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July 8th, 2006

Men with fans

men with fans

If you have ever been in a social situation where there is stifling heat, such as a cathedral or a concert you will notice that on the whole it is the women that fan themselves with their programmes or orders of service. The men just sit there with their programmes or orders of service grasped in their sweaty hands.

I was wondering why this is. Do women get hotter than men? Do men have a higher heat threshold? Are men embarrassed to fan themselves with their programmes or orders of service? Or do I just go to the wrong kind of events. Pehaps in other social settings it is the men who fan themselves with their programmes or orders of service.

I don’t know. Perhaps this drawing of men with fans will bring forth some reaction that will reveal the inner workings of the human something or other.

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This is a single post on the Cartoon Blog by Dave posted on Saturday, July 8th, 2006 at 9:49 am. Click here to read all of the latest posts. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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6 Responses to “Men with fans”


  1. ash says:

    I think it’s a fact that fanning oneself with a peice of paper expends energy and involves effort; and the heat generated as a by-product of this effort is greater than the cooling out-put generated by the service-sheet-fan. Ergo, service-sheet-fannery (SSF, for we in the church love our acronyms) actually makes on hotter…

    I shall not bring into question the logical faculties of females, and shall instead posit that they must know some magical fan-design secret that we men don’t…

    July 8th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
  2. Nefertiki says:

    One of the things that Dave is good at is providing pleasant surprises and the subject of this post is no exception. “Men With Fans” – I was expecting to see something about soccer stars enjoying the limelight, but instead you chose a subject of greater depth and promise of philosophical and scientific analysis. Not that I don’t care for soccer — as a former soccer mom (with a gifted ten-year-old who made little boys cry even before the game began, e.g. “Mommy, I’m not going to play against that big strong girl!”), I feel entitled to pretend that I know more about it than I really do.

    Leaving the useful SSF aside, I am far too modest to attempt to comment on hot men, er, men suffering from the heat without benefit of air conditioning (WBAC). That would require a firm grounding in physiology, world culture, gender differences, and The Mikado which I don’t possess. But off the top of my head I’d guess that, on the one hand, in some countries men do fan themselves, or depend[ed] on slaves to do it for them, or in factories, depend on employers to provide large standing-on-floor fans or huge industrial fans. (They were called “sweat shops” after all.)

    But on the other hand, perhaps men in church or on public transport abstain from fanning themselves for fear of looking like ‘girlie men’.

    To the moderator: if you express your objection to grammatical atrocities, run-on sentences with an excess of hot air, and bad taste in general, by blocking my comment I will understand perfectly.

    July 8th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
  3. Emma says:

    My German teacher used to tell us that we shouldn’t make fans because it was an expense of energy which would only make us hotter. I thought this was a myth set about by teachers to prevent mass fan-making chaos during lessons. Thus find that fanning oneself with a service sheet helps to cool me down in the short term. Perhaps the men are still bound by this teacher-like myth? As a teacher myself I feel it is my duty to keep up the myth to prevent mass fan-making chaos during lessons anyway.

    July 8th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
  4. Dave Rattigan says:

    Once again you bowl me over with your keen perception.

    This whole cultural thing where it’s acceptable for women to fan themselves, but positively *unthinkable* for men to do the same really annoys me.

    We need to address this imbalance, but I fear it might split the Anglican Communion.

    July 9th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
  5. Russ says:

    Us British men prefer to leave a stiff upper lip, so that sweat can drip off it in an attractively macho way, suggesting that nothing so trivial as heat can disturb our sang-froid.

    Either that, or we’re lazy beggars who worry that if we wave our hands around in church, people may consider us charismatic.

    :)

    July 10th, 2006 at 9:46 am
  6. barrie says:

    In my experience, women suffer more from heat extremes than men do.
    For example to following two examples
    Example 1
    Woman – I’m cold – lend me your coat
    Man – Where’s your coat?
    W – I don’t have coat that goes with these shoes
    M – You should have worn a jumper
    W – What, and spoil the look of this low topped dress?
    M – Which looks great with Goose-Bumps
    W – Just give me your coat!

    Example 2
    W – Blimey, its hot today
    M – Why are you wearing a thick jumper?
    W – You said I looked nice in it last time.
    M – Yes – in December. Its July now. Why don’t you take it off?
    W – I’ve not got anything on underneath
    M – You ought to wear layers

    July 10th, 2006 at 12:31 pm