How to ‘empower’ your man in the home
As Miranda Kerr ‘slips into her feminine’, Bill Linnane has some more tips on how to best please your man
Miranda Kerr knows a thing or two about marriage. This is partly because the 34-year-old model has been married twice, firstly to Orlando Bloom and now to the world’s youngest billionaire, Evan Spiegel, head honcho of Snapchat. In an interview with Net-a-Porter’s online magazine,
The Edit, Kerr described Spiegel, who is seven years her junior, as “a 50-year-old man in a young body”, which makes him not that dissimilar to so many of the 50-year-old men on Snapchat pretending to be 15.
But it was Kerr’s discussion of her approach to marriage that raised the most eyebrows: “At work, I’m like, ‘We need to do this!’ and ‘This needs to happen’. But at home, I slip into my feminine and empower Evan to be in his masculine.”
Asked to explain exactly what this pearl of wisdom actually meant, she elaborated: “Just be more in my feelings. More gentle, leaning back. It’s a nice balance. My Grandma taught me that men are visual and you need to make a little effort. So when (Evan) comes home, I make sure to have a nice dress on and the candles lit. We make time to have a nice dinner together.”
Finally, our day has come — Kerr is leading the charge for masculinists everywhere, letting the ladies know that even a Victoria’s Secret model has to put a little effort in to make our fragile egos feel validated. So without further ado, here are some other ways to “lean back” rather than “lean in”.
1. Would it be too much to ask for a pipe and slippers? Clearly feminism has gone too far and balance needs to be restored in households around the world, but rather than revert to the old ways, we need to modernise: instead of pipe and slippers, why not bring him his e-cig and Toms when he comes home in the evening? A nice relaxing puff of unregulated mystery gas should help him unwind, whilst the flimsy canvas and porous soles of the Toms will make him feel like he is relaxing in a hammock on a Pacific island, as opposed to trapped in negative equity in Roscommon.
2. Come on girls, have a wash: you’ve been trapped in the house with several deranged children all day, racing through endless cycles of laundry and ironing, and are starting to understand why Irish housewives used to consume half of the world’s supply of Buckfast. At the end of the day, you sound and look like Jodie Foster in the film Nell
(right), in which she had been living in isolation in a ditch for her entire life.
No man wants to come home to that, especially not a billionaire who presumably has to sift through his site’s online traffic of billions of nudes. No, you need to achieve a supermodel’s level of perfection — despite having zero time in which to do this in — or we are done. You know we once shifted a third-round qualifier for the Rose of Tralee and we are fairly sure she is still waiting for us out there somewhere, so please try to fix yourself up a bit, or at least stop crying. 3. Men need to feel all powerful, as they are afflicted with critically fragile masculinity. When he slumps in the door from his important job in the call centre after being shouted at by strangers, the last thing he needs is you attempting to talk to him about how you think one of the kids might have ADHD and you think you might be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. A respectful silence, punctured only by the sound of dutiful shuffling and bowing, as though he were Genghis Khan, is all he wants to hear when he comes home. 4. Fetch him a beverage: thanks to the EU/troika/Opus Dei, we aren’t allowed to drive around the place half cut, so offering him a refreshing alcoholic beverage is a thing of the past. However, you can go for a healthier option — after all, you want him to live for a long time, as without him you are nothing. Why not clear some time in your day to rustle up some kombucha, even if it’s just so he can quip that the gelatinous lump of bacteria known as ‘The Mother’ is much like your mother, in many ways.
5. Laugh at his terrible jokes: it’s important that men are laughed with, not at, so whenever you suspect he is trying to be funny, even if it is after you have discovered he remortgaged the house to buy a sports car, you will need to giggle like a schoolgirl. So titter flirtatiously while the debt collectors are kicking down the door to take away your washing machine, the only help you ever got around the house, and possibly your only friend.
Even on their wedding day, Kerr reportedly went so far as to roast a chicken for the groom, as it is his favourite dish
6. Make him feel smart: ask him about the many important decisions he made in the workplace, like which roll to have from the lunch trolley or which highlighter he used most during the day. Also try to ask him about things he likes to think you don’t understand, like the GAA, personal finance or George Hook.
7. Teach your kids to admire him: you need to work hard to counteract the corrosive effects of Peppa Pig and her constant ridiculing of Daddy Pig. Daddies generally are not shown the respect they deserve, whether jumping into muddy puddles or making a mess of dinner. Teach your kids to call their father ‘sir’ and to never speak to him unless they are spoken to by him first. This distance should ensure they will grow up to be respectful members of society... or possibly gang members.
8. Aim low: if you do manage to get out of the house and have some sort of career, just make sure you don’t earn more than your spouse. This will be easily achieved as your workplace will most likely be overflowing with equally insecure men who also seem to think they deserve a higher wage than you.
9. BMS or Be More Stepford: Miranda Kerr dons a nice dress and lights candles for her man in the evening, despite this being a clear fire hazard and the fact that, as a 27-year-old tech billionaire, Spiegel probably just wants to take hits on a bong while playing Overwatch. Even on their wedding day, Kerr was striving to be the perfect wife, going so far as to reportedly roast a chicken for the groom as it is his favourite dish. Somehow the image of Kerr in her haute couture wedding gown checking a mini rotisserie oven is the most depressing part of this whole thing.
10. Disregard all of the above: what works for Kerr and Spiegel works for them. Her comments weren’t some call to arms for women everywhere to give up on this whole suffrage malarkey and get back to tanning hides in a cave while himself goes to hunt a woolly mammoth in Copperface Jacks — she was just talking about how her relationship works, and given they are still in the first six months of their marriage, she is allowed to over-egg the cake a little. Let’s see if she is still roasting chickens by candlelight in a negligee in 10 years’ time — perhaps then we can check back with her and see if she has any actual advice on how marriage works.