Husband Gets Brownie Points for Being A... Husband.
It is really not that incredulous when you give it some thought. Our headlines are proof. No kidding. If you were to gently decimate some of them, you'd be left with this: Our men metamorphose into 'newsworthy' partners on exhibiting qualities that are required for reasonable coexistence.
Something is rotting and the stench is bad.
Moreover, these headlines are the ones that claim to be delivering the ‘news’ to you, as and when it breaks. If you look closely, you might just spot the crown bestowed upon the man , engraved in fine print, right below the headlines.
Remember when we lost our bazookas because Mahendra Singh Dhoni fixed Sakshi Dhoni's, his wife's, sandal straps? Or when Justin Hartley helped Chrishell Staus, his wife, with her gown at the Oscar's? The chest palpitations that followed - with tragic diligence to our times - were like a conch shell that could be heard far and wide.
No one should get brownie points for what’s already expected of them. But...
When Fawad Khan fixed his wife's hair, a while back, before the cameras, all he..aven broke loose. I am sorry, were we expecting another oh-so-cute man to fix her strands? I mean, he totally can, but that's a different story altogether.
It is time to rethink our news. Take it by the scruff of its neck and allow it to gulp down a healthy dose of self-reflexivity.
You see, when the bar is already set low, most men don’t have to bend over backwards.
One of Jane Austen's most celebrated characters, Mr Darcy, considered to be the ultimate sex bomb (even today!) was quite the asshat, at the beginning. Yes, he remedied his ways with a few good deeds and cutesy behaviour, but that does not negate the fact that he was a proud snob, belittling Elizabeth Bennet, despite being attracted to her.
One, among many, bars set. (And this was the 19th century.)
In KJo's Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Shah Rukh's character gets lauded till date, by most enthusiasts, as the "exceptional dad" who is a single parent, straddling both work and home. Yes, he is a caring father and all of that, but let's change the plot: Shah Rukh's character is done away with and Rani Mukherjee's isn't. She is now the single mother raising Anjali. Would we heroize her or would we feel oh-so-sorry for her? You know, because there is no man around to help her out?
Anyway, so the treat-them-mean-keep-them-keen card, wielded by men for ages, is now a trump card for smart men, carried by the winds of change. And I get it. They don't have to try hard. The groundwork's set.
Simple gestures of politeness, amicability, and kindness leave women floored. Because we haven’t encountered it enough to consider it the norm. That sucks, right?
Why should anyone have to glorify qualities in a person, man or woman, that should serve as basic groundwork?
Let's take some more examples: Holding the door open for someone, cooking a meal at home, turning up for your kid's PTA meeting, not vaporising into thin air without prior notice, and other such indicators of peaceful co-existence- they're massive rarities, and sadly, a LOT of praise is expected when a man is doing something that he was anyway supposed to do.
Imagine waking up tomorrow morning and expecting to be lauded, or, even worse, getting lauded for brushing your teeth, or ticking things off something as routine as a grocery list.
Woop de do. No cookies for you.
But, of course, the real problem is this: How do we stop aggrandising basic niceties, on a man's part, without discouraging him to keep doing what he is doing, and more?
Less trumpets, more matter-of-fact words of acknowledgment?
We'll have to figure that out on a case-by-case basis, I guess. Each story is different, so the degree of corrective measures will naturally not be the same.
But, please, trophies aside!
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