Growing up in an age of political correctness I’ve always felt conflicted about gender roles, and specifically how I was expected to engage with women. A large degree of my life has been spent suppressing my overtly masculine tendencies for fear of offending women or making them uncomfortable.
Like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (excuse the reference – I’m not that much like him!) I’ve always been rather coy about openly admiring a women’s physicality in some fake chivalrous attempt that I’d be appreciated for ‘not being like all the others’. And I’m not sure when, but somewhere down the line I learnt to equate any form of appreciation for a woman’s physical beauty to disrespect of her other qualities.
Somewhere down the line I learnt to equate appreciation for a woman’s physical beauty to disrespect of her other qualities.
Perhaps women too experience this conflict between physical admiration and respect. I think of that great movie, The Life of David Gale, starring our not too great friend, Kevin Spacey, and his scene with long-time friend and colleague, Constance Hallaway (played by Laura Linney). She’s a professor who’s spent her life trying to be taken seriously as an academic. Cancer stricken, she mourns the fact that, ‘you work so hard not to be seen as a sex object. Before long, you’re not seen at all’. Constance has had only a handful of sexual partners and, now facing death, the realisation of her sacrifice dawns upon her. Needless to say, Kevin Spacey ‘sees her,’ and is of course on hand to help lift this incredible burden.
For women who work hard not to be seen as sex objects, is there a point of no return where they are not seen at all?
It’s a confusing time. I’m ashamed to admit it, but the very first CD I ever brought was No Scrubs by TLC. I grew up on Destiny’s Child telling me that within me lay a trifling-ass negro who can and will be replaced if and when necessary. Pair this with the fact of me being raised by a single mother, who in my eyes never relied on anyone, and what you have is a feeling of not being needed in all of the ways that the external culture told me I would be. In effect, that a woman didn’t need me to pay her bills, didn’t need me to lean upon, didn’t need me to offer direction or guidance.
Yet whilst this narrative played out, there was another sat right by its side. I’m still told by friends today that what they really find attractive is an alpha male. That despite being independent they want and need a man to be dominating, to take charge, be protective, and to be the breadwinner even.
I think of a friend of mine who went on a date and was disgusted by the fact that the man had asked her permission to kiss her. Permission! A complete and utter turn off she described it as. Take hold of me (she actually used the word grab) and kiss me like a man! And whilst I appreciate her sentiment, I could’t help but think that, in our current climate, such behaviour might catch a man a case.
She was turned off by him asking permission to kiss her. She thought, ‘take hold and kiss me like a man!‘
So how to tread this finicky terrain?
I don’t really have the answer. It goes without saying that different women want different things and that the job of a man interested is to find out exactly what that is. And as cliché as it may come across, as men we all are on a journey in deciphering the difference between how women have been represented and their individual, personal needs. Understanding the ideas and expectations put on us and then trying to unravel them to decide what kind of a man you want to be is in deed the challenge for us all.
Margins Page
Margins Page is a play on its very words. Stories of black people in Britain, both past and present, have often been relegated to the margins of the British canon. This platform attempts to reconfigure this position, serving as a page to help develop, curate and promote black British literature.
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