REAL MEN? REAL WOMEN?

by Melodie Johnson Howe

Leigh’s last two columns got me thinking. When I was learning to write it never occurred to me that it would be difficult to write about men. At least not more difficult that it was to write about women. Jane Austin or Flaubert didn’t have a problem writing about the opposite sex. They observed, listened, and tried to capture both sexes on paper. After all, that is what writers do. We’re voyeurs staring in through the window at the party, or the lovemaking, or the fight, or the murder.

It is said that Fitzgerald was better at writing women than Hemingway. But it’s Hemingway’s women that stay in my mind. He wrote about women the way he saw them. Not the way he was supposed to see them. In The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, the big game hunter Wilson ponders the female species:

“They are, he thought, the hardest in the world; the hardest, the cruelest, the most predatory and the most attractive and their men have softened or gone to pieces nervously as they have hardened. Or is it that they pick men they can handle? They can’t know that much at the age they marry, he thought. He was grateful that he had gone through his education on American women before now because this was a very attractive one.”

As a young college student I was appalled when I read that passage, especially the “predatory’ line. How could he call women that? American women! But when I finished the story I understood why. That’s a good writer. And to this day that passage has stayed with me. It is a dark reminder about women and men.

I have just finished reading a mystery by a very well-known male author. The women in the novel, good or evil, were okay. Nothing leapt out to offend me like that “predatory” line, but nothing leapt out to delight me. The female characters just weren’t that interesting. But they were by today standards — “real.”

A male author’s “real woman” is: she has sex when she wants. She can hold her own with a man, but still be vulnerable when necessary. She can usually shoot a gun, practice karate, and run to keep in shape. She rarely dresses up. Usually tank tops, jeans etc. She is smart and independent.

A female author’s “real woman” is: she has sex when she wants. She can hold her own with a man, but still be vulnerable when necessary. She can usually shoot a gun, practice karate, and run to keep in shape. She rarely dresses up. Usually tank tops, jeans etc. She is smart and independent. She worries about her weight, her mother or child and she talks more than her male counterpart.

Yes I generalize. We all have our favorite writers who rise far above the generic. But I find most do not.

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I am going to speak immodestly so stop reading if conceit offends you. I was a beautiful young woman. And what I learned being beautiful is that many men were afraid of me. They didn’t want the attention I brought. One man told me that he couldn’t go out with me again because he wanted to punch out the other guys who were ogling me. His problem? Of course. But an interesting one. Did that make him a Neanderthal? Today it would. But he was in his own way letting me know how intimidated he was by being with me.

Leigh wrote about the good looking guy bedding all the beauties and then marrying, quit happily, the plain Jane. I loved that story. It has a bitter sweet truth to it. I also like what Leigh said about a woman for every man. Men like women whether they’re fat, thin, blonde, gray, tall or short. Men like women. Men need women. They may need them more than women need men. And in all honesty having been there and done that, I think men desire everyday normal average women more than they desire the great beauties.

I also discovered that men can be confused by beauty when it’s combined with intellect or a sharp wit. What did my husband say, “Brutal brain?” Most men would greet me by staring at my body then slowly arrive at my face. By the time they got to my face they were geared up to respond to me in a certain way. When I got them in conversation they had to readjust. They had to think. Here’s a big secret: men do not adjust easily. Quite a few have excused themselves and walked away from me rather than adjust. Maybe they only wanted to hit on me, and not banter. Sexism? Fear? Loathing? Who knows? But it’s great stuff to explore. It’s not generic.

I long to be offended as I was in Hemingway’s short story. I long to be delighted. As writers we need to be more daring with our male and female characters. Maybe as daring as those writers who wrote in pre-feminist times.

1. This illustration was my idea, and not Melodie’s. When I add an illustration to a contributor’s article, I usually ask the contributor if he or she approves, and if not, I remove it. Melodie was a justifiably concerned that this old movie poster might make her look silly, and might be interpreted as being self-serving, but then said, “Oh, what the hell, use it. It makes my point in an odd way,” which I think is dead on target. But if it violates good taste, the blame is mine. —JLW [↩]