Friday, April 13, 2007

On the Attraction of Wit (or Worse)

I think that this won't rise to the level of rant. It is more like a musing. The question for contemplation is why men love bitchy women. Last night, I heard the (possibly apocryphal?) story of how one of my professors met his wife: he was teaching a class in a room immediately after she taught a class in it. Her classes always ran over and one day he was fed up and evidently let her know he was. She gave it right back.

Does this contradict the idea of machismo? Do men secretly long to be bossed around? Intuitively, I would think that men would like a quiet, flexible woman. But does that mean that a woman has no personality? Perhaps this just all falls in the category of "the way of a man with a maid," which even Solomon never hoped to understand.

1 comment:

John C. Hathaway said...

At my parents' first meeting, my dad's band was playing at a party, and my mom was trying to sleep. She came downstairs, and said, "It's 2 in the morning! Would you please shut up?"
Sheldon Vanauken theorized that the NT advises "wives be submissive to your husbands" precisely because it is penitential for both parties. Most men really want to take it easy at home, and let the woman take charge.