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Congratulations to Sweden, which, according to the World Economic Forum, is the best country to live in if you’re a woman. The friend from Stockholm who showed me this Marie Claire article on MSN about it agreed that, yes, Sweden is a pretty progressive place (though the current government is doing its best to undermine said progress). But the article itself is a whopping heap of ridiculousness.

First off, this isn’t a news piece. The “new report” was released in 2005, and the article is in the MSN Lifestyle section along with such crucial stories as “Design a Handbag, Win a Trip to NYC!” and “Making lust last.” Its focus is on “it girl,” editor-in-chief of Sweden’s largest magazine for young women Ebba von Sydow. (”Everyone hates her,” my friend informs me.)

[S]he’s a firm believer that Swedish women don’t have to give up their femininity. “I love makeup, I wear pink, and I’m obsessed with handbags,” she confesses. “I’m proof that you can be both smart and womanly. I get thousands of letters from girls saying that I inspire them.”

Okay, maybe I’m being unfair here. I wear a lot of pink myself. But what’s with equating stereotypical gender characteristics with womanhood?

The article goes out of its way to feign shock at the chicks claiming to be equal human beings. From the “tall, blonde police boss” to the Sex in the City-watching Anna-Maria and her four boyfriends, the whole story has a certain “you go girl!” feel. But just in case American women get inspired by the Swedish example and become all uppity, Marie Claire takes pains to point out the downside to not being a second-class citizen:

To avoid double standards, women like Anna-Maria are fanatical about paying their fair share on dates. “I feel very uncomfortable if a man buys me dinner or drinks — as though I owe him something,” she says. Fortunately she almost never finds herself in that predicament, since Swedish men rarely offer to pay, nor do they perform any other conventional courtesies, such as holding a door open or helping a woman visibly struggling under the load of a heavy bag.

But the biggest problem for Swedish women, apparently, is shopping:

With its high income tax, women take home an average of $22,000 per year, compared with $29,000 for American women. Yet prices in Sweden are up to four times higher: a drugstore lipstick costs $15, a pair of non-designer jeans, $130. An evening out costs almost $150. For young women who like to have fun, it can be hard on the wallet. “I save all week for the weekends,” says Anna-Maria Blomberg, 27, who works as a human resources assistant for a pharmaceutical company. “When I shop, I’m always trying to find ways to buy clothes on sale, so I can spend more on accessories like shoes and bags.”

One thing the article doesn’t mention when tallying up the cost of living, though, is that the $7,000 a year more that an average American woman takes home probably gets swallowed up fairly quickly by such trivial, non-shoe-related expenses such as health care premiums, college tuition, and day care—all of which are nicely covered by Sweden’s social safety net.

Naturally, such an article wouldn’t be complete without a mention of Those Rabid Feminists^TM. Even in Sweden’s utopia, those bra-burners still aren’t happy:

A new female-run political party, Feminist Initiative, was launched in 2005 on such platforms as abolishing marriage laws — thereby granting any two (or three, or four!) people cohabiting the same rights as a husband and wife — and legally requiring fathers to take as much time off for child care as mothers. While the party was initially touted as “the way for women’s future,” its support plummeted after its convention several months ago, during which members sang a rowdy song about “chopping men to bits.”

Like much in this story, Feminist Initiative (which is no longer an electoral party) has a bit more of a platform than that. Here’s their website, and from what I can see, it’s all quite good and sensible. (Note particularly: “Nearly all Swedish political parties call themselves feminist, but women’s lives remain unchanged, day in and day out, year after year.” I can’t imagine a political party in Canada, let alone America, calling itself feminist. But I digress.)

Conclusion: Being treated like a human is all very nice, but one wouldn’t want to become (tee-hee) too human. We’d have less money for handbags, and even wind up with unisex washrooms, eww.