Wedding jokes

One thing that I really dislike – and yet come across again and again when I attend weddings – are caricatures of husbands as emasculated, brainless, imprisoned slaves.  You’ve probably heard the jokes.  They usually proceed along the lines of the husband learning to tell the wife she is right, he was wrong, references to the wife’s dominance in all decisions, or portrayals of men who have been cowed, beaten and eviscerated by their wives.  The fact that most people find these things funny usually proves that they are not funny at all, but contain some measure of a haunting truth.

What have we done to women and men to provoke such mean (for women) and pathetic (for men) pictures of their relationships?  For surely women must feel ashamed at and abused by such jokes; at descriptions of callous, cold, calculating and selfish women.  

This does not mean men should attempt to roughly establish themselves over their wife.  Ever.  Rather, I ask, why do we represent marriage as a struggle of wills in the first place?  I don’t mean to be overly  idealistic about marriage, but we certainly concede important ground if at its very beginning we plant the seeds of conflict, selfishness and manipulation in a relationship that is designed to be marked by helpfulness, appreciation, forgiveness and clear communication. 

So please, if you happen to be giving a wedding speech, please go for honesty of feeling, not some cheap joke that you’ve googled up.

Filed under: experiences, observations, responsibility , masculinity, wedding jokes, bad taste, emasculation, marriage

He wasn’t fat

Tragically, a 26 year old man, Lee Marriage, died within a couple of hundred metres of finishing last Sunday’s City2Surf fun-run.  He suffered a heart attack, and the medical staff couldn’t revive him.  Ever on the ball, the newspaper staff have had a geezer at his facebook page, where people have been writing tributes.  Someone who saw it commented (not clear whether in an interview or on Facebook): “He seemed fit, he wasn’t rippling with muscles but he had a slim build – he wasn’t fat.”

O Facebook, source of newspaper stories great and small!  Just before the Olympics, the Tele ran a frontpage story on a couple of our Olympic athletes who had updated their Facebook relationship status.

Are we so ignorant in our consciousness of health, so fixated upon obesity, that this becomes the sole indicator of whether or not we can complete a 14km run and be in tip-top shape?  (Are your muscles rippling?)   Are we so myopic in the face of the vast amounts of information about the world around us, that Facebook is the rule for what is newsworthy?  Can you dumb it down for me, just a little lower, pretty please?

It’s tragic that he died.  It scares me (does it scare you?).  I’m 27, I like to run.  I’ve done the City2Surf.  People in family have high-blood pressure, are obese.  I am not making light of his death.  Nor do I mean to have a go at whoever made those comments.  But, in the interest of public awareness, I’m sure journalists and editors can do a little better, have a little more judgement and responsibility, than Facebook and “he wasn’t fat”.

Filed under: Australia, death, food culture, madness, media, observations, personal, random thoughts, responsibility , City2Surf, death, dumbing it down, facebook, obesity, rant

More questions on responsibility

To whom, and for what, am I responsible? And do these conditions hold, regardless of whether I acknowledge them?  What is the difference between being unaware of such a responsibility, and being aware yet denying their veracity? How does one learn such a responsibility, in order to accept or to deny it, in the first instance?

I am not sure that philosophy can answer these questions.  Perhaps it can be shown, but not expressed…

Filed under: Philosophy, random thoughts, responsibility