Fall Potpourri—Reporting on the Sexes

When my husband was home recuperating from his second knee surgery, I was mostly housebound. I took the time to dig through the piles of magazines that are one of the sources for my blogs. Herewith a Fall potpourri. These are always fun to do, but this one has a special twist. I’ve collected several tidbits about men and others about women. They make for interesting comparisons.

Our first two snippets have to do with the effect of certain colors on each sex. Time carried an ad in November 2017 with the headline: “Famous Volcano Has Strange Effect on Women.” That immediately brought to mind the movie scene where the blonde bombshell is being sacrificed to King Kong, which turned out to be a step up from earlier movies, where she would have been thrown into a volcano.

The ad’s subhead quickly brought me back to reality. “Man and nature collaborate to create a glamorous green ring guaranteed to rock her world.” The stone is Helenite, formed from the Mount St. Helen eruption. The ad doesn’t explain exactly what the “strange effect” is, but they’re touting that “once you slide this gorgeous green beauty on your finger, it will take a force of nature to get you two apart!” We think they meant “her finger,” not your own finger. Then again, they are claiming it has a strange effect.

The other color story (in the same mag, same month) was titled: “Why America isn’t as pink as it used to be.” A 1979 study determined that a bright pink color (think Pepto-Bismol) weakened men when they looked at the sickly color. Some commanding officers at a U.S. Naval Correctional Center used the color in holding cells and it reduced violence in the prison. As might be expected, soon after there was a pink wave in prisons, public housing, and buses. Also in visiting football teams’ locker rooms, because, well… boys will be boys.

Going backward a few months to August 28, 2017, but staying with Time magazine, we were informed that more men are using condoms (33.7% vs. 29.5% over a decade long period). No explanation was given, unless you consider the very next tidbit under “This Just In.” American women are drinking more alcohol. Data collected across about the same decade showed that alcohol-use disorder went up almost 84% for women vs. 35% for men. We don’t exactly know how these two factoids are connected; we just know that they are. Ditto for this third piece of information from the same issue: baseball player Aaron Judge’s shoe size is 17. Again, we have no idea how this connects to condoms and women drinking more, but use your imagination. You know what they say about big feet.

In other random (and more recent) news, five women on an inflatable unicorn float were stranded in the weeds on a Minnesota lake. Seriously. A unicorn float? Talk about inflated expectations. And a Frenchwoman visiting her mother in British Columbia spent 14 days in a U.S. detention center. She had jogged across the U.S.-Canada border accidentally. Saying it was accidental was a given. No one crosses that border in that direction on purpose anymore.

And lest you think only women do stupid things: Time 8/27/18 reported that Paris now has outdoor urinals, because, as an activist at Femme Solidaires put it: “Men cannot control themselves… so all of society has to adapt.” And speaking of lack of control, there’s a $75 burger available at the Arizona Cardinals’ stadium. It weighs 7 pounds. Its toppings: 5 beef patties, an equal number of hot dogs and bratwursts, 20 cheese slices, 8 bacon slices, 8 chicken tenders and a pile of French fries. Lord, we hope it’s only men eating that.

Men should also not get smug over that jogger’s directional confusion. For the first time in 22 years, an Italian runner won the Venice marathon last Fall. The reason? A motorcycle guide led the frontrunners in the wrong direction for several hundred meters. No one asked for directions. They just followed along like lemmings. Men!

Our final two gems are not really surprising. We spend more on our mothers than we do on our fathers. According to several retail sources, in 2017 $23.6 billion was spent on Mother’s Day, with about 113 million cards sent, versus $15.5 billion spent on Father’s Day and 72 million cards sent. Either way, it’s billions and millions. That’s either a lot of love, or a lot of guilt.

Lastly, we found the dream job for every crazy cat lady: the caretaker for the 55 felines that live on the Greek island of Syros. It comes with great views of the Aegean Sea and an enormous pooper scooper. And no, yours truly did not apply for it.

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