Here Be Marriage

Bill Simmons calls himself the Sports Guy, and writes columns for ESPN peppered with pop culture and scientific gobbledy gook Sabermetrics. It would be no exaggeration for me to say that he is one of my favourite online columnists. I have also devoted hours and hours to his podcast, the B.S. Report; it forms the default backdrop to my walks to work. Even when he’s comparing a basketball player’s three-point shooting to a porn stars toilet-dunking, I can’t help but like the guy.

Unfortunately, Simmons also writes about women, in a voice and manner that makes me wonder if he was raised in the 1820’s. Here’s a representative sample of his views on women:

You’re reading the same guy who once premiered my buddy Sully’s “Twelve Percent Theory” in this same space: that every childbirth makes a woman 12 percent less sane until the kids can fully function on their own. So if you have two kids, you’re batting at about 76 percent sane.

Anyone married with two young children can back me up: You don’t mess with your wife, in any way, shape or form, during the 12 months after that second kid is born. Her hormones have gone haywire. She isn’t sleeping enough. She’s dealing with the new baby, the suddenly wounded ego of the first kid who doesn’t feel special anymore, and whether she can handle two kids at all. She’s trying to lose the weight from Baby No. 2, but she doesn’t have enough time to work out yet. So she hates herself and hates you for doing this to her.

You aren’t walking on eggshells around your wife during this stretch; you’re walking on razor blades. Every comment has to be carefully considered before being spoken. For instance, here’s a typical exchange with a mother of two young kids who has a baby 10 months or younger:

Husband: “You look really nice today.”
Wife: “Why today? Why did you have to say today?”
Husband: “I just meant …”
Wife: “So I don’t look nice on any other day?”

Obviously Simmons writes to frame things for comedic effect, and also because he knows what his readers want. But when he talks about women that becomes even more pronounced, which is especially jarring when compared with how he writes about, say, his dog:

And then something crazy happened.

The Dooze fought through the pain, rose to her feet, grabbed the ball, rolled it over to us, took a few wobbly steps backward and dusted off the “Come on, throw it to me” face. We tossed her a few from short range, then a few more. She caught every one of them. This was her last hurrah. She tired quickly and laid down again … and that was that. The doctor came in a few minutes later and euthanized her, with that same ball resting right next to her mouth. We had her cremated with it. We just thought it seemed fitting. When the time seems right, we’re heading to the beach and spreading those ashes in the Pacific Ocean. So much for our first dog. We didn’t even have her for six full years. She belongs to the West Coast, and because of her, maybe so do we.

I consider Simmons one of the best writers going, and a keen observer of human behaviour. He’s paid to write about sports (and, occasionally, other forms of entertainment) and not marriage, but the fact is, he does write about it, and when he does it’s universally negative. Funny? Even, to an extent, true? Sure. But in as cynical a tone as possible, which is simply, for a writer of his calibre, disappointing. 

This got me thinking about marriage and weddings and how little writing about either, by men, seems to be online. Women write about weddings all the time and, understandably I guess, most of the wedding sites out there are geared entirely towards women. I love Once Wed like a hypothetical, unborn child, but even this wonderful site knows which side of the chromosome its bread is buttered on. 

The only male writer I can think of who takes family as his main topic is Jim at Sweet Juniper, and he’s so good it almost doesn’t matter that I can’t think of any others. The main draw for me about Jim’s writing is that it rings perfectly true, without affectation or overt nods to being cute (although his kids are so adorable he hardly has to force it.)

One possible reason for the absence is the perception (true or not) that there is no market for men reading about marriage. And here I don’t mean marriage advice, or marriage counselling, but simply writing about what it’s like to be married. Unless I’m Googling the wrong things (porn again?) I can’t find men addressing what, by all other accounts, is a fairly significant decision. It’s as though having made the decision they don’t want to think about it anymore.

Which could be very true.

The other possibility is that men are writing about weddings and marriage, but just not blogging about them. Perhaps there is a wealth of discussion in forums, scattered around the interwebs. But why the squirreling away? Where is Gladwell on vows, or Ebert on flower arrangements, or Merlin Mann on guest lists? Why is there no Kottke.org for the wedding set?

I think part of the problem is that marriage is not viewed as a funny subject, although I am tangentially aware that funny books have been written where marriage figures heavily in the narrative. Marriage is serious. Weddings are serious. When either is mocked it is done in a heavy-handed degree, as though to say, “Look how crazy we are! We’re making fun of marriage!”

Another part of the problem, and a topic I’ll revisit later, is the assumption that as human beings we all know how to be in relationships. Even when this assumption is challenged through advice sites, countless books, and largely insufferable movies, it is done so almost entirely for comedic or cathartic effect. The attitude when getting married seems to be either that you cannot know what you’re doing so why bother, or you don’t have to know what you’re doing so why care. To someone on the verge of getting married these seem like fairly poor answers.