Sexism from men? Sorry, but us women like to ogle, too
OH I SAY. Boris Becker is in trouble for something he said at Wimbledon. Not for the technical gravitas he brings to his tennis commentary, but for remarking on the appearance of a woman spectator, whom he found attractive.
Be fair! After all, Boris wasn’t bundling the poor girl into a broom cupboard in his traditional game, set and love match manoeuvre, no strings attached, baby.
Baron Van Slam was just passing the time, thinking aloud, no harm meant — but now angry maidens claim he was committing a Sexist Crime of the most heinous Sort.
The pundit had spotted player Marton Fucsovics’ partner in the stands as the hungarian ace took on defending champ Novak Djokovic on Centre Court.
As comely Anett Boszormenyi flashed up on the screen, Becker remarked: ‘They do say they have the most beautiful women in hungary. I wouldn’t know that, but she’s certainly very pretty.’
his fellow pundit John Inverdale offered a gag. ‘That’s quite a good name for the partner of a tennis player, it’s always good to have a partner called Anett,’ he joked. To be honest I thought that was quite funny, but not as funny as if Anett started going out a bloke called Rod and they opened a fishing tackle shop.
HOWEVER, as tennis gags go, it was almost up there with wondering why love means nothing to top players and at what time Sean Connery used to go to bed during the Wimbledon tournament —about ten-ish, apparently.
Yes, I know, stop it. I can certainly see the problem with Boris and John panting on like two randy uncles at a wedding, ranking the bridesmaids over that third glass of port.
Take a cold shower, grandpas! Behave your bad selves. Perhaps it would have been more circumspect if they had not mentioned Anett at all, but let us not be hypocrites here. For we are all, are we not, keenly interested in attractive members of the human race — even if just for innocent observational and perusal purposes? I could study Angelina Jolie’s icy beauty for hours. Daniel Craig as James Bond, ditto.
For more than 50 years my mother has always said admiringly ‘look at the legs on that dame’ if any woman with shapely lower limbs appears on television. And by shapely I mean closer to a plank of wood than a tree trunk, which counts as enviable and well-formed among the women in our family. The thing is, the human race is hot-wired to notice the hotties, on red alert for the Beautiful People in our midst. We think about them, we comment upon them, we register their appearance either in an internal monologue or, like poor Boris, during an unguarded public moment. It can happen to anyone.
Over the past ten years or so, every time Roger Federer has appeared on our office television screens during Wimbledon, someone screams loudly and excitedly about his utter gorgeousness and that someone is often me, but usually it is my Mail colleague Andrew Pierce.
Yet isn’t it possible to genuinely appreciate and admire Roger’s supreme tennis skills, his technical ability, his longevity, his unruffled temperament, his grit, his determination and the distilled beauty of his perfect forehand while at the same time valuing the flawless shape of his engrossing calves or his lovely, cappuccino perma-tan?
Cherishing one is not necessarily detrimental to the other. That is my theory, made without even a whisper of condescension or a murmur of unconscious sexism. For while much is written about the male gaze and not all of it complimentary, we have to admit there is a female gaze, too. One that is equally keen and searching as it sweeps the fields of life, forever sorting the weeds from the prize blooms, the wheat heat from the chap chaff.
Yesterday morning I was outraged by columnist Janice Turner writing in the Times newspaper that the Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen was ‘the most beautiful man in the world’. She’s got a point but in a certain light, his older brother Lars, also an actor, is even cuter.
I have written before about the French television series Spiral, in which lawyer Pierre Clément (Grégory Fitoussi) is easily the most handsome man ever to prosecute a crime. If Pierre walked into any crowded room anywhere in the world, wearing his swirling lawyer’s cape and with his briefs in his hand, I suspect that every woman present — and quite a few men — would either fall silent or fall into a Victorian swoon and have to be revived by tincture of mugwort and a spell in a sanatorium.
No one could fail to notice Pierre’s outrageous suavity, especially if he were sporting his usual noble but troubled expression, one that suggests he is going to mete out harsh justice to every miscreant in Paris, or die in the attempt.
WHERE was I? Of course, Inverdale was previously slammed for saying French tennis star Marion Bartoli was not a ‘looker’ and would ‘never be a [Maria] Sharapova’. Terribly clumsily expressed but it seemed clear that he was alluding to sponsorship, marketability and earning prowess ability, rather than anything else.
A fair if brutal point. Yet to make even the most innocent comment about the appearance of others is now a complete social minefield, leaving one open to all sorts of accusations about intent, significance and consequence. And the rules seem to be harsher for men than they are for women, which is the real sexist crime here.
I don’t think Boris Becker is going to win the medal of honour from the International Para-Feminist Society any time soon, but I am willing to give the old dog a pardon on this dodgy compliment to random babe in the crowd, if you are, too.
New balls, please!