LA DONNA E UN ANIMALE STRAVAGANTE: In praise of straightforward women. They're the smart men's choice

«The current climate of feelings and emotions being the most important ingredient in a fully-lived life has been a gift to these blowhards. ‘It’s better than bottling it up!’ we’re repeatedly told – excuse me, the Kray twins? Those men who contribute to the fact that two women are killed every week in the UK by their partners or ex-partners are certainly showing their feelings; a bit more bottling it up – especially from men – wouldn’t go amiss. Where one finds sensitive men one often finds petulance – and if there’s a worse non-violent character flaw in a man, I can’t think of it. (I could easily excuse a man who wasn’t faithful – if you want loyalty, get a dog – but never a petulant one.) 

(...)  If a man is creative, he’s more likely to have a Magic Mirror anyway; I’m sure Ian McEwan peers into the looking-glass and sees Harry Styles, judging from his pronouncement at an anti-Brexit conference when he was 68 years young: ‘A gang of angry old men, irritable even in victory, are shaping the future of the country against the inclinations of its youth. By 2019 the country could be in a receptive mood: 2.5 million over-18-year-olds, freshly franchised and mostly Remainers; 1.5 million oldsters, mostly Brexiters, freshly in their graves.’ But once he’s heard ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’ he’ll be convinced that he’s forever young, even when his teeth in a mug by the bed are the first sight to greet him each morning.

Occasionally, volatile men can be Cry-Bullies, the term I invented in this magazine in 2015: ‘A hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper’ – extremely applicable to that king of the superannuated Bad Boys Johnny Depp. How much more attractive is the man who doesn’t sit around feeling sorry for himself! (...)

And if that’s not enough, the traditional man often makes a better feminist than his arty brothers; think of the athlete Daley Thompson and the ex-cop Harry Miller allying with women to protect our rights compared with those snivelling little actors turning on J.K. Rowling. With Zara often ‘up early and riding out with her horses’ says a source, Mike happily attends to their children. ‘I was always comfortable just lifting and shifting,’ he says of the manual work he did between leaving school and becoming a professional sportsman.

I’ve been married to three writers, so I obviously haven’t practised what I’m preaching. Thankfully, my third husband, though certainly not a broken-nosed rugby player, is (for a writer) more straightforward than most men I’ve known – and being hardly straightforward myself, it would be somewhat hypocritical of me to expect a Magic Mike-alike. But I would advise young women that if they have a choice between a straightforward man and a pound-shop Heathcliff, take the former. Because as you get older, the stormy rows which ended in wild make-up sex will turn to low-level bickering ending with the kettle being put on as, inevitably, such pairings become less Burton and Taylor – and more Hinge and Bracket. »

«In praise of straightforward men», Julie Burchill, a smart woman