When it comes to old-fashioned courtship, I think many of us women are complete hopeless romantics. As far as we are concerned, the old-fashioned gentlemanly way is how we should be treated.
Flights of fancy and old-fashioned whimsy are very fashionable right now, just look at the darling Paloma Faith, the beautiful retro clothes shop Vivian of Holloway and sites like diaryofavintagegirl.com, where forties enthusiast Fleur de Guerre very beautifully waxes lyrical about the fashions of a bygone age.
This obsession isn't just about the beauty of the clothes - although that does have a lot to do with it - this is about romance. This is about the idea that a man asked you out to dinner and treated you with respect, who took your coat and paid for the meal and you wouldn't have to feel awkward while he did. (As I always do anyway as I have a thing about penniless creative types and usually earn more than the bloke.) This is about a perfect kiss at your front door and a man taking off his hat in respect towards you and giving you his coat at the end of the night in case you might be cold. This is about men behaving like a gentleman who is trying to win your affections rather than thinking they will shag you on a first date and then forget you.
That's how men behaved back then wasn't it? Beautiful stories like The Notebook, old movies like An Affair to Remember, old re-runs of Goodnight Sweetheart and the story of how my grandpa courted my grandma when they were young (he proposed several times and she initially only agreed out of pity for him, but gradually he won her over and by the time they were married she was madly in love. Awww.) have made me believe that in contrast men of modern times are rubbish when it comes to romance.
It is said so often, that modern men wouldn't know chivalry if it bit them in the arse. So many articles claim that thanks to feminism and female emancipation modern men are nothing more than frightened little boys ruled by battered egos, hence why they cheat, why they lie, why they treat us with disrespect. Because some women are just too fabulous and some men just can't live up to us. Cheryl Tweedy and Ashley Cole being a case in point...
Mad Men has shown me to reject such rose-tinted notions of the past. As far as Mad Men is concerned, it's not that romance is dead. It was never really there to begin with.
Some men have always been complete pricks no matter what age they come from. For example, Don and Betty Draper's marriage from Mad Men fills me with untold despair.
Don courted Betty by sending her the coat he saw her admiring but couldn't afford. So far, so romantic and chivalrous. But after a couple of years of marriage and a couple of kids he cheats on her regularly, despite her being the spit of Grace Kelly, he is also mentally and physically abusive to her.
And the poor woman is stuck, stuck in her gilted cage of a house with no escape. Even when she attempts to make a career by taking some modeling jobs Don sabotages it for her. And this man is meant to be our dashing hero despite the fact that he treats his wife like shit. (But it's because he's so complicated and tortured, yep, that old chestnut. And so it seems, that just as I have thought about many modern men, Don Draper needs to man the hell up.)
And he's far from the only one. Peter Campbell cheats on his new wife with secretary Peggy, Roger Sterling is completely open about using prostitutes and having affairs behind the back of his wife of many years. They muck women around, treat them with disdain and disrespect quite openly in their little boys club.
Compared to the men of the 50's and 60's advertising agencies modern men are rather wonderful creatures. Do you know why? Because they are forced to take responsibility for their actions. Women are no longer afraid to hold their men to account. Women can walk away from a serial philanderer, she can divorce without shame, it is they who should now feel ashamed. While she can have her own career and know she will survive.
So men might not wear a fabulous trilby anymore (a loss I do lament) and there will always be something quite lovely about a man offering me his arm or giving me his coat if it's cold (that's just good manners!) but I think I might cut the modern man a break. In comparison, he really ain't so bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment