Signs that men are (nearly) the new women Here’s what they need to complete the package
Soon, men will think it perfectly normal to spend the price of a tank of petrol on candles
Let’s talk about gender pronouns. No. Let’s not. Let’s talk instead about how men are turning into women. For example, it now appears that, contrary to what we’d assumed, men are more emotionally impacted by divorce. (At least, that’s what a new Lancaster University study is saying.)
Meanwhile, Rosamund Pike has alerted us to the unusually high quota of male nudity in her forthcoming TV fantasy, The Wheel of Time, and the effect it had on the actors who started frantically dieting, working out and generally behaving like paranoid body-conscious actresses. They’re catching up fast. So what’s next?
Men: if you’re interested, here is what you need to complete the package and become just like women.
• Feel responsible for everyone’s happiness and feeding the dog. It’s not that you always have to feed the dog, but if the dog doesn’t get fed, you will blame yourself.
• Be fixated with your hair thickness. (Just kidding. Men caught up with that circa Elton John).
• Experience, in rotation, kitchen envy. Location envy. Children envy. Garden envy. Juggling envy. Just-groomedenough envy. Effortless style envy. Bathroom envy. Multitasking envy. And round again.
• Regret not having got your legs out more while you had them and not having taken full advantage of your clothing rights before they became restricted. (Men are getting there: they sometimes miss the days of roaming freely with their tops off.)
• Wonder if your strong opinion about #wallpapergate was voiced a little too strongly for Johnny, who is only 15. (This is on the hell will freeze over first list.)
• Ask shop assistants their opinion on things they could not possibly know, such as “Will I like this sofa when I get it home?”
• Think it perfectly normal to spend the price of a tank of petrol on candles.
• Get up in exercise wear when you have no intention of exercising.
• Ask strangers in the street where they bought their clothes (see hell will freeze over).
• Feel guilty for not making a birthday cake.
• Be subliminally aware of the calories in everything. (Most men have caught up on this, although they still don’t get that vegetables can be carbs.)
• Start thinking about Christmas no later than November 1. These will snowball into intrusive festive thoughts, sometimes at 3am.
• Really mind when you overcook the expensive bit of beef. All you had to do was take it out three minutes earlier! And now the Whole Evening Is Ruined. (Currently men are still safely in the “What Does It Matter?” space. They once took a dim view of unsolicited stirring of their risotto, but that’s as far as it ever got.)
• Get yourself in a parking squeeze and have to ask a passerby to direct you out of it or, possibly, even to get into the driving seat and take charge of the situation, because that’s how tight it is.
• Lie awake late at night worrying about things like where your green earring has got to. (This may be the step too far, on account of the male compartmentalisation technique which allows them to discard medium- and low-level worries and only deal with what’s at the top of the in-tray. You can say to a man in the middle of a medium-level worry situation, such as the youngest being homeless, “I think I may have a solution”, and as likely as not he will say: “To what?”)
• Ring (and text with pictures) five friends, one after the other, to canvas their opinions on whether you should buy the rug. (Men don’t ask their friends’ advice on any subject apart from what their nearest station is; also, they do not have five friends’ phone numbers.)
• Keep a mental note of which friends bothered to ring you when the dog died, or similar. (Likewise alien to men. They have zero expectations of friends, refuse to judge them, and are always pleasantly surprised when they turn up.)
That should keep the men busy.