Sometimes, reality satirises itself. I would like to share the following advertisement for Bronco toilet paper (“It’s a healthy sign when there’s a Bronco in the house”) that appeared in the Women’s Weekly issue of September 12 1959:
“To the men in your life … some things are very important. Men liked being looked after … and loathe being fussed. They like being masterful … and leave everything to you. That’s what makes them such a responsibility. Men will never discuss a question such as toilet tissue … yet they expect you to know exactly how they feel about it. All they want really is a firm, clean-handling toilet tissue they can use with confidence.”
After continuing in the same vein for a little more, the advert concludes: “So, next time you buy toilet tissue, consider the men in your life.”
Being confronted with a culture in which providing the best in bogroll for hubby dear was represented as the ultimate mission in life for a successful woman, makes it easier to understand, and even sympathise to a degree, with the feminist revolution. Notwithstanding the movement’s later lurid excesses, a regimen so demeaning and patronising simply had to be overthrown.
As a student at Rhodes, I once even took part in a feminist demonstration, the occasion being, as I recall, the ceremonial crowning of the next Rag Queen. My lady friend, and future wife as it turned out, was at that time quite a hard-core feminist — of the Andrea Dworkin variety. This explained my unlikely presence amongst the stridently yelling band of protestors, holding a placard reading “Women are not cattle!!” and feeling like a complete doos.
This protest turned out to be the memorable occasion when Anthony Collins, something of an iconic figure amongst certain elements of the Grahamstown counter-culture, decided to detonate a teargas canister in the crowded hall. He was carried out headfirst, followed by a stream of angry fugitives, coughing and cursing. One tried to rip my placard from my bewildered hands.
Without approving of Anthony’s gesture, I cannot help admiring the way he broke through the apathy, conformity and sheer timidity of student life to actually do something. Somehow, he managed to evade outright expulsion for his dastardly deed, but the Rhodes Women’s Movement was more or less defunct after that.
Viewing several new action television series, amongst them Lost and Dollhouse, makes me wonder if the pendulum has swung too far the other way from the days of Bronco toilet paper. Specifically, it really jars to see diminutive women routinely knocking out much larger men with a single crisp punch, as if this is perfectly normal. We know damn well that this is not how things work in real life. One doesn’t have to hanker after the era of popular entertainment when men did all the fighting on-screen while women stood by and wrung their hands to object to such contrived pandering to feminist sensitivities. We should be able to be shown the obvious reality that men are physically stronger than women, even if this has nothing to do with who buys the family toilet tissue.
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