Saturday, February 10th, 2007
Coy Boy
The dumb blonde now has a male counterpart. We’ve been done in.
In the beginning, there were the dumb blonde jokes.
After centuries of subjugation, fed up with being the butt of male chauvinism, womankind struck back with one swift stroke: Why are blonde jokes mostly one-liners? So men can understand them.
Maybe men didn’t get it. Maybe we didn’t see it coming. But as we slobbered and leered at successive generations of blondes from Marilyn Monroe to Paris Hilton, women stole a march over us, entered the workforce, zoomed up the ladder, placed themselves in positions of influence (look at how many editors, broadcasters, creative directors are women) and proceeded to create the male equivalent of the dumb blonde.
Behold, the coy boy.
You’ve seen him in ads. Four girls are driving down the road to a beach. Coy boy stands by the roadside, wearing floral shorts and a daft expression. The girls stop to say they want a “hottie to help them get naughty.†Does he know any man who will help them rub suntan? Boy scratches his head and tells them to check at the beach café.
It’s straight out of a dumb blonde joke, except that the tables have turned and the joke is on us.
In another ad, this one for a matrimonial portal, a woman actually barks orders such as “sit†and “fetch†to a rather helpless looking, pliant husband. No prizes for guessing who plays the dog and who plays the, er, bitch.
If the first ad portrays men as mere sex objects, the second reduces them to household objects. Remember the old bromide about why brides wear white? All household appliances come in white. Well, just so you know, the guy in the matrimonial ad was wearing white. As for the girl, suffice to say she was wearing the pants.
It’s not just in the portrayal. There seems to be a full-blown conspiracy to reduce men to the space formerly occupied by simpering bimbettes. This whole metrosexual gig could well be one elaborate ploy manufactured by women to get us to wear pink shirts, shave our chests, colour our hair, get elaborate facials and generally do all the preening, pouting stuff that was formerly the preserve of ladies who lunch.
Witness the commercial where a guy breaks into a girls’ hostel. He’s not doing the guy thing and stealing a neck with one of the chicks. No, honey. He’s doing the coy boy thing and stealing, hold your breath, FAIRNESS CREAM.
Hang on, it gets better. The commercial goes on to say there really is no need to use women’s fairness cream because men now have their own fairness cream.
Commercial ends with coy boy striking a pose with three chicks squealing hi handsome. The only change from tradition is that it is the guy who is standing there fluttering eyelashes. And hey, don’t miss the mascara.
We only have ourselves to blame. For centuries, we treated women like doormats. Then, like in some cheap horror flick, the doormat decided to get a life but revenge was top of the agenda. They couched it in the guise of equality but, willy nilly, the old inequality has been replaced by the new inequality.
Maybe some day, things will even out and job jars will be equal, both sexes will take turns at changing baby’s nappies, doing the dishes, getting the groceries and watering the kitchen garden. But for now, till the glass ceiling is shattered beyond redemption, Demi Moore will seduce Michael Douglas in Disclosure and Priyanka Chopra will do likewise with Akshay Kumar in Aitraaz.
If the eighties were about Bachchan refusing to acknowledge Rekha Ganesan, the new millennium is about Ash, who coincidentally plays the Umrao Jaan du jour and does not admit to seeing Bachchan Junior. For that matter, she never admitted to seeing Vivek Oberoi either (regardless of how he spelt his name).
One of the year’s highlights was Tom Cruise v/s gravity, not in MI3 but on Oprah’s couch. Never mind that he’s the world’s biggest movie star and she’s the TV host with a now-on, now-off weight problem. The fact is, she played him and he merely and willingly played the fool.
If the world’s greatest movie star could do it, King Khan was not far behind. After seven decades of getting women to shed their clothes, Lux roped in a man to mark its 75th anniversary. There he was, all smooth chest and smoother talk, his modesty covered by a few rose petals while four women spanning two generations sit fully draped on the rim of the tub and dunk him.
The message is not loud but it is abundantly clear, gentlemen. Men are rapidly sinking. For now, women are clearly on top.
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This piece appeared in Men’s Health (February 2007)