“Do you like wearing a dress, Daddy?”

“Can you believe it used to be that Men told Women what to do, what to wear, their hair, clothes, everything!!!”
“You mean – we used to be in charge - and that women spent all their time wearing pretty clothes and looking after the house and the men? Weird!”

An AP-500 story
(posted quickly because a recent story got 1000 hits in less than 2 days! Yay!)

Daddy smoothed the silk dress he had embroidered and patted my hand. “It was so sudden, really.” He paused.

“The men in charge – everywhere – kept on showing how massively incompetent they were. Greedy, getting fat and sleek on ‘being in charge’. Eventually people realised the unfairness. There was Brexit in Britain - telling the self-elected EU to get knotted because unelected bureaucrats shouldn’t be overrule a genuine democracy. Then Trumpit in America – when so many decided that the white, male, rich ‘elite’ had been cheating and manipulating for too long.”

“Well, anyway. There used to be this group - Bilderberg it was called. They had a reputation, true or not, of being ‘the people in the background ruling the world’. Ludicrous when you think about it. But – things just came to a head when a huge number of these Bilderbergs were revealed to be corrupt, nasty, perverted and generally unsuitable.”

“So what happened?”

“The women who were married to these men – they went ballistic. They were having a series of meaningless meetings nearby – and Mrs Tannon, wife of the President and Mrs Van Kleef just marched in and took over. They had accumulated all the information necessary to, well, blackmail their men into just giving in.”

“Then they announced there would be changes. Instead of being in the background, women would be up-front and open about their aims and intentions. Decisions would be made by women working with men rather than by men ignoring women. Men who were not-contributing would do the background tasks which ‘they’ had said women were stuck with. Cooking, cleaning, child-care and not just tasks beginning with C.”

“Was it they who fixed the Middle East?”

“Absolutely. They said the West were not as bad as they were accused but changes were going to be made. For example Arabs were perfectly allowed to hate Arabs and kill them if they wished. However, they’d get no arms and damage beyond national boundaries would be dealt with by women in a way the men would hate. Testosterone-driven negotiation was no more. It was made very clear that women would not run ‘everything’ as males had their skills. But the male-determined methods of the past were done, ended. Cooperate not Compete, y’know their mottos.”

“But why do we have to wear the dresses now?”

“Just learn the history of costume, Charlie. Male peacockery was supported by women working furiously to make HIM look good. The Change has meant that in households like ours, the woman is in charge. So the woman dresses for leadership. The man, like me, has to spend the time making it easy for her. Part of that is making sure I don’t compete. So I wear the prettier fussier clothes, and it’s a huge effort getting it right. It’s not what I ever expected – but I can cope. Actually, it’s better than that – I love these clothes and feeling so pretty.”

“I do too.”

We hugged. Enjoying the thrill as our lacy frills rustled together.

Another 500-word story - how soon will the wimen be in charge? - A story for anyone to take onwards (and acknowledge)
AP