From the time of my early childhood I have seen the view on gender and sex certainly change. Initially it was the natural order of things that papa was out to work and mama was home taking care of the house and children.

Then came the ‘sexual revolution’ which changed all that. All was turned upside down and put together in a different way. Somehow I ended up with the deep rooted opinion that it is very, very bad to act in a way that could be considered sexist. Only the inner values, which are independent of gender, were considered to be relevant. You were supposed to be sex-blind.

That naturally created some discrepancy between what I could observe and what I was supposed to observe. Let’s take the example of a very pretty girl. One guy who, like me, was drilled to see only the inner values – even though that was rather difficult to do – started a conversation about philosophical questions of life, the universe and everything to engage the intellectual being inside that pretty exterior, and got nowhere.

The other guy just locked his eyes onto her body, drooling noticeable, only able to utter such intelligent thoughts as “Wow, you are so beautiful, can I have your number?” Not a single note about the inner qualities. He usually got the number.

Often the purely sexual aspect is exhibited – oozing sexuality instead of displaying a masters degree or a doctor title. And, funny enough, this is mostly done by the female, who officially works on being appreciated for her intellect and not the cleavage. Let’s take a normal business setting. Men are usually totally a-sexual in such an environment, buttoned up shirt with a tie. But the female executives often show off her non-intellectual qualities. What would happen if men would do that?

All these thought, I have to admit, never really surface totally within me, until very recently, when I ran into a picture of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.

Ms. Merkel is probably a very intelligent person, at least in the limited political way, so why in the world is she sexualizing her appearance so much. There is no beauty in this as she is not a particularly beautiful person, and whom is she trying to arouse? Or is this just a sport to see how long it takes that male until he finally looks at her boobs? There certainly are other options to dress as you notice when you look at the person in the background behind Ms. Merkel.

When I though about how this would look like if the male part of the political world would give up its boring non-sexuality and let it all hang out as well, I became curious. So I went out to find if it did indeed exist, and to my total surprise, I found it.

Wouldn’t that put a completely new face on politics? Please don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to bash either Bush nor Merkel. It is just that here we are offered by these very public figures a way to understand just how much of a double talk exists in the arena of emancipation. We could use any setting in business as well, we would, most likely, find a similar situation.

Hopefully, after draining my brain of inner conflict, I will now be able to just compliment a woman on her looks without the idea of violating the emancipation law. Because, quite honestly, I appreciate female beauty just as any other male. Just as I am sure women appreciate male beauty. Just as a side note, a co-worker of my wife once called me ‘ruggedly handsome!’ I still dearly love Sharon!

What do you think, should men start fighting for sexual equality in politics and business and dress more like George in the above picture?