It’s 15 by 14 on our shoe rack. For my husband. Black chucks, black Italian street shoes and black boots against purple loafers, burgundy boots and beige ankle boots. I could swear they’re secretly talking to each other. Move over, boys, my strappy pumps bitch, you’re stealing our performance! Bella Signorina, pamps back a brightly polished shoe, it’s the 21st century, isn’t it?
It’s true: women may be underrepresented in management positions and men in kindergartens. But in everyday life, the big patchwork of roles has long prevailed . Take us, a reasonably modern couple in their early forties. Sometimes we behave like the dream of an equal opportunities officer: not only do we share earning money and having children as a partnership, sometimes the distribution of roles even tilts to the opposite. I can be a whole guy. He a real girl.
My lover drags me from shoe store to shoe store in Venice, can make witch hats out of an old newspaper and a roll of scotch tape, and his spaghetti sauce tastes way better than mine – whether I lock myself in the kitchen with Jamie Oliver or a ready-made product in the fry pan. I can park to the nearest centimeter and organize our receipts so that the accountant sends me thank-you emails. Then again, we’re acting like we’re in a 1960s commercial: I stare blankly into the toolbox, wondering what a phase tester looks like (small, electronic, what phase anyway?) as it takes an hour and a half to single-handedly assemble a wall of books. And he can overlook a dead bouquet of flowers in the middle of the dining table. for weeks.
The same role play with our friends . For example this one: He is a successful businessman, she is a part-time mother. But as soon as guests come to eat, he behaves like a cross between a compulsive housewife and a master proper: he’s already damp mopping under the table when dessert is on top. Should the guests just lift their feet. Recently, his wife has been locking the cleaning closet on such evenings. Or the bohemian couple with their two-part DVD shelf. Black and white Asian art films versus Hollywood action thrillers. Her films are too loud for him, his too quiet for her.
And: The worst macho I know is a woman . She earns more, he takes care of the children more, but she decides on her own when it comes to holiday destinations, sofas or clothes: “Who brings the money home here, huh?” Her own father would not have dared to say such a saying. Sometimes, I’ll admit, I wish I was back in the fifties. When the forester from Silberwald was still responsible for chopping wood and Piroschka would never have aspired to her own career as a signalman. But those moments never last long. Because I know: In a life like that, I probably wouldn’t have a magazine column, my whole family wouldwould have to eat my bland spaghetti sauce, and the daycare would call worried if my son wore his sister’s pink hair clips again. Nevertheless, I should buy myself a pair of shoes again. Or better two. There are limits somewhere.
