The picture of the pinched face of Posh Spice perched on her heels with her toes crushed and crumpled in those narrow shoes, while her husband Beckham, smiling in comfortable flat, wide toed sneakers makes me wonder if we live in a woman unfriendly world designed by who else…. man? 

The tabloids scream that Posh Spice is insecure, so she doesn’t smile but I think  she is in chronic pain because of her footwear. The more sleek and stringy a woman’s shoe gets, the man’s shoe is getting wider and flatter. 

Take bus and train seats or even furniture – designer or otherwise. Have you  noticed how many times you cannot place your two feet comfortably on the floor and  by the end of the journey, they are aching or swollen?

This can be compounded when  you have a man sitting next to you with his legs spread outwards. 

Nowhere is this inequality more obvious than the clothes we don. While sports men wear more aerodynamically designed wind resistant full body tracks, the attire of  women athletes and volley ball players are just eye candy for the spectators. In tennis, women’s hem and neck lines are as much of an attraction as the game itself, but the men’s attire seems to be frozen in time.

The fashion industry drapes women in clothes that range from atrocious, bizarre, hideous or uncouth that can hardly be worn in real life but men seem to walk in from the road onto the ramp or vice versa.

But, the strange irony is that while it is perfectly OK for a woman to dress like a man  , it is an absolute NO for men to do so, unless one wants to be called a hijra or a transvestite. But slowly and very subtly the male bastions have opened up to ear rings, long hair, hair bands, waxed torsos and dupattas. And when I hear them complain how they really have to take care of their long manes, I get a sadistic high. Maybe the day is not too far when they will grow their nails, top it with false ones, paint and manicure them. Will that be the last nail in the coffin of raw masculinity?