No Pants, No Problems
King Mswati of Swaziland has determined the cause of the world’s problems and it’s a lot simpler than everyone thought. The absolute monarch, who rules over a million people in the tiny African nation, believes the world is in bad shape not because of poverty, corruption or disease, but because of a more troubling issue: women wearing pants.
Needless to say, I was surprised to hear this. I thought the world’s problems stemmed from something far worse: men wearing dresses. It can cause a lot of pain and embarrassment. At least that’s what the guy who tried to pick me up said.
But what if the king is right? What if we could solve the world’s problems by getting women to stop wearing trousers and instead wear, say, miniskirts and bikinis? Are you with me on this, guys?
It’s certainly worth a try. Nothing else seems to be curing the world’s ills, not the peace talks in the Middle East, not the adopt-a-child food programs, not the send-Britney-to-the-moon effort.
I, for one, have always been envious that women can wear anything they want — pants, suits, even ties — whereas I can’t even wear pantyhose. My wife often borrows my clothes, but if I so much as touch hers, I’m on my way to a shrink. (Guess who wears the pants in our household.)
I used to wear a cross on my neck, but I stopped doing that, afraid that someone might call me a cross-dresser. That’s a label usually given to a man who wears women’s clothes, when he isn’t being called a deviant. And what do we call a woman who wears men’s clothes? Liberated.
Give the king some credit: his solution is fairly easy. All we have to do, for starters, is give every married man a pair of scissors and send him into his wife’s wardrobe. A few hours later, we can send a truck to his home to collect his body. And just like that, we’d solve one of the world’s biggest problems: overpopulation.
With fewer men in the world, we’d also solve several other problems, including hunger, poverty, and baldness.
In the next phase of the plan, we’d give every bachelor a can of red paint and send him into his mother’s or sister’s wardrobe. Only a few of these men would come out alive and, as a bonus, they’d all be the same color. That would help solve the problem of racism.
The streets, of course, would soon be filled with distraught women.
Woman: “Oh no, what am I going to do? How am I going to manage?”
Daughter: “It was self-defense, Mom. You didn’t mean to kill Dad.”
Woman: “Yes, I know. But how am I going to manage without my favorite jeans?”
Many women would rush to buy new pants, boosting the economy, creating more jobs in the clothing industry and solving the unemployment problem, particularly in China.
Yes, King Mswati’s solution is not only easy, it’s fairly effective. He’s a smart man. That’s why he didn’t suggest a radical solution such as promoting democracy throughout the world or treating women as equals. That would mean giving up his monarchy, not to mention his nine wives, none of whom, incidentally, wear pants.
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