“The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.” Thoreau’s estimation of Parisian dictated fashion throughout Europe and here in America was easily confirmed. And for those with the interest and grit to do some research on the subject, there are few things to compare with the fashion industry when it comes to in your face unadulterated racism associated with fashion. But the recent media focus on beautiful Caucasian women dominating the fashion industry is not a story for the weak in heart and mind; and most certainly it is not a story for those with a closed mind concerning the facts of prejudice and bigotry on the part of those calling themselves “liberal,” facts that will not go away no matter the amount of denigrating those they view as “conservative” or the amount of politically correct spin put on the subject.

As I once more intrude where angels fear to go, few would dispute Julia Roberts is a “Pretty Woman.” And it took a really pretty woman to play the role in the film in order for it to be successful. Those calling themselves “liberal” may think they have a claim on Hollywood because of it promoting perversion, sex and violence, but the reality is quite the reverse; it is a business to make money, and the film Pretty Woman was not going to be a success, it was not going to make money without a really pretty woman in the role. Discrimination? Of course! Blatantly so! That’s Hollywood. But there is a comparable discriminatory institution that helps Hollywood be Hollywood: The fashion industry.

While corporations get away with “murder for hire” using the politicians they have bought and own to legitimize their wars and other depredations, the fashion industry operates with the kind of impunity any mafia godfather could rightly both envy and admire. And despite the blatant racism it is one industry the ACLU knows better than to try and intimidate. But there is a very good reason both materially and esthetically why the fashion industry concentrates its efforts on using beautiful Caucasian women to promote itself: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and beautiful Caucasian women are the standard of beauty in the world of fashion, and in the less civilized world of pornography as well.

But beyond the esthetics of beauty there are some very grim reasons thoroughly implanted in human nature for the fashion industry dedicating itself to promotion using Caucasian women almost exclusively. You can find the reason for this in the classic 1933 film “King Kong” where it is pointed out the natives and Kong were attracted to Fay Wray. Back then there was little in the way of political correctness to avoid the obvious of the natives and Kong really going gaga over a beautiful, blonde Caucasian girl.

My attention was first drawn to this subject of discrimination in the fashion industry over forty years ago when I read Professor Claude G. Bowers’ definitive work “The Tragic Era” dealing with what is euphemistically called “Reconstruction” following the death of Lincoln. I have often recommended this book to people for them to gain insight to how America found itself in the grip of a Federal Triune Dictatorship following Lincoln’s War. But it helps to explain many other things also, it helps to explain a thesis of mine formed many years ago that the seed of destruction for America was planted in slavery.

One of the greatest questions of American history has been what if slavery had never been introduced in America? A further question is what if it had been excluded by our Constitution? Another question is what if the Negro leaders of the time had accepted Lincoln’s relocation proposal? Their refusal to do so prompted Lincoln’s question as to why these Negro leaders would want to stay in a land where they surely knew they would continue to be hated and despised, never to find themselves accepted the equal of Caucasians?

A great fallacy was given the imprimatur of the U. S. Supreme Court when the justices made the Draconian decision to abolish segregation. Living in their insulated world of privilege, never having lived like so many ordinary people the ideal of desegregation was doomed from the beginning for the very reason the fashion industry chooses beautiful Caucasian women almost exclusively. The court could make a law, but it could not force Caucasian children into the schools of DC, Watts, or Harlem, it could not change either human nature or the reality of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. What the court did in its blindness to the realities was to make a bad situation worse, creating what became known as “white flight” with many schools in America being even more segregated now than before the court’s decision.

Martin Luther King could have a dream, but it was a dream only, never able to pass the test of reality. But at least I had the benefit of being a high school teacher in Watts, I saw the fallacy of MLK’s dream on a daily basis in a community filled with people whose only dream was to escape their miserable lives, but doomed by a system that would never do any more than give out welfare checks in order “to keep those people in their place.”

The invasion of America by millions of illegal alien Mexicans has only benefited the wealthy profiting from slave labor, these wealthy with the politicians in their pockets refusing to secure our borders in order to keep these millions coming without hindrance. But the enormity of this betrayal of America adds to the misery of the millions of legitimate American citizens already living in poverty in places like Watts. There will never be enough welfare checks to keep these growing millions “in their place,” and the increasing violence across America with entire cities being given over to gangs, jails and prisons being “growth industries” is the result.

For those of us who accept we live in a demon-haunted world in which life is neither fair nor just, where the strong dominate the weak and women have never been accepted as of equal value to men, it is only to be expected the ideals of fairness and justice invariably give way to the grim reality of those dedicated to greed and avarice, to the ruthless whose goal is power and wealth. It is with justifiable cynicism “Treaties are made to be broken” rings all too true, and history is replete with “To the victor belongs the spoils,” and “The winners of wars write their histories.”

Prohibition was an ideal, but it was an ideal doomed by reality. Separate but Equal never passed the test of equality, but neither did desegregation; and a multitude of laws will never displace human nature that dictates “birds of a feather flock together.” However, the pecking order is the result of factors over which few have any control, the factors that make for a demon haunted world filled with inequities and injustices. The person who says they do not know much about art but they know what they like remains in the majority. And the majority always wants Fay Wray in King Kong, and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Hollywood was able to call Hedy Lamarr “the most beautiful girl in the world” without fearing howls of Racism! Discrimination!

It is futile to expect the leopard to change its spots, it is futile to expect Muslim nations to become democratic, and it is futile to try to promote “diversity” into the fashion industry. While it remains a truism “sex sells,” the fashion industry is dedicated to the standard of beauty being Caucasian. And there is nothing the Supreme Court, the ACLU, the NAACP can do to make it otherwise. A far deeper thing is involved with the fashion industry, one that no amount of laws or demands for change will avail. Who has the money and power? These, not fairness or diversity rule the fashion industry. And the fashion industry reflects the will and tastes of those who have the money and power.

Perhaps Bush has decided to nuke Iran; there seems little we can do about that. But suppose the Supreme Court was to decide to “nuke” the fashion industry including all its publications making it abide by the same anti-discrimination laws governing the schools and other government institutions, that Hollywood would have to make films in which diversity ruled to meet a quota system, that all pornographic material must meet such a quota rather than what those with the money want to see? We know life is not fair or just, we know we are all what we are by accident of birth and some things cannot be changed as a result of this.

But no amount of laws is going to surmount those things like the standard of beauty applied to King Kong and Pretty Woman; and not even the most tyrannical of despots can change this. However, tyrannical though it is “the head monkey in Paris” has always known where the money is, and the really big money follows beautiful Caucasian women. “The face that launched a thousand ships,” this by itself is enough to cause wars and change the course of history.

I can only wonder how the recent media attention being given the fashion industry’s blatantly obvious discrimination may stir thoughts of war in some, whether there may be marches in the streets with minorities carrying placards reading the contemporary equivalent of “Down with Fay Wray and Julia Roberts!” I suppose this would meet with roaring failure, and the reasons for such a failure should speak volumes to any believing they are going to change things when it comes to the power of the standard of beauty in the fashion industry, berate and revile it as some may. And the AARP notwithstanding, old and wrinkled does not come off as “sexy” no matter the spin. There are simply some things no amount of propaganda or laws can change.