Peekaboo

Once upon a time, global conspiracies used to be about assassinations and warfare. Julius Caesar. Abraham Lincoln. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, while the world fights on a larger scale, and the people in power do what they have to do, what do us less powerful people do? Indulge in our day-to-day frivolities. Frolic, play, work, earn. And what happens when you get bored of that? Who says that conspiracies are the domain of a few people alone?

I hereby espouse that an enormous and potentially devastating conspiracy is slowly growing. An echo of our times, an echo of our frivolities, an echo of our society.  Already it has swamped across several societies, cropping up every now and then when you least expect it. You turn your head and it is there. It makes you cringe. It makes you blush. You turn your head again and there it is again! Another naive victim of this modern day global conspiracy, floundering in her ignorance.

Intelligently carried out by it perpetrators in such a fashion that it will deceive its victims into thinking that it is something attractive and is a sacrifice well worth making, it comes in an alluring package, ridiculously priced and yet marketed with such fervour, promoted with such glamour, that the victim falls prey before she knows what has hit her.

This conspiracy slowly reveals itself as an innocuous fissure, peaking out from behind a fibrous exoskeleton, seeming to want to soak in the sun and bask in its newfound glory. Mischievously subtle, so that the victim will not be aware of its showcase; and tactfully stealthy, so as to evade discovery when the victim senses something awry; it can reduce an ethereal femme fatale to a ludicrously Human (with a capital H) being within the span of a second. It makes you think of baboons, and that is not a very flattering image to induce in one’s imagination when one has gone through so much effort otherwise to look presentable.

Sadly, it is telling of our times that this little crack that displays itself has recently achieved such stardom that victims have been found to voluntarily subjugate themselves to its dominance. Feminists believe that it is a cleverly concealed tactic at hurling women back into the throes of suppression and societal restrictions. So you either surrender yourself to its demands, accepting that while you have those jeans on, you will not bend or sit or stretch or dance or jump or sleep; or you resort to wearing your dad’s old T-shirts. OR you just decide to say to the world: ‘Deal with it, boss. That’s my bum crack and you have one too.’