Angela Mollard: Have we taken it too far in self-censoring our impulses

Recently Angela Mollard was about to message friends with a humorous quip about the Greek god in another lane during their morning swim but paused. Is this how men feel every day as they navigate the post #MeToo landscape?

He was, without question, the most extraordinary looking man. Late 20s, perhaps 30-something, standing at the end of the pool windmilling his arms in preparation for a Saturday morning swim.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him, though a momentary glance at my fellow ragbag of middle-aged squad members showed they were equally captivated.

It’s not often our municipal pool with its tired paint and hair-strewn showers is blessed with Greek gods, and this man was precisely that.

His muscles, strong and flexed rather than cartoonishly steroid-pumped, were sculpted from caramel and each was in perfect proportion.

To top it off, he had the nonchalance of someone completely at ease with his own exquisiteness.

I broke the group trance: “He really needs to try harder.”

Angela Mollard said writing about Chris Brown made her be more careful with her words. Picture: Justin Lloyd

The blokes laughed weakly because the last thing a beer-paunched, injury-beset, monstered-by-midlife man needs is a real-life Adonis reminding him of his deterioration. And then Adonis dived into lane 5 and we all sauntered off for coffee.

Later, in our squad’s What’s App group, as the usual banter flowed about who owed money and who hadn’t picked up their new cossies, I started to type a cheeky message.

“Hey, did anyone think to recruit the stray guy from lane 5?” And then I stopped.

Was it sexist? A bit icky? Just a laugh? Or was I objectifying a good-looking man? I deleted the message and instantly felt muted and neutered.

Is this how men feel every day as they navigate the post #MeToo landscape? Are they self-censoring every comment? Is there a constant internal tussle with what’s acceptable and what’s not? Is there an underground movement of sorts where they banter as they once did?

Let’s be clear. The conversation and commentary needed to change.

Millennia of patriarchal prejudice where insult and denigration were employed as the tools of suppression had left a late 20th century gender power imbalance.

As I came into the workplace in the 1990s you quickly learned to sidestep the sexists and the grubs. It’s better now. Safer. More respectful. But careful. Oh so careful because with any evolution you need to establish new parameters.

And those are being delicately crafted by trial and error.

Gillian Anderson found out women still want raunch in their books. Picture: Instagram

Some men have told me they’ve adapted easily. It’s simply a matter of respect. Others say they’re part of a new silent generation who self-mute around sensitive subjects.

My own experiences have taught me it’s both complicated and fraught.

A few months back I interviewed TV host Dr Chris Brown. We were discussing how he had unwittingly prioritised work over love.

When I wrote the piece I pointed out he’s a catch because he’s handsome, successful, has a tonne of interesting hobbies, loves animals (obviously) and phones his dad every day.

I asked, amusingly, how he could be single.

The editor, who I’ve worked with for years and has excellent judgment, quite rightly pointed out that if a man wrote the same about a woman he’d be objectifying her.

So we adapted the story and, feeling out-of-step, I privately vowed to be more careful.

But it was discombobulating when, a few weeks later, one of the best TV critics in the country made the same observations.

Reviewing Dream Home, Ben Pobjie pointed out Brown was a good choice for any job.

“Part of that is the handsomeness,” he wrote.

“Dr Chris is almost frighteningly good-looking with the kind of perfectly sculpted features that could make you kneecap a budgie just for an excuse to visit his clinic.”

Pobjie also noted that Brown possessed natural sincerity rare in celebrities “as handsome as him”.

Ricky Gervais says men have ended up “scared of words.

Discomfort always accompanies change. And the pendulum doesn’t immediately reset precisely where it should. Sometimes it swings too far in the other direction.

It’s lunacy, for instance, that author Sebastian Faulks has declared he will no longer describe what female characters look like after being criticised by a reader.

And what of pool guy – would it have been acceptable for me to comment on his obvious athleticism if he’d been in Cirque du Soleil or a burlesque troop? Do we cancel all risqué song lyrics? Am I the only one who enjoys the sepia-toned sexiness of the Fleetwood Mac song: “Won’t you lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff”? Or Queens of the Stone Age’s Make It Wit Chu.

As actor Gillian Anderson discovered when she invited women to share their uninhibited desires for her new book Want, they still want raunch.

They want flirtation and fantasy and confidence and humour. Some want dominance. The woke may win the world but it seems you can’t circumvent biology. Staying with the heteronormative, what of men.

Have they evolved, as Ricky Gervais so sharply points out, to slay beasts, survive wars and the ice age, to eventually end up “scared of words”.

Who knows where we’ll arrive. Hopefully not in a world ruled by humourless correctness.

If I see pool guy again I’ll think of John Keats: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”

Even if I have to keep the thought to myself.

Originally published as Angela Mollard: Have we taken it too far in self-censoring our impulses