There's a lot more to beauty than what met his eye, Lisa Scott writes.
Winter having finally snuck up on Dunedin and shoved its cold hands down our backs, you'd be forgiven for thinking that, amidst all the firewood-toting and hiding under duvets watching Danish/Swedish police procedurals (don't subtitles give you a false sense of being able to speak the language?), you could afford to relax the old diet and get so hairy the dog looks bald.
But don't you dare, says blogger and overnight celebrity Amanda Lauren (33), who believes staying hot for your husband is essential to a good marriage; in fact, she made a vow at her wedding a few weeks ago to do just that.
A vow which, having seen the pictures, her husband clearly didn't reciprocate.
In an article as welcome as a turd on a footpath and about as clever, which appeared on the website Your Tango, home to some of the best material online journalism has to offer including Erection Pills that Really Work, she quotes New York relationship expert April Masini's (a woman so pneumatic she bears a remarkable resemblance to a blow-up doll) claim it's incredibly important for women to maintain their looks.
"Men are visual at all ages,'' says Masini, "they want you to look attractive and they want their friends to be jealous.''
"If men can't help but be visual creatures,'' writes Lauren, in a piece of bint wordage that would have been well-received in the 1950s, "I need to oblige.''
And while she's not sure if her husband's friends are jealous, "they do acknowledge he has a hot wife. I see the look on my husband's face when I come out of the bathroom, ready for a night out, or the way he checks out my butt on the way to Pilates.''
Feeling sick yet?
How about this, to the tune of Burt Bacharach's Wives and Lovers: "Having an attractive wife makes him happy. They say happy wife, happy life - but I'm happiest when my husband is happy.''
Blergh.
I'm happiest laughing my head off with a glass of rosé in my hand and I think the whole visual creature problem could be solved with a poke in the eye.
If you believe the Amandas and Aprils of this world, a man can look like a shaved scrotum while the little woman needs to stay little and pretty or risk losing his affection.
No, just no.
You don't see husbands vowing to keep their back hair waxed or promising to dress in the fashion of the times, rather than the fashion of their favourite time.
And, given it's a documented fact that a man finds a woman sexy simply because she has agreed to sleep with him, I think you can safely chuck the Pilates.
I'm not going for feminist rant of the week, Amanda Lauren's article insults men just as much as women by painting them as ridiculous slavering dogs, unable to distinguish cookie-cutter good-looking from sexy as.
Do you know what men find a real turn-off?
A miserable woman.
A miserable woman with a heavy blunt object in her hands.
A miserable woman with a heavy blunt object in her hands who looks like she might use it on you if you ask her where her thigh gap went.
A man who stops loving you, Amanda, because you're no longer young and beautiful is a dick.
I hate to break it to you like this, but a superficial shallow tool like your husband must be (to agree to your wedding vow of permanent hotness), has probably already cheated on you.
A truly fabulous woman is more than the sum of her beauty and finite youth.
She is smart and kind and funny and confident and wise with a wisdom born of not caring about the size of her arse: as long as she can get it into a chair, it's arse-sized.
These things also make her beautiful, a head-turner, a room-stopper.
She doesn't tremble with the need to win the approval of any man.
She loves herself and because of that is adored in return.
Something which you are doomed to learn the hard way, Amanda.
The secret to a happy marriage isn't hotness.
Sure, finding each other sexy is wonderfully convenient, particularly when it's snowing outside and you've finished season three of Broen/Bron.
However, the pleasures of growing old together aren't found in knocking yourself out to maintain the facade of a crumbling building: let it crumble, it's a glorious ruin.
It's laughing every day, enjoying each other's manifold quirks, and getting one over on that ultimate jealous lover, Death.
- Lisa Scott
