Those who have been checking this space for a while will recall our study of the men on postcards who keep on rowing even when their partner makes it difficult. Looking over the postcard world recently, I realized that we had left out another role for the hardworking, helpful male.
These are the long-suffering men who are willing to provide motive power for ladies in swings. The swing pusher is a more cheerful chap than the postcard boater. You hardly ever see THESE gentry complain. No matter how hard the work gets, they are always willing to lend a hand.
Let us compare their counterpart in the art world. Here is one of the most famous swinging couples, portrayed in the eighteenth century by Fragonard. THIS gentleman is not making him useful at all. Unlike our more modern AMERICAN man, he is there only for what he can see.
You don’t catch our homegrown swing helpers thinking of such low matters.
I have read some unworthy commentators who say this is really the result of mid twentieth century morals, that what interested Frago’s hero couldn’t even be suggested on a comic postcard, and that what seems like a chivalrous and selfless dedication to the task is due to the fact that another part of the body was perfectly okay in a joke.
Of course, we can all see that this exists only the mind of those perverse critics. Look at this chap. Does he look as if HE is just interested in the feminine situpon. Consider his noble expression and join me in scoffing.
A reference to a poor, exhausted donkey does not change matters. This man is clearly working hard and doing it just so the young lady has a good time.
It’s going up in a swing which is the focus of these postcards, not some imagined obsession with the southern end of the body.
And the men are simply examples of the cheerful, helpful man of the postcard world. He is already to help out, even when the young lady does not require his assistance. He knows a kind word and a compliment will make the day advance.
And his mind is as far as possible from any thought, no matter how our twenty-first century prurience may judge him, from the considerations of anatomy or sex which Fragonard showed in the Continental male of an earlier age.
This guy doesn’t count. It’s an accident. Even the dog realizes things have gone wrong. And anyway…that is…maybe this artist produced Canadian postcards, too, and was used to French humor. (Stop snickering, you two in the back row. With minds like that, YOU’LL never be swingers.)
Blogsy Babbles 