Page 30 - Dainfern Precinct_Issue 4_2022

SHOPPING
HUMOUR

BY JAMES CLARKE
said, “I send him off to get tomatoes
and he comes back with a bottle of
ketchup and he says, ‘Well it’s made
of tomatoes isn’t it?’ So I go, ‘Yes,
but it’s not much use in a salad, is
it?’ Men! Typical!” The woman added
that her husband stood there and
“positively glowed with pride at this
confirmation of his virility.”

As I said, we urbanised South
African males are not much
different – and our fears regarding
our masculinity are daily being
questioned in so many other ways.

A few years ago, Gina Bergman
sent me a short piece entitled “Men
are just happier people – they see
chocolate as just another snack;
they can be President; they can
pee anywhere; they can never be
pregnant; and car mechanics tell
them the truth.”

But make no mistake, women are
asserting themselves over men as
never before. Notice how trousers
have replaced skirts. Notice how
women are filling executive posts
– and suffering more and more
heart attacks. Notice how, since
Mrs Bandaranaike became prime
Image: Erwin Voortman,Unsplash
minister of Ceylon in 1960 – she
en seriously don’t like If I go out to buy something – let’s was the world’s first female prime
shopping. I don’t think we say a ‘man thing’ like a hammer – minister – one third of the world’s
only ‘pretend not to like I know exactly where I will find one. governments is now run by women.
Mit’ as British psychologist, I simply drop in at the hardware and
Kate Fox, suggests. She avers that get one. That’s all. No hunting. I don’t The growing concern regarding
men seem to have an unwritten crouch low and creep up on some masculinity and men’s subservience
rule ‘prohibiting any enjoyment unsuspecting hammer and then hold to women is nowhere more manifest
of shopping’ and that they see it aloft and shout in triumph. I then go than in contemporary humour. Look
shopping only as something that has home and do manly things with it – how TV comedies usually show the
to be done, and done fast. Women, like smash my thumb. male as pathetically inept. Look at
on the other hand, love it. Basil Fawlty – then look at Sybil – in
But a woman might set out to buy, command, in control, insufferable.
Hardly surprising. After all, shopping say, bread and milk, and come back Compare Dagwood with sensible
is surely a form of gathering and, for with a R300 ‘top’, new shoes and Blondie; Hagar with down-to-earth
aeons, it was the woman’s lot to gather. something for somebody’s birthday Helga; Clinton with Hillary . . .
While the men went hunting, the which isn’t until next January. Her
women would go off gathering stuff, like mind is still wired the same way it Where are the swashbuckling
berries, palatable insects, etc. was 200 000 years ago when she Errol Flynns and the strong, silent
set out looking for berries but happily Humphrey Bogarts? Remember
Kate Fox’s observations mainly became distracted by a rotting the manly baritones in Show Boat
concern the English (in 2004 she zebra carcass full of delicious little and South Pacific and West Side
wrote Watching the English), but maggots ideal for hors d’oeuvres. Story? Compare them with latter-day
urban South African males, no singers – yet the girls love them!
matter what their racial background, Fox says men “choose to prove
are no different. their masculinity by emphasising What does it say for the future of
how hopelessly bad they are at masculinity?
Fox tries to equate the way men shopping”. Appearing to be useless
shop with hunting – “they select their at shopping can, says Fox, be a I’d like to answer that . . . but my
prey and then, single-mindedly and “significant source of pride” for a wife says I have to go with her to the
purposely hunt it down.” No, we don’t! man. A woman interviewed by Fox shops.
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DPL