Gender Battlefield
Like many men of my generation, I am confused by my gender.
After the ‘new man’ of the eighties and the ‘rise of new laddism’ of the nineties, men my age have fallen between two stools. We’re too old (and in my case heavily built) for all this ‘metrosexual’ business (H&M T-Shirts won’t go over my shoulders) and too young to carry our children in a papoose.
I’ve always been confused as to what women want me to be. In this confused age, I grew up trying to cover all bases: I write poetry, I cook and have a good palate for wine yet I’m a big rugby fan and think weightlifting is an artform.
Thus, I consider my gender to be a battlefield. In the age old ‘light vs. dark’ dialectic, my male and female sides have taken potshots at each other for as long as I can remember.
My feminine side took the upper hand a while back - I had a special limited edition rugby world cup pint glass (I had to drink seemingly several hundred cans of heineken to get it). It had the image of a rugby ball sandblasted onto the inside. I considered it to be a thing of wonder and beauty. One day to my chagrin, considering the effort that it took to acquire it, it was smashed into tiny pieces by a tin of water chestnuts diving out of the cupboard onto it.
The demise of the item was unavenged for several years whilst I developed an interest in opera, until this week, when in retaliatory action, a set of black Adidas boxing wraps snuck into my white washing and absolutely totalled a brand new fitted work shirt that cost me $140 dollars, that I’d worn once.
