EXASPERATING WOMEN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 114, 16 May 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

EXASPERATING WOMEN

ETERNAL ELIRTS. There is one aspect of every wo man's character ou which only her female friends are reliable authorities, and that is the side of her which annoys men. remarks an overseas writer. I he differences between the average male and female minds are so many and so fundamental that almost any woman can irritate almost any man ou some point or other, given the opportunity. Unfortunately for the 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 lii.s nerves but those of the majority of men she meets, so that she has little chance 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 value 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 interest.

To the really practical woman all art and all science are means to an eud; 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 of manifestly serviceable things like wireless. However forbearing she is in her attitude toward what she considers the childish unpracticality of the male mind, with its preoccupation with theories, it is exasperating in private life for any mar with bobbies of a non productive kind to know that she feels he would be much better employed in doing something that gave visible 1 results.

Second in unpopularity with most men who have complained to me is the over-developed maternal instinct which urges some women to “mother” every male they meet, irrespective of the age 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.

He is urged, wheedled positively implored “for my sake” or because “I’m sure you don’t look after yourself properly ” to cat twice as much as he 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 bit. Just to please me!”

And a«y interesting topic he starts discussing is sure to be broken into with admonishments about his smoking too much, working too hard, not. having an overcoat on cool days, or having too much or not enough exercise, and so

then there is the woman who never for one moment forgets she is a woman, and a charming one at that, when she is talking to men. In consequence they cannot forget it either. Her conversa tion abounds in “We women—” and “You men—” and, as an irritated man once said of someone of this type “You can’t talk of cricket or books or tie future of civil aviation with he,- for two minutes without her somehow belt g arch about it.”

No normal man objects to paving tributes to a pretty woman's fascinaeim at intervals, but if all his dea mg with her is to consist of nothing else, ho is likely to get surfeited with cha-ni. Almost as annoying to men a- overarchness, apparently is the habit of taking courtesy privileges for granted, into which some women fall. Men are so accustomed to our unpunctuality, for instance, that the majority of them will accept quite preposterous excuses for our lateness. But the woman who imply docs not bother to vouchsafe a reason for turn ing up at an appointment twenty minutes after the time arranged is going to find herself unpleasantly short in invitations sooner or later. Certainly the high-handed, queenly manner does not pax with men, but nor does its exact opposite, the too self-ef-tacing attitude, “What do you think about so-and-so, George?” Only about two per cent, of men are smug enough h°r,r b n P > by having their opinions borrowed whole by their womenfolk, and that two per cent, simply isn’t worth pleasing.