The Waiting Game
Men. I have to feel sorry for them. Not all the time, just when I spot them loitering in department stores with that glazed expression they reserve for shopping.That’s the problem, of course, they’re not actually shopping. They’re waiting. You’d want to have a heart of stone not to collapse laughing – whoops, I mean not to be stirred by pity – at the sheepish way they skulk around.If shops had any initiative they’d provide waiting zones for men. Stock them with sofas, reading material, video games and – if they really wanted to be magnanimous – locate them near the lingerie department. They could charge for admission, as with a crèche, and operate at a profit.
But there is nowhere to park men on shopping expeditions. Sometimes they try perching, if there’s a convenient ledge, but it invariably ends in disaster with demolished displays. Cue more shamefaced lurking.
The retail trade used to refer to male customers as wallet-bearers, emphasising their secondary role. Now it’s their opinion that’s required as well as their credit card.
But it can’t be any old viewpoint tossed off willy-nilly. They have to pretend they’ve squeezed their brain cells until they pop over why one pair of shoes is marginally superior to the other. Repeating ‘no, your ankles don’t look fat in those’ ad infinitum simply won’t do. They have to trot out something more convincing: ‘The Manolos are so Kate Moss with that ankle strap but the Jimmy Choo peep-toes lend you leg length.’
Otherwise they’ll be punished. Indeed, I have a theory that women bring men shopping with them as a control mechanism. We cunningly present it as a bonding exercise but it’s fundamentally about power.
My friend Tara’s boyfriend sloped off to a stag weekend instead of whisking her out to dinner for her birthday. ‘You must have been furious,’ I commiserated.
‘Not at all,’ she chirruped. ‘I made Peter drive me to one of those designer outlet parks in the middle of nowhere the following Saturday. It was fabulous, we spent all day there and he couldn’t say a word.’
Tara may have found it fabulous, but I’m certain Peter was wondering if the stag weekend was worth the trade-off.
Men have a touchingly simplistic view of shopping: they buy a pair of trousers if they (a) need them and (b) fit them. Half the shops on Grafton Street would be forced out of business if women applied those rules.
Before David Beckham lost his ideal husband status - although that present of pink diamonds takes him a fair way towards reclaiming it - one of his most alluring attributes was that he went shopping with Victoria. With a smile, as opposed to a haunted air.
I noticed a father and son in Arnotts the other day, each with an identical hangdog demeanour. Death Row inmates could have looked no more dejected. Meanwhile the mother and daughter in their party were bouncing in and out of changing rooms, elated.
You see, men can’t just buy satisfied women with a blank cheque for retail therapy any more - they have to witness it being spent too.
