Let us men be glad we did not live a century ago. Then – when “we” were “lazy, selfish, thoughtless, lying, drunken, clumsy, heavy-footed, rough, unmanly brutes, and need taming”.
Even as there remain among us: “Beauty Men, Flirts, and Bounders, Tailor’s Dummies, and Football Enthusiasts.” (You know who you are!). A “Tailor’s Dummy” is described as “a man who looks good in a suit but has the personality of a sock”.
Apologies to the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Socks (you can’t be too careful these days.).
How different to then, when advice on keeping a man happy was equated with having a content dog - “feed the brute!” This was described as harsh, on dogs. It was noted how dogs were “always loyal and love unconditionally” - not necessarily the case with men.
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We men, of course, are so much different now than those described above by a “suffragette wife”, as quoted from a 1918 document on display at the Pontypridd Museum in Wales.
She went further and advised young ladies: “Do not marry at all.” To those who “must”, she said the best prospects would be a “strong, tame man”, such as the “fire-lighter, coal-getter, window cleaner and yard swiller”.
One suspects that her real emphasis was on “...tame”.
Yet, all these years later, is there a man among us who would dare sing – even in jest – that song from the 1964 film My Fair Lady: “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?”
“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?/Men are so honest, so thoroughly square;/ Eternally noble, historically fair./Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat./ Why can’t a woman be like that?...
“...Men are so pleasant, so easy to please./Whenever you’re with them, you’re always at ease.”
(Bless my timorous soul, but where’s the exit?)
Lerner and Loewe, who wrote that song, are – mercifully - dead. (If they weren’t, they would be.)
More acceptable now would be You Don’t Own Me, sung by Lesley Gore in 1963. “You don’t own me/Don’t try to change me in any way/You don’t own me/Don’t tie me down ‘cause I’d never stay...”
“Suffragette wife” would definitely approve.
Suffragette, from Latin suffragium (with French feminine ending `-ette‘) for “right to vote” for women.
