In honor of Friday, in honor of it being the 15th of May [update: except it's the 14th. Don't mind me. I have absolutely no concept of time anymore], and in honor of this vintage ad Dan posted to my Facebook Wall yesterday:

(Tomato jam? Delicious. Tomato Jell-o? Bluh. Discuss.)

May I present to you another offering from Esquire’s Handbook for Hosts.

Previous posts on this topic:

My new go-to party handbook

How Attractive Are You to Men?

How Attractive Are You to Women?

Because yes, this book is much, much more than codified heteronormativity and drink recipes. It’s a full-service hosting manual, starting with a chapter on canapés and including tips on preparing soups, sauces, stews, fish, steak, dessert, etc. It also includes a section called “Continental Cooking: Foreign Flavors to Win Guests’ Favors” and a chapter on “Midnight Snacks: Cures for Booze in the Night.”

Mind you, this is a book with a single-page chapter devoted to caviar that starts thus:

Not that this has any direct bearing on the quality of recipes within, but I can’t help shake the feeling that it kinda sorta does.

At any rate, as I browsed through the sampling of canapé recipes, I found a few that looked moderately interesting in a vintage “how quaint, what passed for entertainment!” way, and others that made me wrinkle my nose in distaste. Like bacon-wrapped olives. In the 40s, no one worried about sodium.

But this recipe for tomato canapés is too cringeworthy not to share:

Cut 3 large tomatoes in half. Cut 6 rounds of bread and toast. Spread upper side with thin layer of anchovy paste mixed with creamed butter, then with thin layer of mayonnaise. Place tomato halves (or slices) on each. Dust with salt and pepper and cover tomatoes with thick layer of whipped cream to which 2 tablespoons of well-drained horse-radish and a little grated onion have been added. Dust with paprika and grated carrots.

Leaving aside the formatting, since all the recipes are like this, with ingredients listed as they are needed rather than upfront, I love that most of the quantifiers are so vague. “Dust.” “Thick layer.” It reminds me of the way my grandmother and mother would explain their methods for cooking favorite dishes — after a while, you just intuitively know how much of something to add in. The only specific measurement is the 2 tablespoons of horseradish — because god forbid you use too much of THAT in this recipe. And first you are to halve the tomatoes, but later you could slice them if you want, whatevs. And it took me a couple reads to realize that you weren’t supposed to cut both bread and toast, but cut the bread and then toast it.

And that’s nothing to say of how truly gross this sounds.

Fortunately I don’t see this recipe making a comeback.

No related posts.

Being the Handbook for Hosts companion quiz to “How Attractive are You to Men?”

First things first.

You can click for a larger image, but what I want to point out first is the illustration chosen to accompany this quiz.

Please compare it with the illustration accompanying the quiz for women.

The woman is a hideous hag, while the man is impeccably dressed, beautifully coiffed, and rather smug-looking. This man is not unattractive. He’s kinda . . . pretty. In fact, it’s not at all a stretch to call this 2-D man “effeminate.” I’d argue that this is exactly what Esquire was going for. So what we’re working with here is the following analogy:

unattractive woman : disgusting :: unattractive man : feminine

(You might argue that I have this wrong, and substitute presumed or stereotypical sexual preference in place of “feminine,” and then further argue that Esquire got it wrong, because the analogy they meant is “unattractive woman : masculine/lesbian :: unattractive man : feminine/gay.” While I wouldn’t argue against the notion that Esquire’s illustrator was thinking “this is what gay looks like,” in the 1940s lesbians wouldn’t have even been on the radar.)

I just wanted to make sure you spotted this, because it’s one of the most telling aspects of the book and the time in which it was published. Onward.

The first question, “Do you use the continental approach, based on the belief that an immediate pass flatters a woman?” makes me laugh because it reminds me of one of my favorite Christopher Walken SNL sketches, “The Continental.” I couldn’t find the best one, but Hulu has an oldish one:

I never knew that “continental” was a real thing.

Do you show your real fondness for a girl by telling her about her bad points and advising her how to improve them? This again is an error. If you must tell her you hate her perfume or how she does her fair, wrap it up in heavy sugar coating.

This seems to contradict that unbelievably stupid rule from The Game, which advises douches-in-training to insult the girl they want to pick up, but by the end Esquire doesn’t appear to have a problem with correcting women on personal grooming matters. (Because you want your arm candy to look and smell the way you want, and the added bonus here is that your continued critiques will chip away at whatever self-esteem your arm candy might have had.)

Do you make distinctions between the jokes you’d tell a man in the club shower and those you’d tell a girl in a parked automobile? Almost no women like bathroom jokes or jokes with dirty words.

FALSE.

(And just in case you weren’t clear before on which class this is aimed at, “club shower” is a unambiguous hint.)

Do you plan your evenings with a woman ahead of time or leave the choice of amusement up to her? It’s much more flattering for a man to announce the evening’s program, showing he has given thought to her amusement.

TRUE.

I mean, I’m up for the spontaneous date just as much as the next person, but there’s a difference between hanging out on a Saturday afternoon, having a lightbulb moment and making plans for an adventure on the spot, and scheduling a date to get together and then saying “So, what do you want to do?” No. Just: no.

Do you believe it necessary in the modern ago to push in a girl’s chair for her and to light her cigarettes? These small courtesies mean a lot to a girl.

Because the war is over and now this is ALL THEY HAVE. Ha ha ha ha ha *sob*

(Seriously, though, when I was a smoker, I loved it when someone else lit my cigarette. There were a couple nonsmokers I dated who would grab my own lighter just to light my cigarette. It made me feel like I was in an old-time movie. Totally hot.)

This one’s my favorite:

Would you dine a girl expensively and not buy her flowers, or economize on the place and bring her at least a gardenia? Most women would prefer having flowers and less to eat.

So I’m expected to starve while my apartment smells nice. Okey-doke. They better be damn good flowers.

That said, I texted this question to Stephanie because she’d already seen the book and I figured she’d find the question and answer as humorous as I did, and she responded (paraphrase): I’d rather have the flowers and a hot dog. I can’t say I disagree, and therefore it would seem as though the ideal date would include a corsage and a trip to Crif Dogs/PDT. (*COUGH*)

I’ll leave you with this:

Do you consider it a young girl’s own business whether she gets tight and is indiscreet when she’s out with you? Keep an inexperienced girl from getting tight, if you have to spank her, and don’t let any woman become indiscreet through liquor. Triumphs over drunken women don’t help any man.

I’m with you on that last part, Esquire, but as for the rest, are you kidding me? Sure, you’re at least consistent with the women’s quiz, advising ladies not to demonstrate their capacity for holding liquor lest they be thought of as “fast,” and the idea that a man must protect a woman from even herself is also consistent with the rest of the book, but SPANK? That’s a joke, right? It must be a joke.

Right?

No related posts.

The Esquire Handbook for Hosts has a list of questions you can ask yourself for self-diagnosis, followed by tips on how to modify your behavior, if necessary. Let us enter the world of delightfully antediluvian heteronormativity!

(click to embiggen)

Ha ha! Look at the illustration of the unattractive woman! Her hair is stringy! Her teeth are buck! She has a big nose and bushy eyebrows! She wears GLASSES! The horror.

#3 — If you are asked to get another girl for a foursome, do you pick one obviously less attractive than you are? You are unwise to do so. Get the most glamorous girl you know, and both men will be pleased.

Ladies! All you are is arm candy. But also! Sixty years later, women are given a different sort of advice all together: that if you want to appear more attractive, hang out with people less attractive than you are. Studies have shown that this works! Science!

So what’s interesting here is the assumption on Esquire’s part that women in general would not want to invite their better-looking friends out on a double date, and encouraging them here and in the next question to be more generous to their female friends, less jealous and prone to acting out scenes from The Women. It’s condescending at best, wholly insulting, and yet — not bad advice, in a stripped-of-context general rule sort of way. Hos before bros.

For obvious reasons, my favorite is #5:

Do men marvel at your capacity for holding liquor?

Yes! They do! I think! I’m usually too tipsy to worry about it!

A great mistake: it gives you a fast reputation and runs into money — the man’s money — besides.

Oh, well, shit.

#8 was read aloud in the company of Stephanie and Kim (who was visiting from Vancouver, and it was so awesome that we had a gorgeous spring day to hang out and have fun):

Do you make things easier for a man by suggesting that he climb into a car first, if he’s driving, or by asking him not to stand up when you come into a room? This is an error — men know that they are supposed to show these signs of consideration to a girl and they respect her more if she takes them as a matter of course.

We all gave Esquire a pass on this one, with not a little bit of grumbling about how feminism should have little to nothing to do with the question of whether opening doors, pulling out chairs, or walking on the outside was acceptable and that focusing the debates on whether this was oppressive patriarchy crap shifted attention away from stuff like equal pay and domestic violence and race/class/sexuality-based inequities and this is all anyone who had even one decent Women’s Studies course already knows.

The walking on the outside part, though, that’s always been my favorite. My grandfather did it. We’d be walking somewhere and I’d notice that he’d switch which side of me he was on when we crossed streets or turned corners, and I finally asked him what he was doing, and he explained. And I thought that it was the sweetest thing ever, that my grandfather was being all chivalrous with me. It made me happy to see it referenced in an episode of Flight of the Conchords (the first one, right? I think).

All other things aside, I have to give Esquire’s Handbook for Hosts credit for adhering to the idea that a man should always strive to be a gentleman. There is a section of this book dedicated to the question of asking a woman up to your place “to look at your etchings.” (That is an actual quote. They actually say that. I think they’re being tongue-in-cheek.) Manners above all, appears to be Esquire’s main point. And different women require different approaches and other rules of conduct. To be sure, this whole section reeks of sexism, classism, elitism, entitlement, throwing down a number of eyebrow-raising assumptions about the breadth of sexual experience a “modern-day business woman” might have. It’s very Mad Men Season 1-ish.

It is intended as no reflection upon the business woman that she may be treated somewhat less conventionally than, say, a sub-debutante; rather it is a compliment. No modern woman in her right mind and past the age of consent wishes to preserve the ancient fiction of her fragility in the face of a practical world.

Let’s get this out of the way, since most of you are going to focus immediately on this:

10 — Do you knit when you are having a cozy, fireside evening with a man? For some reason, men hate to see a woman doing anything with her hands when talking to her. Undivided attention is best.

Ha ha ha! But here’s something: I’ve only just started knitting while watching a movie with Dan, and I remember asking if it would bother him first. Because yeah, I don’t want him to think that I’m not valuing our time together. Manners are important for the ladies, too.

Finally:

16–Do you save yourself wear and tear by not troubling to entertain men bores? A grave mistake. Bores have their uses since a clever girl can practice her conversation on them, with nothing much to lose. Besides, they often have attractive friends.

Men! The worst thing you can be is boring! But ladies won’t let on that they think so because they need you for practice. And for your cute friends. Esquire does not care about the men bores of the world — they get what they deserve for being so godawful boring. And apparently Esquire believes that even the bores of the male species are superior to the “clever” girls, when I would say that a clever anyone would be able to talk circles around a bore and thus not get much value out of her practice. But maybe I’m reading that wrong. (BTW, I think we should bring back the term “men bores.”)

Don’t miss the con at the bottom of the page. There are several of these throughout the book, all ways to trick rubes into paying for your drinks. This book. So useful.

Thursday: How Attractive are You to Women? (The answers may surprise you!)

No related posts.

Seen this yet?

It’s an ad for Dockers khakis, and it’s stirring up trouble on the Internet.

My immediate response, kneejerky and snarky per usual, is here.

This morning I read Kim’s post, in response to the Dockers press release about this new “Wear the Pants” campaign. The choice press release quote:

“The intent of the campaign is to put forth a new definition of masculinity, one that embraces strength and sensitivity and appeals to men who can change a tire ANDa diaper,” said Jennifer Sey, Global VP of Marketing. “We’re not trying to shame men. We want to make them laugh at themselves and at the state of manhood. And, at the same time, encourage them to dress up, man-up and embody today’s new definition of masculinity.

And Kim’s response (excerpted):

That “balance” she implies (“men who can change a tire AND a diaper”) is absent, but what’s very much present is, “Once upon a time…women rarely had to open doors and little old ladies never crossed the street alone. Men took charge because that’s what they did.” No one I spoke to read the ad as being tongue-in-cheek…Please just help me list the ways this entire thing is WRONG.

Gladly. And I’ll start with the two you mention briefly:

1. There’s no balance here at all, no hint of sensitivity or co-parenting. Men are not women or children. That’s the definition of manhood here.

2. By their reasoning, then, this definition of masculinity is not new. It’s old, tiresome, and irrelevant.

3. The ad campaign itself is nothing new. This sort of axiomatic Man vs. axiomatic Woman line of reasoning, whether it appears in ads or TV shows or books, happens every 7 years or so. Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche (which was tongue-in-cheek, though many took it at face value), The Man Show (which I think presented itself as satire but only as a front to get away with espousing really neanderthal ideas about both men and women) . . . this is already played-out territory. (Not to mention the whole “real men wear khaki” idea was done over a decade ago by the GAP, in a much more inclusive campaign.)

4. Circular reasoning. I guess the only place for it is in advertising, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Dockers presents khakis as the item which will grant men their sensitivity while they keep on being rugged door-opening old-lady-carrying heroes. (Who neither eat salad nor drink lattes.) I suppose this is where the tongue-in-cheekness is supposed to be found, but their attempts fall short, mostly because there are no markers in the ad to suggest that Dockers is winking at us. There’s no modest proposal here. This ad sounds way too much like what we all absorb on a daily basis both from individuals and cultural institutions. (By the way? Opening doors has nothing to do with it.)

5. The press release also states that the new line of khakis is “aimed at emancipating men from the ‘Dilbert-hood’ of cubicle khaki.” Again, there’s nothing in this ad to suggest that what is emasculating men is their dreary cubicle existence. (But it does raise a couple interesting questions about where economic class fits into all this. White-collar workers are being reconfigured as more rugged, manly, working-class heroes?) Nope, this ad points at disco and salad bars as the culprit (because this ad was created in 1982). Oh, and one more thing is responsible for men not being MEN anymore:

6. “Somewhere along the way, the world decided it no longer needed men.” This idea, if it’s not the number one reason, is decidedly in the top three reasons why people, men and women together, do not support feminist priniciples or outright hate feminists. “Because the feminist movement doesn’t care about men.” Which is patently false (or should be patently false. Can’t count the number of times I’ve had to argue this point). And I cannot stand the fact that this sentiment is being used to SELL PANTS.

No related posts.

Quirk Books, publisher of (best-selling, because there is no justice) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, has announced a sequel follow-up, to be released this September. Sense and Sensibility and … wait for it … Sea Monsters.

OK. 1. No.

2. Book cover not nearly as funny as that of P&P&Z.

3. I suppose this was to be expected.

4. Different author, but same general philosophy, per the editor responsible for what might turn out to be a series¹: “I just thought it would be really funny to desecrate a classic work of literature.” CHARMING. Honestly, I have no problem with classic works of literature getting updated or messed with. Just put some thought into it, yeah? Prove that you know what you’re doing, work on integrating the horror plot with the courtship plots, instead of just cutting and pasting vast chunks of one novel into another. If this new guy knows what he’s doing, he’ll have Colonel Brandon sporting some serious scars from a long-ago battle with a giant squid or something in the Indian Ocean.

5. OK…the trailer (yes. I know) is actually pretty funny.

6. Still, no.

7. Besides, it should be Persuasion that gets the sea monster treatment. HONESTLY. FORFUCKSSAKE.

Related posts:

1. To my 30s
2. Travels in Ireland: Cliffs of Moher