"We've given them more than we've taken away... Think of the troubles they had before. Don't you remember the singles' bars, the indignity of high school blind dates? The meat market. Don't you remember the terrible gap between the ones who could get a man easily and the ones who couldn't? Some of them were desperate, they starved themselves thin or pumped their breasts full of silicone, had their noses cut off. Think of the human misery."
The Commanders quote clearly demonstrates the one sided view of Fathers arranging marriages for their daughters, and the overall view of women as a whole. You haven't given them anything, you took away their independence, their options for the future. The men see this as a great thing because it's convenient for them, but cover this up by saying they are saving their daughters from misery. The fact that "human misery" is representing a girls freedom, shows how even though they're not handmaids they're still seen a sort of prize, or object. For their personal opinion and identity does not matter because the men are satisfied. These examples the commander uses as being negative are not negative they are supposed to be part of life that help you mature and to be able to find that one person you want to marry. By adding in starvation, silicone breasts, and a nose job is his way of over exaggerating the horrors women went through to make themselves beautiful for men when every woman didn't do this, and men weren't always the reason for these actions. And thereby justifying his opinion, and manipluting it to make it seem a selfless action.
