Jilly on modern men: a beard doesn’t make up for constant crying
WHAT is the mark of modern men? Beards and constant crying, according to Jilly Cooper.
The queen of the bonkbuster said she had observed many social changes since she began writing during the Sixties.
“Have you noticed men cry all the time now? The whole time. Always crying. And they have beards,” Cooper said during an appearance at the Hay Festival.
“I think it’s very cyclical. In the Victorian age, people were obsessed with death and had beards. Go back to Shakespeare – Mark Antony, poor soul, his eyes are red with weeping and he says: ‘If you have tears to shed, prepare to shed them now.’ So I think everything goes round and round in a circle, don’t you?”
Men these days were also partial to homosexual affairs, said Cooper, 81.
“I have an adorable gay friend … he’s just started going internet dating and he said it’s extraordinary, all married men wanting to have gay affairs.
“How odd. Do you think men are so terrified of women now it’s safer to get off with your own sex?”
Political correctness was taking its toll on flirting, she added. “A lovely man came round the other day and said ‘I can’t flirt any more.’ It’s so sad.”
In her early job on a newspaper, Cooper shared column space with Germaine Greer.
She was asked by an audience member if she was a fan of Greer, who caused controversy at Hay earlier this week with her claim that rape was often no more than “bad sex”.
“I think she’s brilliant but are the words ‘applause junkie’ terribly rude?” Cooper said tactfully. “I don’t want to be rude about her.
“But I think she has got to the stage now where she will say something outrageous just to get everybody going.”