Dame shortage Down Under


An Australian mayor has received a fierce tongue-lashing for inviting “ugly Sheilas” to settle in his town. The tactless oaf has only himself to blame. Yet it appears that he acted from the best motives, believing that homely spinsters would find it relatively easy to bag a husband in his isolated mining community. Furious female residents have nevertheless demanded his resignation, calling him “a pig”, “a ruffian” and “a shit-eating wombat”. They seem to think he was implying that they had the sex appeal of the duck-billed platypus. The point he was actually making was that the men of the town, who currently outnumber the women fivefold, are in no position to be choosy. The same mathematical logic would apply whether the existing female population were beauty queens or warty-nosed crones.

A more valid criticism of the mayor is that his invitation is likely to be ignored. Women have their pride, and I can’t see many of them migrating to a place acclaimed as the Hagsville of the Australian mining belt. The fellow obviously hasn’t a clue about the advertising game. If you’re desperate to buy a breeding mare, you don’t tell the world that any fat-arsed nag with four hooves will do. Instead, you place an advertisement in the leading horsey periodicals asking for top-class fillies to mate with the finest thoroughbred stallions. Everyone knows that people exaggerate in these notices, and you’ll get plenty of enquiries from the owners of mares about to end up as cat food. As we say in the jungle, “if it’s fertile, it’s fuckable”.


Now the root cause of all this hoo-hah is the human obsession with facial features. The funny thing is that my friend Smacker Ramrod, the circus vet, once told me that in his experience pretty women made disappointing girlfriends. He found them demanding in everyday life, passive in bed and not nearly as gorgeous as they had appeared from a distance of twenty-five feet. The women he had the fondest memories of were the ones he wasn’t initially sure that he fancied. They were the girls who worked hard on their all-round game – many were brilliant conversationalists; others were gymnastic in the sack; a few could play the ukulele. This led me to surmise that you can’t really separate personality from appearance in the human mating game. A women who is beautiful and shrewish will eventually be seen as unattractive by her lovers, just as a woman who is plain and sweet will find men warming to her appearance as well.


All this human angst about physical appearance makes me glad to belong to a species where looks don’t matter. Not the look of your face, at any rate. A firm rump with a generous covering of hair is a pre-requisite for most of the good things of gorilla life, including sex with mates of your choice, status in the higher echelons of society and ringside seats at the python-wrestling tournaments. Gorillas don’t fall in love at first sight, but if we did it would be a glimpse of a furry rump that triggered the emotion. A gorilla version of
Mickey Dolenz (himself an honorary ape in many respects) would have sung:

Then I saw her tush
, now I’m a believer

I don’t suppose many men will fall in love with a woman’s arse, but if Jennifer Lopez’s doesn’t do it for them I doubt anyone’s will.
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