"Sugar and spice and all that's nice..."

Yes, I know... I usually have a snarky red carpet review after an award show but we celebrated my youngest daughter's 16th birthday this weekend (whew!) so I only caught part of the Grammy's last night. I think the pictures I've chosen pretty much say it all... yet I'm going to comment anyway, because - well, I just want to.
Here is the same Gucci dress - guess which one is the American?!? That's right. It's the top one, Katy Perry at Grammys, looking almost like a caricature - sort of like Jessica Rabbit - whereas the Chinese actress, Bingbing (hmmm, loving that name, who was in the same dress earlier this year) looks petite and demure (and okay, let's just say it) she doesn't look slutty. She looks beautiful and feminine.
Sigh.
As I've been driving around lately (and in sales, there's a lot of driving around) I was thinking that in the United States, men are becoming more like women and women are becoming more like men. Women are now allowed to be on the FRONTLINES in a war...  which I am, as a woman, totally against. WE ARE WIRED DIFFERENTLY. WE WANT TO BE TAKEN CARE OF. We want our knights in shining armour.  We are emotional. We have periods. We have babies. We are not emotionally programmed to shoot at the enemy and deal with those consequences. We play house and babies and dress up as little girls. Boys play with toy guns and toy grenades - it's how they are wired. As I watch all these high school (and college) sports, I can see that these girls are getting masculinized. I'm not saying I'm against girl sports, but they start acting like guys - they lower their voice and start calling each other 'dude' and sweat and lift weights and, well, act more like guys. Not so much in track,  tennis and golf but definitely in volleyball, basketball and soccer.
Yet men still want the beautiful, sweet and feminine girls so they gravitate to where ever those girls are, even if it's overseas (see above.) Too, American women are so over-sexualized that it becomes a turn off to men. Ask any high school boy in America and they will tell you that it's the girls that are the aggressors these days and not the boys - at least in the public schools. In my Baby Boomer high school years, it was the boys who were the aggressors and girls tried to remain chaste and save their virginity. In my small Texas town's high school, it is the exact opposite. The girls are the only aggressors and beg the boys to have sex - yet the "good" boys tell the girls they want to wait. Their dads have told them not to ruin their lives by having a child too young and they are listening. I'm wondering if it's the same elsewhere, and when I ask people from other states, they confirm the same situation.
It's all backasswards...