EXASPERATING WOMEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20851, 18 April 1931, Page 6 (Supplement)

EXASPERATING WOMEN.

ETERNAL FLIRTS. There is one aspect of every woman's Character on which only her femalo friends are reliable authorities, and that is the side of her which annoys men, rejnarks an overseas writer. The differences between the average male and female minds are so many and 80 fundamental that almost any woman can irritate almost any man on some point pr other, given the opportunity. Unfortunately for tho woman, the man is generally too courteous to let her know .what particular mannerism, pose or habit of hers is liable to fray not only his nerves but those''/of tho majority of men sbo meets, so that she has little charice to avoid making the same mistake in future. He is usually too loyal, too, to discuss the matter with other men. Undoubtedly the inability to take an interest in anything which has no practical lvalue comes first in the list of complaints.

There is a certain type of woman who instinctively asks, " What's it good for ?" ?' What will it do ?" about things in ;which men take a purely intellectual in-

Jerest. < To the /really practical woman all art and all science are means to an end; in the case of art "the end is the adornment of her house,, and with science it is the combating of diseases from which she or her children might suffer, or else the discovery pf manifestly serviceable things like wireless.

However forbearing she is in her attitude toward what she considers the childish unpra&ticality of the male mind, with its preoccupation with theories, it is exasperating in private life for any man with hobbies of a non-productive kind to know that she feels ha would be much better employed in doing something that gave visible results. Second in unpopularity with most men ,who have complained to me is the overdeveloped maternal instinct which urges some women to " mother" every male they meet, irrespective of the ago or the inclination of the victims of their irrepressible protective -feelings. Such women do their " mothering with an infuriating air of " Men are all just over-grown schoolboys to me, that s all!" and for a bachelor meals in their houses are always an ordeal. Ho is , urged, wheedled positively implored " for my sake " or because " I'm sure you don't look after yourself ptoperly " to eat twice as much as ho wants, and far more than is good for him.

A refusal to do so is greeted with wails of " Oh, but I had this made specially for you! Try just a little tiny bit. Just to please ®ie!" And any interesting topic ho starts discussing is suro to bo broken into with admonishments about his smoking too much, working too hard, not haying an overcoat on" cool days, or having too much or not enougli exercise, and so on. Then there is tho woman who never for ono/moment forgets slio is a woman, and a charming one at that, when she is talking to men. In consequence they cannot forget it either. Her conversation abounds in " We women—" and " You niGn —" and, as an irritated man onco said of someone of this type, "You cant talk of cricket or books or the future of civil aviation with her for two minutes without her somehow being arch about it." No normal man objects to paying tributes' to a pretty woman's fascination at intervals, but if all his dealing with licr is to consist of nothing else, ho is likely to got surfeited with charm. Almost as annoying to men as overarchness, apparently, is tho habit of taking courtesy privileges for granted, into which sorno women fall. Men aro so accustomed to our unpunctuahty, for instance, that tho majority of them will accept quite preposterous excuses for our lateness. . , But tho woman who simply does not bother to vouchsafe a reason for turning up at an appointment twenty minutes after the. time arranged is going to unci herself unpleasantly short in invitations sooner or later. , Certainly tho high-handed, queenly manner does not pay with men, but nor rloes it? exact opposite, tho too self-cffac-W attitude, " What do you think about so-and-so, George?" Only about two per cent, of men arc smug enough- to be pleased by having their opinions borrowed whole by their womenfolk, and that two per cent, simply isn't worth pleasing.