," he said.

Mr McInnes's theory on women was backed by shoppers yesterday. Wendy Carey did consider buying something for her husband while out shopping at the Melbourne DJs store in Bourke Street Mall but, in the end, she chose to spend $650 on herself instead.

"I bought myself two pairs of shoes and a dress," she said.

Despite restricted family budgets which have been partly brought about by escalating petrol prices, another shopper, Jane Hodgson, who was perusing the cosmetics collection on her lunch break, said women would not go without "necessities" such as make-up and perfume.

"You're still going to buy perfume, you're still going to buy stockings," said the mother of one.

"And with Melbourne Cup coming up, I've got to get a hat, got to get a dress. You know, those things you're still not going to go without."

Matt wrote:

So do you care about people, or what is it that motivates you to share truths with others?

On the emotional front, it's the desire to: share this hidden fantastic thing I have discovered; follow my conscience and do what is right; repay my debt to past sages for helping to enlighten me; live in a world where madness and irrationality are absent. Naturally, these desires are all egotistical and emotional in nature.

I don't know about this "caring for others" bit. That's far too abstract to be a real factor and always arises out of self-centered motives, in any case. "Caring for others" is essentially what people call their egotistical attachment to their loved ones - it glosses the attachment up and conceals the selfishness underlying it. In the case of Mother Teresa types, the phrase reverts back to its meaningless, abstract nature.

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DQ: On the emotional front, it's the desire to: share this hidden fantastic thing I have discovered; follow my conscience and do what is right; repay my debt to past sages for helping to enlighten me; live in a world where madness and irrationality are absent. Naturally, these desires are all egotistical and emotional in nature.

MG: Well, take the desire to share a fantastic thing with others. I think everybody wants to share fantastic with others, but why do we want to do this? Would you say it's the same phenomenon at play here for you as it as for other people?

I call it "caring for others", but I don't know what else you could call it. Maybe we share things more for the entertainment value or something.

My grandma had a heart attack a few months ago and I was in the hospital watching her. I've never witnessed anyone die before. I wasn't real close to her, but I knew her. She was on life support and they told us that when they unhooked it that she was going to die, and I felt so sad that I almost wanted to cry. It's not that I was sad for her because she was really old and unproductive and her death was totally non-tragic. She wasn't in any pain or anything and she was even telling us jokes and stuff as she was lying there. But I was more saddened by the loss of her humanity, that we humans (CRAP :-) are finite and come to an end, I guess. What would you call that?

Thank you for your lesson on the lesbian community, David. My, my, you get around don't you?

All generalisations, mate.

I envy your written skills, and although I like to think I have a sound knowledge of the English language, I aspire to develop my skills further.

I guess you have more time than I, given you don't work and spend all day "thinking".

I have met the most undesirable women imaginable (I mean mentally, not physically) and also the most undesirable men.

Seems to me, more and more women are going it alone as even they are "thinking" about the relevance and safety of relationships. How do you know what goes on in a woman's mind, any woman, just because she does not write it down?

You can never know another's thoughts.

Ahhhhhhhh David, another "Pick the most pathetic aspect of female behaviour and shove it on here like all woman are like that!"

Men/boys buy Computer games and have fun killing people on them, men obssess over footy games and just about kill each other over them, men bash women because they are too gutless to talk and cry..........

The generalisations go on and on.............

It's a bit of both. You can't submit to logic and truth, not consistently at least, without doing it in a conscious, thoughtful and willing fashion. And vice versa, you can't be fully conscious and thoughtful in your choices without being devoted to truth.

Matt asked David whether he "cared" for other people. I think the answer to that - logical rather than emotional - is that yes, one cares for humanity's survival and sanity (to whatever degree that can be established) because consciousness is necessary for the propagation and survival of Wisdom. People matter in that sense. If you're a Courier by trade and you don't care for your vehicle you may as well look for another trade.

Matt wrote:

Well, take the desire to share a fantastic thing with others. I think everybody wants to share fantastic with others, but why do we want to do this? ... I call it "caring for others", but I don't know what else you could call it. Maybe we share things more for the entertainment value or something.

I would call it the emotional pleasure of conquering new territory and absorbing it into one's ego - in this case, the minds of others. I'm not really talking about the evangelical desire to convert people here, although it is related. It's more the desire for people to discover what you have found and think highly of you for it.

Matt: But I was more saddened by the loss of her humanity, that we humans are finite and come to an end, I guess. What would you call that?

David: Being sad over your own mortality. Despairing over an injustice imposed by Nature upon yourself .... and, er, everyone else.

DQ: I would call it the emotional pleasure of conquering new territory and absorbing it into one's ego - in this case, the minds of others. I'm not really talking about the evangelical desire to convert people here, although it is related. It's more the desire for people to discover what you have found and think highly of you for it.

MG: There has to be more to it than that.

Matt: But I was more saddened by the loss of her humanity, that we humans are finite and come to an end, I guess. What would you call that?

David: Being sad over your own mortality. Despairing over an injustice imposed by Nature upon yourself .... and, er, everyone else.

Matt: Yeah, yeah, this "er" part...what would you call despairing over everyone else. If it's not "caring" then what is it? Just an evolutionary survival mechanism or something?

It's a bit of both. You can't submit to logic and truth, not consistently at least, without doing it in a conscious, thoughtful and willing fashion. And vice versa, you can't be fully conscious and thoughtful in your choices without being devoted to truth.

But which truth, David?

Insofar as absolutes go -- particularly emptiness -- we are talking about a state of existence that has absolutely no emotional attachment, aren't we?

Would a perfect Buddha not be able to engage or not engage in anything he so chooses without attachment.

I dunno, a life of habit seems highly -- dead, to me; wisdom or no wisdom. However, I'm guessing that's the whole point.

DavidQuinn000 wrote:Matt,

DQ: I would call it the emotional pleasure of conquering new territory and absorbing it into one's ego - in this case, the minds of others. I'm not really talking about the evangelical desire to convert people here, although it is related. It's more the desire for people to discover what you have found and think highly of you for it.

MG: There has to be more to it than that.

It's one strand of the egotism that's involved, which, in turn, is merely one aspect of what motivates the (not-yet-perfect) spiritual man to promote wisdom in the world.

Matt: But I was more saddened by the loss of her humanity, that we humans are finite and come to an end, I guess. What would you call that?

David: Being sad over your own mortality. Despairing over an injustice imposed by Nature upon yourself .... and, er, everyone else.

Matt: Yeah, yeah, this "er" part...what would you call despairing over everyone else. If it's not "caring" then what is it? Just an evolutionary survival mechanism or something?

A subconscious attempt to end the guilt which arises from being exclusively concerned with oneself? Yet another selfish ploy on the part of the ego?

Or perhaps it's a case of seeing your own ego in everyone else during that moment, and you are merely continuing the same old despair over your own plight?

-

Wisdom comes from compassion and knowledge -- and from that, apt judgment. In that way, one could be fully engaged with life without being emotionally attached, at the same time.

Could a fully enlightened being ever err?

I kind of find it difficult to believe that a perfectly detached being could do whatever. Would not a perfect being differentiate between things? It is possible for several sorts of beings to have sex with infants with no attachment whatsoever or to kill with no attachment whatsoever.

I do not think that emotional detachment alone is wisdom.

What is compassion, in your view?

Women's works
Christine Westwood
October 06, 2005

FOR the first time in its history, this year's Venice Biennale, the world's most important contemporary art forum, was headed by two female directors and its international jury awarded four out of the five Golden Lions to female artists.

Some would say this emphasis has been a long time coming. As exhibition posters by the Guerrilla Girls pointed out: "Of the 1238 artists on exhibition in major museums in Venice, fewer than 40 are women."

Of the artists included in Australia's Art Almanac for September, more than 60 per cent exhibiting solo or in small groups are men. Add the artists listed at leading investment galleries and the proportion rises to more than 70 per cent.

These figures are no surprise to Wendy Teakel, an artist and senior lecturer at the Australian National University.

"I've been teaching in an art school for about 20 years and I'm very aware of the demographics of who I teach, predominantly female," she says. "But when I've counted around at exhibitions the proportion is inverted. To quote two recent examples, a sculpture prize in Canberra and the Lempriere exhibition in Melbourne, only about a quarter of the artists were female."

Why do so many female art students fail to realise fully-fledged art careers? Teakel believes the first couple of years out of art school are make or break time.

"That's where women seem to come unstuck," she says. "Maybe it's when they have their first child or are simply trying to hold a home together."

Teakel's observations are backed by the statistics. It seems that, even in our post-feminist era, women are still spending more time than men on domestic and caretaking chores. According to research from the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, women in dual-income families undertake almost 13 hours of unpaid housework a day compared with 10.7 hours for men, as well as three hours to every two that their partners spend on care-giving activities.

It's worse in Europe. A time use survey by the Office for National Statistics in Britain in 2000 shows women there do double the hours of housework in dual-income families. And in Spain, the Centre for Sociological Investigation concludes that Spanish fathers spend an average 13 minutes a day looking after their children.

"Babies are the reason why the art world will always be like many other professions, predominantly a man's world," says South Australian painter Marnie Wark.