Hoy en el autobús se ha sentado junto a mi una mujer con un bebé de
varios meses que dormía plácidamente en su carrito. Me miró y señaló al
pequeño, como disculpándose: «¿Se nota que lo ha vestido mi marido?
¿Sí, verdad? ¡Mira cómo ha puesto al pobre! ¡Y con el calor que hace!»
Y se echó a reír. Ni me había fijado, pero el bebé llevaba unos
pantalones cortos encima de uno de esos pijamas pelele con pies y una
chaqueta de lana batante gruesa, a pesar de estar a 30º. «¡Qué inútiles
son los hombres!», sentenció con una sonrisa.

Recordé ese tema de debate bastante recurrente entre parejas sobre
si todos los hombres son un desastre en el sentido estético por el mero
hecho de ser hombres (y heterosexuales). Algunos están convencidos de
que no saber conjuntar una camisa con unos pantalones es algo inherente
al macho de nuestra especie. Pero siempre hay alguien en el grupo que
es también es hombre pero sensible a las mezclas de colores, entre
otras cosas, y todos acaban preguntándose interiormente si no será gay
a pesar de estar casado y tener dos niños. Como decía el fabuloso Jerry
Seinfeldt: «Y aunque lo fuera, no pasaría nada».

Se han escrito ya bastantes obras sobre los estudios de género, un filón
que nunca se acaba y que siempre resulta rentable. Uno de esos libros lleva por título: Why men don’t iron (Por qué los hombres no planchan), y está escrito por Anne Moir. Comienza así:

«We hear a lot these
days about the “new man”. He is more sensitive than the older model,
more ready to help about the house or to spend time with his children.
He is civilized, declawed, and gentle. He can still be strong, of
course, but his strength is manifested by patience and emotional
warmth. This paragon sounds suspiciously like a female; indeed, it is
often said that the new man is “in touch with the feminine side”. The
supposed compliment betrays a fin de millenium unisex ideal. (…) It
is Generation X —with a splash of Calvin Klein’s cKOne— cruising the
line betwenn sexual identities and possessing the best traits of both
with none of the old male’s inconvenient faults.

Today New Man is
updated by another: Postmodern Man, the new man dressed to the hilt in
academic theory. He is also a sharing, softer sort of guy, less
competitive than the traditional male, and at home with his amorphous
sexuality. He too is meant to be in touch with his female side. It
might seem, then, that theres is molded by social forces. He is a human
object of whom no part is given by nature. Postmodern man is a
boy-child of intellectuals who teach gender studies. New man is a
creation of popular feminism, media hype, and out-of-touch copywriters.
What is common to both postmodern man and new man is that they are
aspirational figures: neither exists outside the academic mind or Gucci
perfume ads. There is one big ostacle to the whole theoretical
caboodle: a realistic account of sex differences will close the door on
the intellectual postmodern republic.

(…)

Women and gays, after
all, have most to fear from the old, unreconstructed male who can be
intolerant, be crude, and show a frightening capacity for violence; the
new man, if he can be fetched into existence, will be a much pleasanter
creature. We have turned Professor Higgins’s question on its head. Now
we ask why a man can’t be more like a woman.

The straight answer
would be that it is not in most men’s nature to be like a woman, nor in
hers to be like him. That assertion, however, ignores another
fashionable belief which insists that our sexuality is not natural at
all, but a social construct. This belief, which goes hand in hand with
claims about bisexuality, insists that we all have the capacity to be
heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, and the only thing which
determines our sexual orientation is social pressure. At first glance
this might seem an odd assertion, but increasingly the Western world is
being driven by the belief, often enshrined in law, that the only
differences between men and women, other than their obvious physical
atributes, are those caused by privilege, opportunity and influence.»