Amateur Brain Surgery

Just because women were treated like idiots for centuries doesn’t give us the right to take revenge on men.

The Nurse remembers when very few women had decent jobs, if they worked at all. 

The telly showed us climbing all over hunky blokes wearing ‘Denim’ aftershave, breasts heaving. 

Or flitting around the living room in a frilly pinny dusting the skirting boards. As secretaries, fair game for male colleagues, leaving work when they married as a matter of course. Or as perfectly groomed, empty-headed ornaments.  

Yup, women were patronised and repressed. True, we were treated as second class citizens. Too fluffy and pink to manage anything more intellectual than getting to grips with a recipe for fairy cakes.  But things are very different today.

The Nurse never liked bullying. She might be an evil, pointy-teethed mass murderer but she isn’t the type to pick on people, take the piss and make them look stupid. 

So she’s disturbed to see the trend for dissing men on TV continuing. With the end of the new century’s first decade fast approaching, we seem to be stuck in an ugly rut.

Today’s TV ads and programmes are the diametric opposite of the ’60s and ’70s classics The Nurse remembers so well.

Switch on to see inept men struggling with simple household tasks. While super-efficient, shiny women look on, smiling or tutting with ill concealed contempt.

Sharp lady business moguls wipe executive floors with their male counterparts. Male stereotypes are reinforced left right and centre. Witness Mr Muscle ads where the skinny, weedy bloke is rescued by the macho products of the unpleasantly muscled and ‘packaged’ superhero.

So what’s going on? The Nurse thinks we’ve gone a bit too far the other way. Perhaps women were repressed for so long that when society took the pressure off we went crazy with freedom.

Which is understandable. When The Nurse left home she went a bit mad herself, staying up late and partying too hard in reaction to her super-strict childhood. And Russia’s criminal classes – released by the fall of uber Socialism - went a bit mad too. 

The Nurse would prefer real, honest equality instead. Come on girls, we’ve had our fun. It’s time to start treating men like human beings and equals rather than recalcitrant children.  Have some respect. If you were as old as the Nurse you’d remember when the boot was on the other foot and you’d tread more sensitively.