At the same time, male authority has been diminished, male spending power has been reduced, and all fathers have been symbolically slaughtered. Thus the female has a rare charismatic power. I remember once taking a frightened, hasty walk through the New York offices of Vogue, a central shrine of American womanhood. All over the building, career girls sat at their desks, typing and correcting proofs, smart, svelte, each one wearing a hat . It should also be remembered that American girls are the product of enormous capital investment.
Every country has something that it particularly likes to spend money on.
Such girls are a form of conspicuous consumption, like Christmas trees outside office buildings. Because they are the products of such attention, young American girls can be very selective indeed about their standards, their clothese and their boy friends. This period of choosing is the most important period in any girl's life, and marriage is a necessary comedown. Thus all those middle-aged ladies who, fresh from scavenging through Europe, sit in the bars on ocean liners, tipping waiters and apparently grinding their diamonds between their teeth, are really looking sadly into their drinks and wishing they were girls again. To any European woman in the audience, coming from a location where it is more prestigious to be old than to be young, this would be rude.