too much of a good thing
A couple of days ago a Brexit-voting pal of mine popped several well-thumbed articles from his favoured right-wing press through my letter box (see, I am an inclusive kinda guy, not a rabid member of the metropolitan liberal elite as some of my best friends are Tories, dontchaknow). Once, I’d recovered from the shock of being mail-bombed by the BNP I did what any right-minded individual would do: junk anything penned by Jeremy Clarkson without reading, ceremoniously set-fire to the many photo-shopped portraits of Jacob Rees Mogg, and take the rest with a sizeable pinch of salt. However, one article by resident columnist Caitlin Moran, really tickled me and hit the proverbial nail right on the bonce.
With a relatively novel take on the age-old ‘Venus & Mars’ debate, Ms Moran attributes the big differences to one thing, and one thing only, hobbies. Here’s her take on how gender determines our approach to hobbies and how the hobbyist gets what they need out of them.
Caitlin understandably identifies the hobbies of men as golf, fishing and tinkering about in the shed whilst enjoying a crafty fag and desperately trying to remember where you hid the twelve year-old Glenmorangie. She quite rightly points out that these are all hobbies where we are, when it comes down to it, not really doing anything. In fact we’re doing nothing. We’re not being productive, we’re not advancing either ourselves specifically or mankind in general. We are merely pleasuring ourselves in a variety of different, yet surprisingly enjoyable, ways. She applauds the male for using leisure time as we choose, and for being able to do a big, fat nothing.
Having been an angler for a large part of my early life (and some of the latter – ed.) I fully get that fishing is a prime example. Fishing, or angling as we prefer, naturally attracts the ‘dour’ of society who have discovered they can sit by the secluded riverbank on a tiny, supremely uncomfortable chair for eight hours for an almighty sulk, without anyone telling us to ‘snap-out-of-it and stop behaving like a selfish child!’. Indeed, the only question ventured during the pastime of ‘caught anything?’ invariably allows the already dangerously depressed angler to legitimately become even more sulky and dour as they contemplate further their clearly evident failure!
Similarly, golf. Caitlin’s no fan of golf and points out that it’s the most fuss possible over going for a walk. Golfers are, by nature, lazy people, very lazy people, who know they have to go for a walk every once in a while ‘for their health’, but who’ll only do so if there’s a special single-gender members’ club they can go to, with forelock-tugging underlings who carry their stuff around whilst taking the blame for their rubbish round, and zoom around in go-kart-like kiddie-vehicles wearing shockingly bad-taste trousers that no-one tells them off for, before retiring to the 19th and putting the world to rights through the bottom of a glass. What’s not to love?
Now, compare these largely unproductive and often expensively extravagant Mars hobbies with those of Venus – knitting, baking, cooking, embroidery, gardening and pottery – and you’ll note they’re in stark contrast. The do-nothing, self-centred of the male are replaced by real-life tasks which build things, impact those around and genuinely benefit those who undertake them. While we morosely sit by a canal all day or spank the cash on a semi-stupored stroll in shocking slacks, women are busy making clothes, food and crockery or growing marrows in the mud.
Ms Moran stoically admits that women can’t just do nothing. It makes them twitchy and uncomfortable. If Venus took-up the hobby of drowning worms, she’d be peeling potatoes on the bank, answering emails and redesigning the sombre landscape. If they starting slicing a small white pimpled ball, they’d listen to a self-help podcast en-route, perform a perfectly-executed backward-facing-dog in the bunker and carry their own clubs around in a pushchair. Caitlin’s right and she’s on the money: until women learn to do nothing they’re going to remain cast with the provider’s lot. Watch out, gentlemen, that’s the next wave of feminism. Do nothing.
