Somewhere in the not too distant future, in a hospital in a small southern town, a child enters the world. He makes his entrance effortlessly, almost gracefully, precisely at midnight. To those who witness his arrival, trained and lay alike, he appears flawless, a tiny bundle of flailing, screeching perfection, but his doting parents soon realize that something is dreadfully wrong. Even as his arms reach for her, the boy’s tiny blue-bead eyes don’t gaze lovingly at his mother. They don’t track the trembling finger that passes slowly before them, begging for acknowledgement, for a response. They are blank, unseeing.

Half way across town, three more male infants suffer precisely the same fate, journeying from their mothers’ wombs into a life of perpetual darkness. Initially, doctors are merely puzzled, but their concern grows exponentially as they learn of similar incidents from parts near and far. Like fire gorging on dry brush, word soon spreads, growing ever wider as another sightless child takes his first breath. Within the space of a month, none can deny the tragedy that has befallen the world: the male gender has been struck with blindness. Panic ensues; chaos and mayhem reign over the planet as people struggle to find answers, to cope, to adapt.

Not missing a beat, the media is positively agog with the story, shouting it as loudly and as insufferably as they possibly can, from every known medium. A worldwide crisis of epic proportions, they bellow through cyber-megaphones, is casting permanent shadows on the visual lobes of countless infants. The singular common denominator: male gender.

Scientists search furiously, conduct endless genetic tests and fervently gather samples of virtually everything. Fueled by fear, helplessness and anger, people express their desperation in any and every way imaginable. They write scathing letters, slather canvasses with broad, angry strokes of grey and black, pummel unsuspecting targets with white-knuckled fists, or spew hateful words in response to anything that happens to raise their dander. Theories erupt like teenage acne; some are quickly debunked, others carefully considered over lattes in coffee shops, triple martinis in smoke-filled bars, and of course in virtually every university and research facility on earth. Everyone searches for an answer. No one finds one.

Flash forward fifty or so years. At least outwardly, the world is radically different. Though gentlemen’s clubs still abound, strippers no longer twine themselves around poles. They whisper, touch, caress, and wave wrists dabbed with alluring scents beneath the sensitive noses of eager patrons. They don’t bother with the old outfits. Birkenstocks supplant six-inch heels; tassels and G-Stings are as dated as Betty Crocker and telephone booths. The women don’t slather their lips with blood-red lipstick, line their eyes with gobs of charcoal, or fry their hair with Suicide Blonde hair dye. In the clubs, the music doesn’t blare or deafen, doesn’t seek to drown out words. An ambient embrace of the auditory cortex, it enhances words rather than obliterate them.

Splashed with color, fashion magazines still beckon shoppers at the grocery store checkout, but the covers are graced with a different sort of beauty. The camera’s lens doesn’t make love to its subject, it befriends her, evoking congeniality rather than a come hither stare and a sex-starved gaze. Gone are the vacuous Barbie Doll faces of scantily clad, anorexic models. Instead, curvaceous and voluptuous women smile amicably at the camera.

Makeup exists only for costume, for make-believe, for Halloween. Clothes are loose, flowing, comfortable, practical. Sweat pants are the jeans of the day, preferably in olive drab, grey or natural. Bras are a thing of the past, as unfamiliar and unnecessary as the corset once seemed. Negligees are artifacts, sad reminders of how women once suffered. On the Internet, single people still pursue one another with fervor, but their decision to connect is no longer contingent upon a photo. The new standard of beauty bears almost no resemblance to its predecessor. Women are considered beautiful when they act kindly, speak intelligently or simply laugh good-naturedly. Appearance is irrelevant.

Flash forward yet another fifty years. Unsurprisingly, the notion of what is beautiful has moved steadily away from the bell curve’s center and is currently firmly entrenched in the extreme. Rubenesque is the much-touted ideal, the look du jur. Women of modest proportions are scorned, pitied, even discriminated against. Those who secretly yearn to dab their faces with color, to add strawberry hues to their tresses, or to shave the forest of hair that has sprouted on their legs, suppress these urges for fear of ridicule or derision. They pile on clothing so their thin, lithe figures will not elicit disapproving stares and contemptuous comments from judgmental strangers. Those who do dare to be different, to parade about in public wearing tight, form-fitting clothing, to boldly display dyed and styled hair, to teeter on antiquated stiletto heels, pay dearly for it. They are turned down for jobs, granted decidedly sub-par service in certain establishments, and brutally mocked on the talk-show circuit.

Men, meanwhile, hang about on the sidelines. They cast no aspersions upon the so-called errant, radical women who boldly express their individuality, who dare to deviate from the norm. Men, as they have since time began, harbor preferences, predilections, a general notion of what is enticing, alluring or erotic, and each varies from the next. They do not dictate what is beautiful. It is women, not men, who both set and uphold the standard of beauty, enforcing it with an iron fist. In spite of themselves, women succumb to the pressure that they themselves place upon their burdened gender. Everyone plays along, conforms, purchasing clothes they find unappealing, wearing shoes they abhor, being who they are not.

Flash forward yet again. In a hospital in a small southern town, a male infant is born. Almost immediately, doctors realize that he is different. His eyes dart back and forth in his head, inquisitive, seeing. Subsequently, many more male infants enter the world. All of them are sighted. A new era dawns as the whole of mankind is once again sighted.

The tide continues to turn.

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