Posted on 07/22/2003 9:41:01 AM PDT by presidio9
"WHY can’t a woman . . . be more like a man?” queried Rex Harrison in an early rap classic. (Hey, you kids think you invented talent-free celebrities?)
I first saw My Fair Lady when I was 12 and just starting to get interested in what marketing types call the “features and benefits” of gender identity. No wonder I found this particular number a little scary. After all, by this point in the play, Higgins had already changed Eliza Doolittle’s voice, posture, manners, clothing, hairstyle and her habits of mind. There weren’t really that many bits still up for grabs.
Of course, many would argue that Professor Higgins has well and truly got his wish. These days, it is hard to imagine an Eliza who would gratefully fetch Henry his pipe and slippers. Shoving them up his antimacassar is more like it.
Women are still women, of course. We still care passionately about eliminating war, hunger and the odd grey pubic hair. We have been slow to relinquish girlish rituals like looking after children and remembering to flush. But we have also, unquestionably, become more inclusive in our gender identity. (“Boys may date girls who embrace diversity,” my mother warned me. “But they don’t marry them.” Hah! If only.)
To a lesser extent, the same has been true for blokes. Ten years ago, the Sensitive New Age Guy was heralded as the greatest evolutionary breakthrough since Homo erectus. Today, Homo detumescence is more like it. Speaking as something of a former SNAG hag myself, I find it hard to respect a man who weeps openly on the first date. (Meeting my kids can’t be that bad.)
Frankly, most of the blokes I met who professed to be “in touch with their feminine side” couldn’t tell their elbow from their anima. I also detected an inverse relationship between the capacity to “feel one’s feelings” and the capacity to “pay one’s mortgage”, though the evidence for this is purely, and disastrously, anecdotal.
SNAGs, while generally well-meaning, incorporated the least attractive aspects of traditional femininity. After a while one looked forward to spending time with them with the same eager anticipation normally reserved for imminent menstrual cramping. Yet old SNAGs never really die. Like the low-grade meat by-product for which they are named, they just become leftovers, staring accusingly at you from the bottom shelf.
Nevertheless, the longing for a man who, for want of a better lyric, is more like a woman remains as insistent as ever – though, with hindsight, most of us would agree that we’d prefer someone who acted more like a girlfriend and less like a blocked duct. Someone who knows how to share his feelings and his gel wax smoothing serum. Who regards a trip to the mall and a trip to the urologist as two distinctly different experiences. Who can bring home the bacon if necessary but naturally prefers the pancetta. Someone, in short, who is exactly like your best gay friend – fit, fun, stylish, and impeccably moisturised . . . Well, okay, not exactly.
I keep reading about those metrosexuals – straight, urban males who shop just like a woman, yet make love just like a man – but they seem awfully hard to come by. Every time I go looking for one they always seem to be out of stock.
A recent New York Times feature defined metrosexuals as “straight guys who were into Diesel jeans, interior design, yoga and Mini Coopers, and who would never think of ordering a vodka tonic without specifying Grey Goose”. Jeez. I’d never even heard of Grey Goose. (I say, Honk if You Love Stoli.) Honestly, I hadn’t felt so five minutes ago in – gosh! – hours.
According to the Times, Karru Martinson, who works in finance, is typical of the new “flaming heterosexual”. Although sexually “straight as an arrow”, he is equally in demand for “his knack for seeing when a bag clashes with an outfit”.
Like metrosexual icon David “Gender-Bend it Like” Beckham – who is man enough to paint his fingernails, plait his hair and pose for gay magazines – Martinson is what marketers call a “pro-sumer”, a cutting-edge consumer whose disposable income is matched only by his vanity . . . er, “heightened sense of aesthetics”. Yet women are reportedly almost as interested in metrosexuals as retailers are.
I guess it’s worth a shot. I once dated a guy I met at the Clinique counter. I figured any bloke who, in broad daylight, had the guts to ask for Scruffing Lotion had to have something on the ball. The free tote bag had nothing to do with it. I swear.
Not to mention Lee Marvin in "Paint Your Wagon." The author, of course, is a little off base (about everything ...) Harrison could act, maybe even dance. He just couldn't sing.
We used to call them "Mamma's Boys". There was one in my church. He was a teen then. His mother bought designer everything for him. $100 haircuts. Manicures. The whole bit. He's probably starring in a stall at the Roanoke rest area right now.
She lost me here.
Oh, no..... Oh he!! no....
What is wrong with dopey women anyway?
We used to call them "Mamma's Boys".
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We used to call them "change of life babies".
(For all you folks in Rio Linda and Palm Beach county this means that a woman who is going through, or tettering on the brink, of m-pause one day discovers to her very great surprise that she is pg.)
And this is attractive, why?
And let's not ever forget, he could do one hell of a Rex Harrison immitation. Pity he was born too late to do Michael Bolton.
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