Men, p.11
Men, page 11
Sex appeal
The trouble with male sex appeal is that they give generously.
Misogyny
Misogynists make you rethink Darwin. They disprove the theory of evolution – they’re evolving into apes.
Change
If a man ever tells you he can change, say, ‘Hey, what’s that noise? . . . Oh, it’s the sound of millions of women laughing themselves to death.’
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A woman thinks, OK, her man has a few flaws but with time she can change him . . . Men know that the only time they’ve ever been changed by a woman was out of their nappies as a baby.
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Men changing? It won’t ever happen. It’s as likely as the washing-machine repair man turning up at the right time on the appointed day.
Ego
Calling men selfish is like calling a dwarf short.
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The average man’s ego is not just BIG. We’re talking Visible from Outer Space. It’ll be there on the satellite photos, along with the Great Wall of China and the Barrier bloody Reef.
Fidelity
Most men think monogamy is something you make dining-room tables out of.
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Unless crossed, the female of the species tends towards fidelity and constancy. There are a few species where the male stays faithful until he dies, mostly as a result of being eaten by his partner after mating.
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The only way most wives could ever have sex with a man other than her husband is to have a fantasy . . . Fantasize that she’s someone else. Cameron Diaz, say, or Angelina Jolie.
Feelings
How can a man explain his feelings when he doesn’t know he has them?
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When it comes to emotions, men have a carp-like attention span. It’s a kind of empathy amnesia. The only good thing is you can make cracks in front of men about how inadequate they are, because they’re not listening anyway.
Communication
Like airbags in a car, sensitivity in a man is an optional extra.
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Women spend more time thinking about what men are thinking about than men spend thinking.
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Maybe your husband doesn’t have the best emotional responses, compared to other men, or even certain species of plankton. But he’s not alone. Most husbands are inattentive. You could leave them at the beginning of the football season and they wouldn’t notice till the end.
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For women, wordplay is foreplay. How else is Woody Allen still getting laid? Women love a little punnilingus.
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You’re better off engaging in a heated argument with your pillow over whether or not you’re having a supportive relationship.
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The only interest the average man has in ‘personal growth’ is his morning erection.
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If your husband says there’s nothing to talk about, tell him that yes there is. Your impending divorce.
Midlife crisis
A few years into the marriage and his mind starts wandering – a shame, as it really is too small to be allowed out on its own.
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When friends ask, ‘Where is your husband?’ reply, ‘Attending the birth of his next wife, probably.’
Pets
The reason I hate animals is because I went out with so many as a teenager.
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Don’t consider getting a pet until your husband has learned to come to heel when called.
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I have accidentally discovered a home-grown solution to getting rid of laughter lines. Have a male partner who collects snakes and, believe me, you will never laugh, smile or vaguely relax ever, ever again. Especially when the mouse he buys to feed it escapes. The pregnant mouse. Nothing like roaming your own home with a net and a tranquillizer dart to take the joy out of life.
Hypochondria
‘Hypochondria’ is Greek for ‘man’. If a man denies this, then hypochondria is the only disease he doesn’t have. Men just can’t leave being well enough alone. ‘So you really think I’m a hypochondriac?’ he’ll ask in a worried voice. He’ll then get hypochondriacal about being a hypochondriac. His ailments will soon be killing you! One measly headache and it’s a swelling brainstem, one pee too often and it’s prostate cancer . . . You’ll start to forget what he looks like without a thermometer wedged between his teeth.
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A man’s wedding vows should be ‘In sickness and in sickness, I now pronounce you . . .’
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Women get colds, headaches, the blues . . . Men with exactly the same symptoms get the flu, a migraine and a midlife crisis. Women on the other hand are psychological hypochondriacs. We take our emotional temperature all day. Am I happy? Could I be happier? Is he really the right man for me?
Ask these questions too often and it will be time you took the temperature of your relationship with a rectal thermometer.
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Nobody ever said marriage was going to be easy. In sickness and in health and all that . . . and believe me, if you marry into allergies like I did, there’s always going to be a little something wrong.
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Simply tell him they’ve finally found a cure for hypochondria – death.
Sport
Men can play golf all day and tell you that it’s business. Why can’t women do the same thing with clothes buying? ‘I’ll be dress shopping for eight hours with the girls. I don’t want to go but, you know, it’s for the business.’
Sport is nothing more than housework avoidance. The football season and the cricket last for months. Why can’t women have a shoe-shopping season? ‘It’s shoe-shopping season, dear. I’ll see you in February.’
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Don’t let him talk you into competing in a marathon. A ‘fun run’ is a contradiction in terms.
Cricket
I have had marriages that have lasted less time than a test match. It’s Wagner – with wickets. The sport version of tantric sex – but the only thing which gets sticky is the wicket.
Toilet training
If men are so superior at spatial awareness why do they always pee on the bathroom floor? (Try painting a bullseye in the loo bowl.)
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Men think that sitting on the toilet is a leisure activity.
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In a woman’s equivalent ‘leisure’ time she will wrap the schoolbooks in plastic, write the Christmas cards, paste holiday snaps into photo albums, pack the dishwasher, unpack the dishwasher, alphabetize the condiments cupboard, make the kids’ lunches, press the kids’ uniforms, shine the kids’ school shoes, sort out the money for the school excursions, finish the kids’ homework (which involves reading all of Ulysses in Greek), take the dog for a walk because nobody else will, get masochistically waxed for her man, hand-bake the Swedish muesli because one of the kids has gone vegetarian, ring her mother-in-law to let her know how much her son loves her, attempt to master coq au vin for a dinner party for her husband’s clients at short notice, finish off her own work from the office, catch the lost guinea pig which had vanished behind the bookshelf and spend half an hour looking for her man – who is still on the loo.
Camping
One of life’s great mysteries is why people are divided into those who like the outdoors and those who like the indoors, and why they invariably end up married to each other.
Women are not that bonkers about the great bloody outdoors with all its multi-footed insects. We only like getting bitten all over by eligible blokes . . . But unfortunately the best place to find eligible blokes is in the great bloody outdoors. While a woman’s natural habitat is an art gallery or concert hall, she’ll invariably fall for the type of man who likes to toss a tent casually into his back pocket and disappear, at a jog, up Everest for a week or two.
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While he enthuses about sleeping rough, living off the land, reading by candlelight and eating by the fireside . . . you’ll feel he’s just described fleeing the Taliban over the mountains of Afghanistan.
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The trouble with camping is that life is not like Winnie the Pooh. Real animals don’t want to befriend you; they want to eat you, instantly.
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Men love to sleep under the stars. But ‘sleep’ is too optimistic a word. It’s impossible to get any rest. Mainly because some insect is always blinking its 9,000,624,439,002 eyes at you in the dark.
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Most men want to get back to nature. Most women want to get back at nature or to the nearest luxury hotel suite.
Beauty versus brains
Why do men prefer beauty to brains? Because they see better than they think.
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Women suffer from facial prejudice. We get judged on our looks in a way that men don’t.
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Up against a sex goddess, principles and profundity are about as useful as a eunuch at a whipped-cream orgy.
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Opera’s the only place in the world where the fat chick gets laid.
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Any girl can be alluring – all you have to do is stand still and look brain-dead.
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A man can be so ugly it’s a wonder he isn’t in a bottle somewhere in a science lab, yet he feels free to judge a woman on her looks. Is there anything quite so annoying as having your physical shortcomings criticized by a man who should be imprisoned for persistent chest hair exposure? A man who is so Olympic Games ugly, you’ve seen better heads on a beer? Imagine if we judged men the same way – ‘Sorry. No pecs, no sex.’
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Cosmetic surgeons stand for whatever the general public will fall for. So don’t give in to male ‘shapists’. Just remember that . . .
Botox is what Saddam Hussein used to kill Kurds. You’ll have a body more preserved than Lenin’s. Why should women avoid all lines except Cunard?
Child-bearing lips To achieve the look of having a giant vagina sutured to your face, you simply take the fat out of your bottom and inject it into your lips, so you’re literally talking out of your arse. (It explains a lot about Hollywood.)
Liposuction Having your bottom sliced off to please a man gives a new definition to ‘lobotomy’.
What will you do with all the fat sucked out? Maybe you could have it sculpted into a statuette? Maybe that explains the Blob? It’s escaped liposuctioned fat, running free.
Facelifts Women only get a new face in the hope that a man will sit on it.
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Beauty is a case of mind over matter – if you don’t mind, it don’t matter.
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Spas are not so much about getting in touch with your inner you as getting in touch with your outer bank manager. Why bother buying the products and having the treatments? You might as well just record the sound of a cash register opening and closing. If the facially prejudiced man in your life tries to tell you that it’s not so expensive, say, ‘Yeah, you’re right. No more expensive than, say, maintaining a space programme.’
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There’s only one way to get rid of unsightly fat. Divorce your couch potato husband.
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Or get older friends. John Mortimer, my best friend, died at eighty-five. He thought I was a nymphette. He called himself my toyboy . . . although he added that it would take him three weeks to get a ‘soft-on’.
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Despite all that frantic hair-dyeing, the very best thing about us is grey: the substance between our ears. That is the only unique part of our bodies.
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If a bloke is rude about your wrinkles or weight, tell him that they’ve found a cure for baldness. You know – hair.
Bald men
Men worry about baldness much more than we do. If he’s all angst-ridden, reassure him that he’s not balding, he’s just gaining more face.
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If he’s challenged at a follicular level, tell him that the men with acres of unkempt foliage on their craniums are much worse. Like Russell Brand. That’s not hair. It’s a lawn. That hair could have garden gnomes in it.
Fashion
Mutton How often have you met a man whose aftershave is set to Stun, his trousers so tight (‘grape-smugglers’) that you can detect his religion? All this negativity about mutton dressed as lamb, what about mutton dressed as ram?
Advice How to let a man know, subtly, that he has no fashion sense? Try , ‘Well, it’s a look. For a wino, maybe.’ Or ‘The only people who’ll follow you in those clothes are store detectives.’
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If your husband has really bad fashion sense but won’t change, just seat him next to Germans. The best thing about Germans is that they’ll be even more badly dressed than he is.
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Men think it’s logical to dress badly so that a woman will want nothing more than to get him out of those annoying clothes. ‘You know what would look good on me?’ a man is thinking. You.
Money belts
Wearing a bulging money belt at groin level is the male version of the Wonderbra. He’s compensating for physical inadequacies.
Testicles
Too tight jeans mean his testicles have applied for a transfer.
Grooming
Life is so unfair. While we’re toning and tanning and tweezing, all a man requires of his skin is that it grows hair and, when shaved, stops bleeding before he gets to the office.
Body hair
I have been out with men who are so hairy they require nostril mousse. What’s foreplay for men like this? Combing bugs out of his back hair? He’s not a man. He’s a yeti. And yet he expects you to undergo a torturous Brazilian wax.
I like a bikini line in which you could stalk stags. Just convince him that he might discover the legendary lost temple of the Xingothuan tribe down there, or maybe a couple of Big Brother contestants who don’t yet know the series is over. That will really excite him. While perhaps it’s best not to have nipple hair you could weave into macramé hanging baskets, or a bikini line which could be gainfully trained up the side of a house – body hair is natural.
I like my pubic hair. It’s like having a little pet in my pants. It’s amazing my pudenda haven’t been awarded National Park status. If I did take to my pubes with a pair of scissors, I’d be shouting ‘Timber!’ But then your vulva just looks ragged. Soon the general effect is of a moulting shag rug. Frantic, you keep on trimming and shaping until your spiky groin resembles a sea creature disturbed in a rock pool and preparing to attack. It gives ‘bad hair day’ a whole new meaning. Your pubic hairs could now shred a man, like Parmesan on a cheese grater. Your pudenda look like AstroTurf. You could play mini-golf down there. I never thought I’d be saying this but Bring Back Bush!
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The reason blondes have more fun is because brunettes are too busy waxing, shaving, lasering and Nair hair removing for some man. But any woman who’s wrestled with a DIY bikini-wax kit will never be quite the woman she once was.
Men and breasts
A male obsession with big breasts is possibly because he was bottle-fed as a baby. If your breasts are small, you try not to fret – but find yourself ordering a D cup of coffee at the café.
But if they’re too big, men drool and slobber all over your boobs, as though they’ve forgotten you’re there. Just say to him, ‘Hey! Excuse me. When the three of you are through . . . lemme know, OK?’
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But don’t join the jut-set. Silicone breasts are like TV evangelists. You know they’re fake but you can’t stop looking at them. Jordan’s boobs are so huge it would be more appropriate to say that her chest has had a Jordan implant. Pamela Anderson’s breasts could be mistaken for a breakaway republic. And yet some men are more excited by breast implants than by the births of their babies. He’ll take out an ad – ‘I would like to announce the birth of a new chest. Mother and boobies doing well.’
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£4,300 is the average cost of implants. What the hell are they made of? Caviar?
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If you succumb to implants to please some man, the embarrassing thing is everybody knows they’re fake. What can you say? ‘These are not my real breasts. I’m just breaking them in for a friend.’
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I once witnessed a breast implant operation. It was like an airline passenger trying to shove an inappropriate object into an overhead baggage compartment.
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If a big-breasted woman draws attention to herself by announcing that she’s saving up for a breast reduction, just reply, sweetly, ‘Why? Isn’t two the normal number?’
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Never get breast surgery to please some bloke. A Wonderbra will do. (So called because when you take it off, you wonder where the hell your tits went.) Or just find a man who understands that more than a mouthful is a waste.
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The good thing about small breasts is that people can always read the entire message on your T-shirts and you never have to wonder why you got the job.
Faults
Women have many faults. Men have only two. Everything they say, and everything they do.
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If any man says he hasn’t any faults, point out that that is a fault, actually – thinking you don’t have any. A man who admits he’s flawed is pretty much perfect in our eyes.
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Because . . . do you know what women really want? A man who is perfect enough to understand why we’re not.
Happy hunting.
Kathy Lette, Men
