As a married man, I learned very quickly that there is a double standard for pretty much everything. Men and women are different, and therefore they obey different rules. For instance, it’s OK for wives to talk about how “hot” an actor is, where husbands don’t really have that option. If a man and a woman are standing in line to check out at the grocery store, and a woman sees a magazine cover with an actor she thinks is attractive, she will—without fear of reprisal—walk over, grab the magazine, flip to the photos of the actor, and then ask her husband, “Don’t you think George Clooney looks great in that suit?” Men will just stand there, sigh, and nod, “Yeah, he’s a real stud, Honey.”
Women do this stuff every day and don’t think anything of it. A man could never act this way. Could you imagine? A man and woman are standing in line to check out, a man sees an issue of People magazine and Britney Spears is on the cover. He knocks his wife out of the way to pick up the magazine, flips to the pages of Britney, and then leans over to his wife and says, “Britney looks good since she lost the weight, right? Look, she’s wearing bikinis again. Check out that body!” If a man did that, his wife would probably take the magazine out of his hands, roll the pages into a sharp point, and then gouge his eyes out right there next to the gum rack and the conveyer belt. Guys can’t say stuff like that. But women can. The whole system is quite unbalanced.
Regardless of balance—or even if it’s fair—wives love to say things like, “Oh my God, Justin Timberlake is so cute. I love it when he’s on Saturday Night Live!” Husbands just accept it. Then we poor schmucks sit on the couch next to our wives and tune in on Saturday night while our spouses drool all over JT and tell us how funny he is. If I was stupid enough to give my wife the identical medicine and say, “You know, I think Mila Kunis is smoking hot. I’ll watch reruns of That ’70s Show no matter when they come on,” I will never get to see that show again. In fact, I’ll be sleeping outside. The last thing I will hear before the door to the backyard slams is, “Have Mila Kunis make you breakfast in the morning!”
Obviously, the rules for women and men are totally different. Women can get away with things men could never do. Every time I point this out to my wife—when she behaves in a manner that she absolutely wouldn’t accept from me—she simply replies, “Duh, it’s a double standard.” That is the only justification I get: “It’s a double standard; deal with it.” Personally, I don’t really care. If my wife likes David Boreanaz, from the show Bones, it doesn’t really affect me (other than the fact that I think the show sucks, and it’s on TV in my house a lot). I guess it is just the principle of the whole thing. I don’t like the fact that women get a pass where men wouldn’t.
Honestly, my wife fantasizing about men from Hollywood or rock stars doesn’t really bother me. In fact, I oftentimes benefit. If my wife drools over Ryan Gosling in The Notebook and then later snuggles up with me after the movie is over, great. That just means I had to do less to get her in the mood. Thank you, Ryan. I owe you one, buddy. My wife, whom I love, can think about Ryan all she wants. Who cares where her mind’s at as long as she’s with me physically? Guys are fairly easy that way. Women definitely aren’t. If a guy was dumb enough to tell his lady friend that he was thinking of someone else while he was with her, that guy will soon be a
single guy.
The most recent blatant display of the double standard has come with the emergence of one Channing Tatum. This dude is a hunka, hunka burnin’ love women of all ages from across the globe lust after. This guy is so popular, his six-pack abs could probably solve world peace. My daughter loves him, my wife loves him, and my mom loves him. I think he’s a shirtless douche. Maybe that is just a bit of jealously talking there; I dunno. Anyway, old Channing is featured in a new film called Magic Mike, where he plays, of all things, a stripper. The women of this world have all died and gone to heaven. Wives are openly talking about how excited they are to see him with his clothes off, to see him dance, to see him answer a telephone. They don’t care what he does, as long as he does it with his shirt off.
Could husbands behave this way? If Scarlett Johansson came out in a new stripper movie, could all of us guys get totally excited about it, blab about it on Facebook, and tell our wives, “Hey, Baby, me and all the guys are going to the midnight showing of the new Scarlett Johansson movie, where she is a stripper, and, oh my God, she is looking so good in the previews.” The answer is 100 percent, no question, absolutely not. My wife would make me feel like the biggest jerk in the world for wanting to see that movie. “What? You don’t like my body? You want Scarlett to raise your kids? You think she even looks like that in real life? It’s all fake, you know?” Of course, my sheepish answer would be to lie and say, “No, I don’t know what I was thinking. She’s actually pretty ugly.” If I tried that same argument for Magic Tatum—“My body is too fat for you! Do you want Channing to come and mow the lawn?”—my wife would answer honestly: “Yes, and I hope he does it with his shirt off!”
Rob’s wife went to the midnight showing of Magic Mike. Rob watched the kids.
This article appears in Jul 5-12, 2012.