WOMAN: NO SATISFACTION

For the last week or so I've been going to the local market looking for a lightweight anorak. I live in Le Cure in the northern part of Florence, Italy. There's a small market very close to the apartment. I hate shopping for clothes. Anyway, the usual question has been "Are these all women's anoraks?" The answer has almost always been "Yes". Something I noticed many years ago is that there seem to be more women's clothes for sale in markets and more women's clothes shops than men's. So I arrived at the conclusion, that most people already know, that generally, women spend more on clothes than men. I assume that most of the time the old clothes aren't worn out it's just that women get fed up with wearing the same ones - they're no longer satisfied with them. The same goes for a 3 piece suite or a bathroom suite or carpets or curtains etc etc

The phenomena of the nagging housewife is very common. Nagging is a way of expressing dissatisfaction with numerous aspects of their partners character. Many women are also dissatisfied with their bodies and go for very expensive plastic surgery like silicone to enlarge breasts, or botox injections to create voluptuous lips.

In D H Lawrence's "The Rainbow", it was the second generation women who were looking towards the town on the horizon and longed for a better life. They were dissatisfied with their hard agricultural existence. It was much the same when my parents emigrated from Calabria to England. It was my mother who really wanted to make the move - propelled by the dream of an easier life...

Eve also was dissatisfied with what God had provided in the Garden of Eden. The wily serpent persuaded her to eat some of the forbidden fruit. Why did he pick on her and not Adam? My outrageous theory is that maybe woman's mysterious make-up includes an inherent sense of dissatisfaction which goes all the way back to the Garden... Roberto Parmeggiano - 17/3/07