The Ease of Modern Chivalry
Men probably don’t think about this all that often, but we really have it easy in 2010 thanks to the diminishing standards of chivalry. For this I want to express my sincere gratitude to modern women.
60 years ago, a man walking down the street with a woman might have encountered a puddle on the path. Back then, the man would be required to remove his coat, lay it across the puddle, and watch as the woman trampled all over it. For a single stretch of a few feet, the man’s coat would be rendered useless for the rest of the evening and he would incur the cost of dry cleaning it later. I suspect that men simply avoided dates following rainy days back then to avoid this inconvenience.
Compare this to the modern equivalent. A man and a woman are on a date, and they encounter a puddle. In 2010, all the man is required to do is point out the quickest route around the puddle. That’s it! It’s so much easier.
Thank you, women of 2010, for lowering your standards. You’ve saved us millions in dry-cleaning bills.
Daily Quickie: I’ve been watching the AMC show Rubicon this summer. After watching last week’s episode, I’ve decided that it’s brilliant.
Actually, I’ve always wondering about the whole coat-over-the-puddle thing. Traditionally, women did all of the laundry. If you were a woman back in the coat-over-the-puddle days, would you have been thinking, “Oh, how chivalrous!” or “F—! Now I have to clean that thing!”
Ha ha…I could totally see that happening. Although the picture above would suggest that it’s not always the man with the woman who has to put down his coat–it’s any man who’s around. Poor fellow.
YEP good point — no ‘dry cleaning’ back then. I often wondered about the sharing the handkerchief thing too. I think that when a man saw a woman crying, he handed her the handkerchief and never expected or wanted it back. Then a man would go home and have another woman make him another one.
Good point! So really the person who suffered most was the wife of the man who put his coat down or gave up his handkerchief. Maybe that’s why chivalry changed…
another thought looking at the picture. The man with the woman looks on as a poor bloke lays down his ‘ratty coat’. Maybe then the finely dressed man give the poor bloke some $$ to buy a new coat.
Or maybe the man laying down the coat is secretly in love with the woman and is trying to divert her attention to his finely tuned manners and the finely dressed man will loose out in the end. HA
I think the puddle cover was often performed using some kind of awesome cape that gentlemen used to wear back in the day. What if there was a situation with two side by side puddles and two equally fetching women wishing to cross them. Should I use my coat for one and then take off my shirt for the other? Or would that be considered more scandalous than chivalrous?
Why did capes ever go out of fashion? That just doesn’t make sense.
That’s an interesting point about the choices men had to make between puddles and women back in the day. I would have chosen the women who just went ahead and crossed the puddle.
That is about the most innocuous example you could have used to point out a major and ongoing cultural change, with which many (both men and women) still struggle. Kudos!
My cousin recommended this blog and she was totally right keep up the fantastic work!