Never Walked In High Heels

Last night I watched on a whim a film titled, “The Fantastic Mr. Fox.” Which recreates the tale of a modern man who was forced to play it safe in the name of family. But still, given his preternatural instincts, wishes to go out and continue to steal chickens from the coup.

I see the entire movie as a badly needed commentary on masculinity in our current society. I remember once my father saying: “women marry men thinking that they’ll change, men marry women hoping that they never will.” And in truth, both expectations are unrealistic. People do change but maybe not in the areas that we desire to see that change. I remember being woken up by a newly engaged friend of mine one morning in college. She came to my room later than usual and when I enquired about this she explained that she was up all night cleaning her fiancé’s dorm room. I was a bit shocked. She was the most independent young woman that I had met up to that point. Her dream was to go live in huts in Africa, and yet here she was confessing she had lost sleep by doing something her able bodied fiancé could have accomplished entirely by himself.

“Don’t worry, when we get married things will change.” Why would she say that? Why would she insist this when there is evidence to the contrary, that all of a sudden with a wedding band on his finger and a double income in the bank account he would ever change? Right there, still lying in bed in my dorm at the age of twenty, I could see that my father was absolutely right. People will often marry others absolutely convinced that after the wedding, everything will change.

Mr. Fox was by nature a chicken hunter. Simple. People often have in their very nature habits that aren’t particularly pleasant. My friend’s fiancé was not particularly neat. That was a characteristic about him that as far as I see evidence right now, has yet to change. By saying “Oh, he’ll change”, wasn’t my friend ultimately saying, “I would like to change him”? And if you love someone, do you want to change them? Can those two philosophies ever come together? Can you love someone while still wanting to alter any aspect of their character?

Mrs. Fox said it best when later in the movie she admits: “I love you, but I never should have married you.” It is a plague on modern masculinity that we seek to change it in the name of safety and security. Taming the modern man to live under a mortgage and go to the same place of work day after day after day is ultimately conditioning men everywhere to be afraid of freedom. I look at the male friends I have in my area of London. A large percentage of them are single, substantially older, and of course they live on boats or carry out some other form of adventurous life.

I love my friends dearly, even though I have my scuffles with them. The point is I can’t imagine altering any of them a fraction. They are warm and friendly and they carry out there lives for the most part exactly as they intend to. That doesn’t mean not living in safety simply because that isn’t what they want. It means weeks on boats waking up in the wee morning hours because the boat next door is on fire. It means not having a plan and living comfortably with the idea that at any moment life can change. I think about them and all I wish is if their lives unexpectedly change, tragedy or great joy, they aren’t forced to change who they are for any reason. Unless of course, they become more like themselves.