Sarah Ayoub, Suri Cruise, and where's the harm in high heels and make-up when Xenu and the Thetans are on the prowl?

Scientology is one of those cults I find endlessly fascinating.

I've drunk the kool aid of a number of cults - the holy Roman church being the first - but I always plead ignorance and youth. In essence there's not much difference in the basic absurdities underlying assorted beliefs, as noted by a recent SMH correspondent:

Scientology is indeed a religion: a higher power has decreed it. In its 1981 High Court case against the Australian Taxation Office, the Church of Scientology claimed tax exemption on the basis that it was a religion – that status was granted.

Delivering the judgment, Justice Lionel Murphy said he saw no major difference between a belief based on alien life-forces living under volcanoes (as taught by Scientology) and the notion of holy ghosts and virgin births.Once I would have been furious at the idea my taxes were subsidising such idiocy. Now I’m just jealous I haven’t come up with an idea that allows me to make a fortune from people who are happy to give me their money, and then even more by not paying tax on it. Andrew Dalton, Annandale

There's something utterly charming and magical about a punter forking over a quarter of a million bucks to get 'clear', by learning that Xenu, alien ruler of the Galactic Confederacy, some 75 million years ago brought billions of people to earth in a spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, stacked them around volcanoes and detonated hydrogen bombs in the volcanoes.

As a result, the thetans clustered together, stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to create complications for humans right to this very day (you can always wiki about those complications, not always spiritual, here).

It must be a bit like getting to the end of a video game, seeing some cheap animation as a reward, and wondering if that's all there is to life, video gaming or religion.

Sure the Xenu myth's no sillier than the story of god wiping out all life (talk about inventing the concept of the holocaust), save for those herded on to an ark, or sundry other biblical myths, but it's the cheekiness of a cult recently invented by a third rate sci fi writer as a way to gouge money that impresses over ancient cults devised to explain mysteries such as thunder, lightning, the stars, the sun, the moon and a flat earth.

But what's this got to do with our loon of the day, you might ask, and if you'll pause a moment to contemplate Sarah Ayoub's contribution to The Punch, Lambs dressed up as mutton, all will become clear.

Because Ayoub spends her entire column getting hot and bothered about little girls and make-up, and acting too old and too vulgar, and losing their innocence. In this area, context is everything, and it's always interesting to see puritans in older generations berate the impurities in younger generations.

Personally I can take or leave make-up or high heels (perhaps high heels are best left to trannies), but where Ayoub got me excited wasn't to do with her familiar, predictable and much abused evocation of JonBenét Ramsey syndrome (here).

No, it's the way she uses a photo of Suri Cruise out and about in little high heels with her mum Katie Holmes to illustrate her point:

The other week, I found a picture of three year old Suri Cruise, wearing a pair of blue peep-toe heels, and I couldn’t help but recoil in shame at how our society has allowed our little girls to grow up before they’re emotionally and physically ready.

Sure, we can’t help the fact that our reality is far different to that of days gone by. But when we have young girls over-sexualised before they’re emotionally mature, or battling issues such as body image disorders before they’ve even reached their teens, we know there’s a problem at stake.

And here's her punch line to the column:

We need more ‘beautiful on the inside’ mentalities. We need more little girls loving life instead of little girls lost in its maze before they’re ready. And as always, we need to get to the root of the problem, and get little Suri Cruise to hand her heels to daddy Tom, because, no matter our take on the matter, we all know that they’re certainly more prettier than standing on a cardboard box for that bit of extra height.

Um, a little girl's in the grip of a loon who believes in Xenu and thetans, and is a chief proselytizer for a dangerous cult that rips money off people, and the most you can worry about is that Suri Cruise is wearing petite high heels?

That's the root of the problem? Guess we have a different idea of what's a root and what's a bit of surface dressing. I'm still not sure how you can have a 'beauty on the inside' mentality if you've been invaded by ugly thetans and are unclear, or for that matter how you might grow up clear, if you're in the spotlight along with a father and mother high up in the celebrity food chain, a status exploited by the couple in question, the movie business, the jackal feeding media, and the overlords of Scientology.

Not to mention columnists picking on you because of that association because you happen to be wearing modest high heels one day while snapped by a paparazzi.

Golly, wearing high heels and putting on a little lipstick might even come as a relief, in the way we used to love playing dress up games and plastering our faces while rampaging through my mother's wardrobe.

So here's a thought. Stop picking on Suri Cruise, and get in to the heavyweight stuff - the cult of scientology.

Or is the chance to increase the traffic to The Punch - by using a photo of Suri Cruise - too irresistible?

(Below: proving we have even less integrity than The Punch, below is a picture of Suri Cruise in the clutches of dangerous aliens. The high heels she was wearing were taken off for this shot, and hidden in the bushes of never ever land).