Eden, like so many other women—especially American women—had been conditioned from a very young age to believe that how you looked was of the utmost importance. Not just “for yourself” and your “sense of pride,” but more accurately, to be “pleasing” and “eye-catching” to the opposite sex. Sort of like a flower to a bee (even if, in that situation, the attraction was as much about scent as it was appearance). It wasn’t just pop stars and other assorted celebrities selling you beauty with their own appearance—and oftentimes, their own product lines—it was also the magazines and the movies and the TV and the internet and any and every form of media that could possibly disseminate the notion that to be “hot” was the ultimate currency for women.

But if Eden had known in her teen years and twenties what she knew now, in her mid-thirties, she probably wouldn’t have invested so much time, effort and anxiety into how she looked. And what she knew now was that men would fuck just about any woman. Regardless of age, body type or facial “presentation.” Indeed, a woman had to have something pretty “wrong” with her to be turned down by a man. At least for sex alone. Which women have also been taught is the mark of being desirable: that someone wants to fuck them. The “becoming wifey material” aspect of that desirability is, even to this day, the most coveted, but most difficult to come by. Which is why women are still convinced that if they can somehow further “stand out” as “the hottest,” then maybe they can gain that necessary competitive edge to “lock a man down” “forever.” As if that concept carries any weight whatsoever in times as apocalyptic as these. Still, conditioning is conditioning, and it’s hard to shake once you’ve endured it. As Eden and so many of her generation had.

Not to say that the “latest” one deemed “young” at present had evaded such conditioning. For while theirs was a generation that was supposedly “freer” of the constraints that had bound, brainwashed and limited the women before them, they were also perhaps the most bound, brainwashed and limited of all in that they were weaned solely on the steady diet of the algorithm. The one that convinced them being smooth, hairless, tan and thin was not only “expected,” it was totally “normal.” “Congenital” even. This because of the apps and the filters and the AI that made it seem increasingly to be the case. Even though there was nothing normal at all about it. To this point, it shocked Eden to think that anyone could believe it was normal to look like a plucked chicken.

Eden wished that she could somehow tell this “current” generation that, although apps and filters and AI have made it so that the illusion of the “perfect” woman—and the “ease” of being one—keeps getting perpetuated in the minds of women themselves (thereby making body dysmorphia the norm), the reality remains that “straight” men are generally happy to see any exposed female body in front of them. Unless they’re particularly dickish frat and/or tech-originating men, who come from the kind of school of thought that genuinely believes a woman with glasses getting a “makeover” entails her getting contacts a.k.a. taking those glasses off, having some makeup applied and switching out a “tomboy” look in favor of a slutty dress. That sort of thing a common trope of rom-com and/or teen movies in the 90s and 2000s. Yet one that still prevailed in the sense that, for the dickish type of men, who had the audacity to be overly judgmental (or judgmental at all) of a woman’s appearance, their “expectations” had also been informed by the “pornification” of everything. Even mainstream advertising (take, for example, Sydney Sweeney’s Novig ad campaign), which couldn’t be avoided even if absorbing it through TV was no longer the standard approach.

In its place, “the algorithm” rose to prominence. And when that failed, there still remained the tried-and-true (and “analog”) billboard method. Though even billboards had changed since the time of “TV supremacy,” themselves becoming digital in a “parlor walls” sort of way. At least in “the major cities” (or what “the powers that be” rendered into major cities by only spending their money on advertising there). One of which Eden had the misfortune of living in…this being part of why her brainwashing was so profound and so unshakeable for so long. New York, after all, was the world capital of digital billboards. Particularly if one had the hard luck of ever needing to pass through Times Square, which Eden frequently did. That was how she got from her middling workplace to the required train to get back to her apartment, which she shared with her boyfriend, Sam.

It was Sam, in fact, who had been the one to make Eden fully comprehend that most men, when you got right down to it, did not give any real fucks about how “polished” or “coiffed” a woman looked so long as her legs were splayed and vag displayed. That was the bottom line, always. Along with her chest and/or bum being showcased as well. Depending on the man, one might be preferred over another, but so long as at least one of those body parts were out it was sure to be smooth sailing. And not the “half-mast” kind. Of course, Eden was aware that another problem had arisen. The one where men couldn’t as easily get an erection, let alone sustain one, anymore. There had been a number of theories put forth about why this was becoming more common even among young men, and one of the leading hypotheses was that the “modern” lifestyle that promoted a near-constant sedentariness was restricting the kind of blood flow that, once upon a time, had pumped so much more readily in men who were constantly moving. Active.

This, to Eden, was so much worse than the reports of sperm counts being lowered due to the “tight pants” for men trend that was once in fashion circa the 1970s (and a little bit again in the 2000s, if you were an “indie boy”). She couldn’t care less about male fertility. What she cared about was female pleasure, and that was getting harder to come by (if one will excuse the ironic pun). Even though, considering how relatively easy it was for a man to become aroused by whatever form of “feminine flesh” he laid his lascivious eyes on, one might have presumed getting a “ride” more regularly would be a given. But no, Eden had noticed a decline in sexual fervor not just at home, but everywhere she looked. However, that didn’t mean “the desire” or the performance of “the desire” wasn’t still expressed.

In the past, though, Eden had learned from Sam that, despite how he tried to make her feel “sexy” in a special and singular way, his lusty attitude and effusiveness for other women rather negated that for her. Especially since these were women she viewed as, frankly, much homelier. What was the point of putting all this effort into how she looked, both facially and bodily, if, ultimately, Sam could get just as turned on by someone who put in no effort at all? A dump trunk, for all intents and purposes. As this realization dawned on her the longer they dated, it made her increasingly resentful toward and angry about all the time she wasted on her appearance, thinking that any of it made a difference. Because men could be aroused by a goddamn tree trunk when you got right down to it. And yes, it was the kind of revelation that might only turn women further against one another as the “hot” ones became incensed by the “ugly” ones getting dicked down despite their lack of effort.

Perhaps worse still, their lack of monetary investment. No care in the world about waxing, tanning, skin “revitalization,” makeup and, eventually, plastic surgery. How dare they?! Eden thought as she listened to Sam tell her for the umpteenth time that he would definitely have a three-way with her and her friend, Becca, if Eden was ever open to it. This obvious crush on Becca had been weighing on her for some time now. Becca who proudly sported her pale skin and cellulite in cutoff shorts while Eden starved herself or went on the kind of diet jags that mostly limited her to celery. Never deigning or even thinking of deigning to show her legs in such a state, lest someone else in the room might notice and be “boner-killed” by it. Of course, Eden knew that the harshest critics were not men, but women themselves, constantly sizing up and appraising their “competition.”

It was a nightmare scenario. And not necessarily one that was limited to the “hetero world.” The gays had their own problems and levels of cattiness on this front. But if they did, they had surely picked it up from hetero women, who themselves picked it up from corporate propaganda. All of which was to say that Eden was doing her best to “deprogram.” Even if every time she thought she was close to doing so, Sam somehow managed to bring up Becca at the worst time, causing her rage to flare up. And, sure, Becca was her friend, so she shouldn’t be thinking “ill” things of her, like how she was a crusty-busted-cunt-with-stringy-hair-visible-acne-scars-bad-body-odor-and-a-fat-girl’s-name, but that was seemingly impossible to avoid when Sam kept expressing his sexual interest in her. Her jealous indignation with regard to this made it so that she grew increasingly distant from Becca. As if it were Becca’s fault for being “ugly” yet somehow inexplicably still desirable to the opposite sex. Eden knew she shouldn’t begrudge her. That, if anything, she should celebrate her for being liberated from the prison of an indoctrinated-by-the-corporate-beauty-agenda mind. If anything, she should ask Becca how she might achieve the same.

Instead, she pulled back from Becca. In truth, from most of her female friends. She couldn’t stand the idea of Sam lusting after her “ugly” friends any more than she could stand the idea of him lusting after her “hot” ones. So, by her logic, she cut ties with both “categories.” It made no difference though. Eden could still catch Sam ogling the kind of women that she deemed to be rather plain, at best. Whether on the street or on his screen.

Finally, she had to break up with him because she couldn’t take it anymore. The being-driven-to-madness by his taste. Or rather, what she saw as his lack thereof. Yet it was only then that she could at last set herself free…because she now understood that, if Sam could be titillated by just about any “kind” of woman, then she no longer really needed to focus on being a “kind” that the Establishment had insisted all women had to be (through whatever the most relevant medium was to convey that message as the decades went on). That is, if they wanted to not only “catch” a man, but “keep” a man.

Maybe, in the end, Eden wanted to do neither. And maybe, in the end, it wasn’t men’s lack of discernment about female aesthetics that had bothered her, but women’s lack of discernment about their own self-worth.