24 December 1998, 942 words
Except for female relatives such as mothers or sisters or grandmothers, buying presents for women is a difficult and important task for most men. In the case of female relatives, the matter is easy: either they already know you're thoughtless, or they expect you to give them the same thing you have since you turned twelve, or they will gladly accept money. (It saves them the trouble of exchanging your gift.)
Apart from those advantages, female relatives are also free to tell you what they want and which store sells it. Or you might even know what they would like. Most importantly, female relatives remain relatives - and often loving ones - even if you forget every gift-giving occasion that exists.
But when the woman you're buying for is not related to you, the rules of the gift game are entirely different. The task of choosing a present is difficult, because you may not know the woman's tastes and, even if you do, you don't know what she already has. And the task is important, because most of the time you want sex. That's why you're giving her presents in the first place. And the choice of gift can often determine whether you get any or not. (Even if you're already getting some, the gift can decide what kind you get.)
There are certain obvious items which, unfortunately, heterosexual men simply can't buy for women. I am, of course, speaking about clothes and shoes and make-up. To be sure, it is possible with keen observation and detailed notes and after a long acquaintanceship to tell what kind of apparel a woman favours. But buying clothes is still fraught with peril. What might look good on the rack might hang badly on her. (If the woman looks like a rack, this is not a problem: but in that case you probably wouldn't be buying her a present in the first place.) Also, minor, but crucial, details always escape our notice, no matter how hard we try. (The most observant man is clinically blind compared to the average female.) For example, we probably wouldn't notice that the woman always wears loose-fitting skirts to hide her little tummy bulge or, even though we've cleverly found out she wears size six shoes - by casually asking her in the middle of a conversation about the price of bread what size her feet are - we wouldn't know that she really buys size seven because she has corns.
Make-up is, of course, totally beyond us. Even the simplest item - lipstick - is beyond out ability to buy. For one thing, we feel uncomfortbale even holding a lipstick to check the colour: it looks too much like a penis when you twist it. And then women have this ability which is beyond that of mortal men: to look at a lipstick which is one colour, but which goes on in a different colour, and know that this will look good. The only way men would buy make-up for women is if someone brought out a line called "Slut": red lipstick, red nail polish and silver eyeshadow. We'd think, "Aiy, ---- would look really hot in that. She'll love it!" And off we'd go to get our faces slapped on Xmas Day.
And what goes for clothes and shoes also goes for perfume. If it were up to men, Armourall could make a fortune selling as a perfume, while the person who bottled the scent of fried chicken would soon surpass Bill Gates as the world's richest person.
Besides , even if we were clever enough to anticipate all these problems (by talking to her sister or best friend), there's no guarantee that she won't have PMS for Christmas Day, in which case all bets are off.
There is no doubt, however, that men experience the most difficulty in buying for their wives. Here is a woman who is a relative but who expects to be treated otherwise. Wives expect to get the same sort of gifts they got when they were just girlfriends. Men think this is unreasonable, and can't understand why their spouses aren't ecstatic about getting a device that peels oranges for Xmas. After all, men can imagine no better gift for themselves than a complete set of spanners. What men don't know is that women, unlike themselves, outgrow toys. And, besides, we aren't motivated to give our wives gifts: isn't she supposed to give us sex, anyway?
Even with all these barriers, the obvious solution (I mean obvious to men) is simply not an option: no matter what else you do, never never never give a woman money. If you have a very understanding or a very mercenary wife, you can get away with this. But if it's a woman you are just going out with, you'd be better off buying her a used wrench. To give a woman money as a gift makes her feel like a prostitute. And no woman wants to feel like a prostitute. Even prostitutes don't want to feel like prostitutes.
This is where rich men have no advantage over a moderately well-off man with sensitivity. The rich man who buys a woman a diamond necklace is still getting the same sex as the man who buys a silver charm bracelet, a red rose, and writes a four-line love poem to go with it. Most women do not want presents that are expensive. They want gifts which show thoughtfulness, caring and affection. This makes the task only very difficult for us men - but not impossible.
Copyright ©1998, Kevin Baldeosingh