Page 38 - FWG Issue 4_May_2022

Humour

SHOPPING

B Y JAMES CLARKE

en seriously don’t like
shopping. I don’t think we
only ‘pretend not to like it’
Mas British psychologist, Kate
Fox, suggests. She avers that men seem
to have an unwritten rule ‘prohibiting any
enjoyment of shopping’ and that they see
shopping only as something that has to be
done, and done fast. Women, on the other
hand, love it.

Hardly surprising. After all, shopping is
surely a form of gathering and, for aeons,
it was the woman’s lot to gather. While the
men went hunting, the women would go
off gathering stuff, like berries, palatable
insects, etc.

Kate Fox’s observations mainly concern
the English (in 2004 she wrote Watching the
English), but urban South African males, no Photo: Erwin Voortman on Unsplash
matter what their racial background, are no
different.

Fox tries to equate the way men shop
with hunting – “they select their prey and
then, single-mindedly and purposely hunt back with a bottle of ketchup and he says, prime minister – one third of the world’s
it down.” No, we don’t! If I go out to buy ‘Well it’s made of tomatoes isn’t it?’ So I governments is now run by women.
something – let’s say a ‘man thing’ like a go, ‘Yes, but it’s not much use in a salad, is
hammer – I know exactly where I will find it?’ Men! Typical!” The woman added that The growing concern regarding
one. I simply drop in at the hardware and her husband stood there and “positively masculinity and men’s subservience to
get one. That’s all. No hunting. I don’t crouch glowed with pride at this confirmation of women is nowhere more manifest than
low and creep up on some unsuspecting his virility.” in contemporary humour. Look how
hammer and then hold it aloft and shout TV comedies usually show the male as
in triumph. I then I go home and do manly As I said, we urbanised South African males pathetically inept. Look at Basil Fawlty –
things with it – like smash my thumb. are not much different – and our fears then look at Sybil – in command, in control,
regarding our masculinity are daily being insufferable.
But a woman might set out to buy, say, bread questioned in so many other ways.
and milk, and come back with a R300 ‘top’, Compare Dagwood with sensible Blondie;
new shoes and something for somebody’s A few years ago, Gina Bergman sent me a Hagar with down-to-earth Helga; Clinton
birthday which isn’t until next January. Her short piece entitled “Men are just happier with Hillary . . .
mind is still wired the same way it was 200 people – they see chocolate as just another
000 years ago when she set out looking for snack; they can be President; they can pee Where are the swashbuckling Errol Flynns
berries but happily became distracted by a anywhere; they can never be pregnant; and and the strong, silent Humphrey Bogarts?
rotting zebra carcass full of delicious little car mechanics tell them the truth. Remember the manly baritones in Show
maggots ideal for hors d’oeuvres. Boat and South Pacific and West Side Story?
But make no mistake, women are asserting Compare them with latter-day singers. Yet
Fox says men “choose to prove their themselves over men as never before. the girls love them!
masculinity by emphasising how hopelessly Notice how trousers have replaced skirts.
bad they are at shopping”. Appearing to Notice how women are filling executive What does it say for the future of
be useless at shopping can, says Fox, be posts – and suffering more and more heart masculinity?
a “significant source of pride” for a man. A attacks. Notice how, since Mrs Bandaranaike
woman interviewed by Fox said, “I send became prime minister of Ceylon in I’d like to answer that . . . but my wife says I
him off to get tomatoes and he comes 1960 – she was the world’s first female have to go to the shops.

Fourways Gardens • 36 • May 2022