I am sitting at the Barnes and Noble by my house. I’m facing the magazine section. A couple of minutes ago, I came to the realization that we live in a culture that worships women. Every magazine in the Women’s Interest section is covered with a picture of a beautiful woman. Half the magazines in all the other sections are also covered with pictures of women. As a woman, I must admit that my eyes is also drawn to the magazines with the pictures of women as opposed to all others. Even the computer gamer mags have digitized women on their covers. We are bombarded with visions of women all day long.

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.  – Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821 – 1890)

This realization was so striking to me that I felt the immediate need to write it down. I went to the blank journals section here, grabbed a book and started writing. I haven’t even paid for it yet, but I had to get this observation down on paper before it slipped out of my mind. The Palm would have been too slow. Graffiti is faster than trying to type on a tiny keyboard, but it’s still slower than pen and paper. No, what hit me in the eyes was too important to try to fuss with Graffiti. It even feels too important for writing. Maybe I should carry around a tape recorder. Of course it seems that eloquence comes out of my fingers much better than it comes out of my mouth. It’s almost like writing is a physical activity of my hands more than an intellectual one.

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.  – Edwin Schlossberg

Anyway, I’ve lived in a society that has told me that women are downtrodden. When I was a child, women burned their bras on the nightly news before my eyes. I didn’t quite understand what the undergarments signified to them. They had never been a symbol of anything to me except being a grownup woman. I definitely wanted to be a grownup woman.

Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.  – Margaret Atwood (1939 – ), Cat’s Eye, 1988

Now, I’ve been smacked in the face with the realization that my world isn’t what people have told me it was. I actually live in a world that worships women like goddesses. Jennifer Lopez is the focus of the J-Lo/Ben Affleck obsession. Oprah Winfrey mentions a book on her television show and it’s an instant best seller. Martha Stewart goes to jail for insider training while all the male insider traders silently go to jail without notice or press.

Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God.  – A. J. Toynbee

When I was exercising at the gym the other day, I scanned the five televisions in front of me. BET had Ashanti singing and slapping her boyfriend. MTV had the girls from The Real World competing in some artificial log roll. VH1 was ridiculing the fashion of women on the red carpet. CNN’s female anchor told me that fifty percent of the upper management was female. Spike TV, “Television for Men”, was playing Star Trek: The Next Generation where Commander Riker was believing Deanna Troi’s intuitive instincts about a visitor to the Enterprise. Even “TV for Men” was worshiping women. I’m sure Oxygen and Lifetime were devoted to women instead of the male worship that logic would suggest.

I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.  – Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

How does all of this affect me? I am female. I am the goddess of this culture. Do I feel like a goddess? Hell no. How could I possibly live up to that expectation? In a society that worships women as goddesses, how does a woman live? Should I expect adoration?