There aren’t many times when it’s harder to be a man than a woman. Generally speaking, we earn more than women of the same age and background, spend less time on housework and childcare, and are allowed to go grey without being accused of “letting ourselves go”. We don’t have to endure the discomfort of pregnancy or the agony of childbirth. We are not expected to laugh at salad or rollerskate in skin-tight shorts every 28 days. Yes, we die younger, which sounds like a bad thing, but on the other hand we spend less of our lives being very old.
When it comes to Christmas, though, being a man sucks. While women can look forward to useful gifts such as scarves and scented candles (very handy for covering up unpleasant smells, often caused by … well, yes, men – sorry about that), men get saddled with pointless, dated tat, as retailers callously exploit the gullibility and desperation of time-poor shoppers. You’d almost think they were deliberately playing an elaborate and unfunny practical joke on half the population. It’s one thing to flog cheap and garish Christmas jumpers, with everyone in on the joke, quite another to peddle trash under the pretence that it’s stylish or useful.
Take Marks & Spencer’s Christmas range. While a lucky woman might get a handbag or some faux fur ear muffs, the “classic” and “luxury” ranges for men include a “pure silk waffle textured bow tie” in a choice of seven colours, another in “pure cotton velvet” in Midnight or Teal, and no fewer than six sets of cufflinks, with designs ranging from the abstract to the faux-classy to unashamedly kitsch robins and penguins. There’s not one but two hip flasks, one in the form of a fish, the other covered in “luxurious” tan leather. Over in the “fun” section, meanwhile, the cufflinks come shaped like holly, adorned with stags or concealing a tiny USB key. Other than the fishy flask, you won’t find this sort of junk in the women’s range.
No claim is too outrageous when it comes to peddling this crap: the “waffle” bow tie that Cyril Fletcher would have turned his nose up at, for example, supposedly “gives you a modern look that will see you from day to night in sharp style”, while the USB cufflinks are “great for office-to-bar wear”.
All right, you’re thinking: that’s M&S, and they’ve never been at the bleeding edge of fashion. But it’s no better at John Lewis, whose men’s Christmas list features five types of cufflinks, including the obligatory penguins, and six hip flasks, with themes ranging from the piscatorial to the geographical. Selfridges, meanwhile, leaves everyone in the dust with its accessories range, whose 337 sets of cufflinks start at £37 for some grey metal numbers from Ted Baker and go up to £3,550 for Theo Fennell’s 18ct gold and citrine “briolette coronets”. To be fair, most of these objects are available year-round. But only at Christmas would they be put forward as a serious gift option.
Bricks-and-mortar shops are even worse than websites, with cheap, nasty and, above all, useless items placed front and centre until you can barely reach the tills for driving gloves, money clips and silver-plated collar stiffeners. Does the average man really aspire to dress like a 1970s antiques dealer and have a serious drink problem? What kind of message do you send when you buy someone a hip flask? “You look like you need a drink – every 15 minutes”?
It’s time for men to say enough is enough, to put our collective foot down and declare that if the choice is between the dull and useful and the eye-catching and impractical, we’ll go for dull and useful every time. Buy us socks, buy us hankies, even buy us slippers if you must, but please leave the cufflinks and bow ties where they belong – in the past.
