Henry Higgins and Women

When I was a senior in high school, I got to play Henry Higgins in our school's production of "My Fair Lady," one of the few occasions in my life where my stuffy white-boy persona actually came in handy. The many years of my childhood spent watching Britain's Sky Channel (yes, while everybody in the U.S. watched Spiderman and the Transformers on Saturday mornings at home, I was subjected to DJ Kat and Yummy Mouse, and Kitty Curls comm... er... advertisements) helped me to develop an ear for various British accents, particularly the sort of South Kensington thing required for the Henry Higgins role. Since many of my classmates knew few other accents than south Baltimorese (which to this day rivals Tennessee-Appalachian as one of the more grating sounds on my ears) it was my privilege to spend five months memorizing and rehearsing some of the greatest lines in the English language, most of which, of course, came from George Bernard Shaw's wonderful play, Pygmalion.

It was also my privilege to learn that fame and status can compensate for what may be lacking in other departments when it comes to receiving attention from the opposite sex, particularly the adolescent sort. Where I was a nice but nerdy guy with horse sweaters and an awkward hook shot before, I was now a star, and to my great surprise, I started receiving attention from girls for no other reason than my status as the main character in a musical. This was shallow and I knew it, but I liked the attention anyway. I, too, was of the adolescent sort. (Note to Lindsay- actually I'm lying about all of this. The truth is that I can't actually remember anything about my life before I met you...).

When I got to college, I went to the sort of school where football players weren't quite as cool as the a capella singers. For the first two weeks of my college existence, I walked around with little attention from the fairer sex. But when word got out that I was now a bona fide member of the Academical Village People, everything changed. Suddenly, I found myself invited to all kinds of parties that I never could have gone to on my own merits, and I was even developing my own groupies who followed us around on our gigs and faithfully came to our concerts with signs and things. (That's actually weird, now that I think about it, but again, remember the adolescent thing). On one incomprehensible occasion, I was talking to Miss Teen USA (a fellow first-year) and she was actually more nervous around me than I was around her. (Those of you who know me and know what I look like will share in my astonishment- again, it just shows what a difference status, even if only localized, can make, especially for the adolescent crowd). Now, there is no need to exaggerate my new success with the ladies, but I did actually notice a change, and it had to do with little more than my new status (as an a capella guy, of all things!).

I felt like Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors (since we're talking about musicals), who wondered whether "Audrey, lovely Audrey" would still love him without his plant. I wondered if Peter-sans-AVP-status would still get the same attention, and discovered after my mission (when I quit AVP over the new Sunday rehearsals) that the answer was the same one that all men who have ever enjoyed the slightest display of status in their lives come to discover upon losing it: a resounding NO.

I think it is this status phenomenon that merited me a surprising "hotness" chilli pepper from one of my (obviously visually impaired) students this semester. Status (he knows SO MUCH and he's SUCH A GREAT TEACHER!) still can go a long way.

Anyway, before this post digresses more than Melville's Billy Bud, playing Henry Higgins in high school meant I got to sing-song the classic misogynist tune, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" If women told me after the show that they were really upset with my character when I sang that song, I felt like I had done my duty as an actor. I think the whole purpose of that song is basically to annoy women.

And yet...

Deep down, aren't there many women who secretly believe this? Isn't success in our male-centric world defined largely in masculine terms? In significant ways, I think, we have not come very far in the last six hundred and fifty years. The great Italian poet Boccaccio wrote in his book ON FAMOUS WOMEN in 1362:

"If we grant that men deserve praise whenever they perform great deeds with the strength bestowed upon them, how much more should women be extolled— almost all of whom are endowed by nature with soft, frail bodies and sluggish minds— when they take on a manly spirit, show remarkable intelligence and bravery, and dare to execute deeds that would be extremely difficult even for men?"

Boccaccio's misogynist contention is that women's acts and deeds should be defined in "manly" terms, that is, by the degree to which women's acts or deeds provide evidence of a "manly spirit." Proto-feminists like the French Christine de Pizan spent their lifetimes countering these ridiculous claims, but even over six centuries later, I think we still define success, virtue, greatness, and so forth in largely male-centric terms. My wife, for example, is convinced that Jane Austen has been underrated as a writer precisely because she writes about women's perspectives in a way that men cannot readily understand. I used to think this was unfair, but I'm starting to come around to her thinking. Jane Austen captures very keenly and insightfully the longings, ambiguities, and viewpoints of certain rural, middle-class Englishwomen during a particular point in history. Her insights are every bit as brilliant as many of the canonical male writers', but because they concern women, they do not get as much credit.

But why would a woman want to be like a man, anyway? I like these lines from Eliza R. Snow, where she says that some who would improve women's status "are so radical in their extreme theories that they would set her in antagonism to man, assume for her a separate and opposing existence; and to show how entirely independent she should be would make her adopt the more reprehensible phases of character which men present, and which should be shunned or improved by them instead of being copied by women."

In response to Henry Higgins's question, "Why can't a woman be more like a man," an authority no less than President James E. Faust has responded, "What a terrible mistake that would be."

And so say I.