In a Word... Suffragette
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?'
[
The Making of Mollie review: Anna Carey's book is now a razor-sharp suffragette stage comedy
Opens in new window
]
'
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.
inaword@irishtimes.com
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