Ann, not only does that photo give this straight girl a tingly feeling inside, two of my lesbian friends have just given up women in favor of some hot, potbellied contractor love. Mmmm, twirl that tool belt over your head, baby!

Oh, stop it! We all know that the NY Times sits on the far left and would neeever print anything like this!

This is the type of situation one encounters only when Honey Wilder or the Times is involved.

Actually, the sheer numbers may make this plausible. If 99.9% of the households don't have this problem, a contractor seeing a couple hundred locations per year will still have this happen to him a couple times a decade. There's probably no way to get anything more than anecdotal evidence either way, of course, but there was a 1994 study that showed around a 3% infidelity rate in marriages per year, not counting the behaviour of the single/divorced. I suspect this gives a large enough pool.

More interesting, I thought, was the contractor who noted that there are some in his profession who dress and act in such a way to take maximum advantage if the situation arises, and that he makes a point not to hire them.

Also, I'd like to express my disapproval at the practice of insulting people's desireability (and especially personality!) on the strength of a photograph. I suspect it's generally held to be a bad thing here when done to women, and it should go both ways.

Oh Zeddy darlin', why don't you take another look; it's a pic accompanied by the caption, "Ronald Brannan, a contractor in Southern California, has been impressed by the power of his job to attract women." It's all about CONTEXT, and in this case I have absolutely no problem with "insulting his desirability." In fact, I plan to do it right now by rinsing my eyes with lye.

I see so many beautiful, non-arrogant boys in my neighborhood every day, so why can't I laugh at this pompous ass?

... because it's very unlikely he wrote the caption? Note that the person in that picture is one that reportedly had a client come on to him, and although he was flattered, he declined. The caption doesn't match the story, at least not for what is generally implied by "impressed" when used that way.

But the details aside, I disapprove also because it's the same level of discourse as, "... but the fat bitch probably couldn't get a man anyway." Even if you assume, for the sake of argument, that he's the conversational equivalent of a moldy fish, do you really want to be legitimizing personal attacks based on appearance? Or the notion of desirability based on appearance alone? I'd suggest that women will come out worse from that exchange than men will, at the moment.

I may be a little old fashioned, but I also don't believe that gratuitous personal attacks have much place in a discussion, regardless.

You know, as someone who has a craniofacial anomaly, I don't like this sort of thing either--but men do it to women all the time with impunity, so I find it hard to get too worked up when the tables are turned.

The real story is the non-story that is the article: No particularly compelling evidence, no particular study, just a "Hey, people might read this..." sensibility.

And the story within the non-story is jealous husbands who are convinced that their wives are sleeping with contractors, who will see this story and find their suspicions validated when they probably shouldn't be.

A few weeks back, I did a list of ten classic literary works prosecuted under obscenity statutes. What most of them had in common: A married woman has an affair with a man who is or should be socially beneath her.

The old archetypes are usually the most universal, and therefore the juiciest.

Cheers,

TH

"beneath" should be in scare quotes.

Cheers,

TH

I have to agree with Zed, It's simply childish to start insulting that man because you don't like the article.

TH, You know two wrongs don't make a right ?

I also think your well the men started it argument is kind of childish.

Methinks that referring to someone, instituting a paragraph break, and then calling them childish is...

...a bit immature. (I'm doing it intentionally for some delightful emphasis)

I agree that making a point of the attractiveness of the gentleman is unnecessary and problematic. The article itself is mockable enough.

On the other hand, I don't believe that the idea is "men do it all the time, so we can too." Based on the fact that this gentleman presumably volunteered to be interviewed and photographed, one has to wonder about his personality. Everyone (male, female, and all shades in-between) makes hundreds of snap judgments a day based on appearance. Its a tad disingenuous to pretend that it won't occur. That doesn’t mean, though, that there aren’t better ways of looking at the article.

The interesting thing is, it always seems that those who attack feminists who make any mention of the desirability of a man in any context (and its fair to point out here that desirability is a focus of this article) by screaming Hypocrite! rarely show any concern with the implications of the men who judge female writers/politicians/professors/etc by there looks, even when how they look is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. It is almost implied that the person who claims that something is bad, engages in it rarely and in more appropriate contexts is worse than those who consistently engage in the behavior without remorse or concern for its place. It seems to me to be a way to shift the focus is a rather insidious manner. Does hypocrisy suck? Yes. But isn’t calling this sort of behavior out as hypocrisy just a way of deflecting focus from more problematic behavior…I think so, sadly. Its all very “na, na, na, na, na…You told me not to fight the bully, but then you got into a slightly different situation and fought the bully, so me fighting the bully is OK, but you can’t ‘cause you said it wasn’t OK…I’m so totally the moral victor here and don’t have to critically evaluate any of my actions because you made one seemingly hypocritical judgment once.�

That said, there are more interesting ways of looking at the article, class being the more interesting one from my perspective. The lure of the “lower-class man� is a common theme in sexual scare tales. (I’d speak to this more, but…eh, I should be working)

Honestly, this is just another in the seemingly never-ending series of NYT “pop culture myths that may very occasionally occur as news of the “next big thing.�

Methinks that referring to someone, instituting a paragraph break, and then calling them childish is...

...a bit immature. (I'm doing it intentionally for some delightful emphasis)

Oh the irony.

What's saddest to me about this article is how easily they just assume all sorts of outdated stereotypes about men and women:

"The client has finally found that ideal — the heterosexual man who will go shopping with her."

“He was a contractor — he was used to hysterical women calling in the middle of the day, and holding hands with neurotic women.�

"You know, as someone who has a craniofacial anomaly, I don't like this sort of thing either--but men do it to women all the time with impunity, so I find it hard to get too worked up when the tables are turned."

I agree completely, you ugly deformed freak.

You no what, zed, you are right. I shouldn't have insulted the contractor based on the picture. We all have our double standards and you helped point out one of mine. If someone had questioned a woman's desirability based on a photo of her midsection, I would have been pissed. Shame on me.