Follow the Babes

Follow the money?

No, follow the babes!

Winds of Change links to an interesting essay, not as shallow as you might imagine, about the importance of "babes" in detecting where social movements are headed. Red Zone blog explaines:
Without putting too fine a point on matters here, the "babe theory" is actually a clever way of expressing a profound point. The edifice of Middle Eastern autocracy and its particularly virulent outgrowth--terrorism--rests upon the repression of women. Liberate female energies from political cage of tyranny and the religious prison of Islamic doctrine and the authority of the bearded mullahs and "pious" terrorists and sexually repressed holy men will crumble like the desiccated dust of the mummies they are.

We are releasing a genie into the Middle East--and the world--whose power is incalcuable.
And right now, they're at the forefront of democratic change in the Middle East and Ukraine, for example. An initial observation of this was here.

I might not have found that essay quite as significant, if 2$$G hadn't independently forwarded me this picture recently, of a babe marching at the Schiavo protests.

Stressing simply babe-ness probably misses the point; it is probably more linked to youth and nubility than to some standard of physical beauty. Because lets face it, in mens' simple minds, certainly any reasonably young and vivacious female will be considered attractive by some significant subset.

Thus where the young women lead, the men will surely follow, exactly as in Delacroix's painting of Liberty Leading the People.