The
GENDER
Code
By Sheri McGregor
Some of the other students were nodding now. Professor Candor with his strong jaw and intense hazel eyes gazed at her.
"And all the while," she continued, "the Brawny man is fixing food. At the end of the commercial, he's standing outside the bedroom door with a tray for his woman." Barbara tapped her fingertips on the pages of the romance novel they were studying in the upper division course, Gender in the Media. "I mention it because the commercial so blatantly markets Brawny towels toward women. There's nothing more attractive than a strong, sexy, intensely masculine man, who's also comfortable enough to show his soft belly to his woman."
"Soft belly?" The woman next to her, a student who wore low-cut blouses and leaned forward as if offering her breasts on the desktop platter to the professor, looked puzzled. Then her face twisted into a scowl. "You're making men sound like housecats."
Barbara laughed. "More like wolves." Comfortable with her viewpoint, she continued. "Speaking in general terms, most women are attracted to an intelligent, predatory sort of man who pursues us. Yet we want him to roll over like a playful wolf, to expose his soft belly in submission to our love when the time is right." She looked up at the professor, who nodded his encouragement, eyes still intense, intelligent, beneath brows angled in interest. Barbara looked away, her body thrumming with excitement she couldn't quiet reconcile with the discussion. Yet her interest seemed a lost cause. Professor Jeffrey Candor kept a professional distance she doubted any student could leap. But he puzzled her, too, occasionally allowing the discussions to tread into personal issues as if his life was an open book.
The other woman turned back to her book. "Maybe you want that in a man."
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The men in the back row were laughing.
"Barbara's hit on something," the Professor said. "Marketing does play a role in what we're studying. And the best ads do tap into emotions. Sometimes ones we don't even realize we hold." He nodded toward the back row where spurts of laughter still rose. "Do you men have something to add to the discussion?"
One man, a tall Swedish looking guy named Ben, but whom his buddies called "Sven," cleared his throat. "We were just contemplating whether we measure up to Barbara's standards." He cupped his hands, as if in prayer. "I was hoping, actually."
The whole class broke into laughter. Barbara sank deeper into her chair. Her cheeks flushed with heat. Ben-Sven had been flirting with her since the first day. He was good looking, but too raucous and funny. Not serious enough for Barbara, who sometimes felt like she spoke an entirely different language than Ben-Sven and his friends in the back row.
Professor Jeff Candor checked his watch, monitoring class time as usual. He'd also been wondering how he measured up to Barbara's standards. Wondering all semester, he realized now, looking at the serious student with her glossy black hair tucked behind her ears. Her appearance almost gothic, she had smooth, porcelain skin and dark, shiny eyes. But he'd made a vow against personal entanglements with students. Older professors had warned him early on f women who would do anything for a good grade, and he'd stood behind his principles. But the students here at the university where he'd been teaching for a short time were older, wiser than the youngsters at community college where'd taught by day for six years now.
He spotted the plump cleavage pushed his way by the student next to Barbara. Well, most of these students were different. . . . Smarter, a working crowd with more life experience, they were finishing their degrees at night. This job had been an eye opener for him, a challenge he found rewarding at age thirty-two when his eyes had begun to glaze over at the sea of naive faces that had met him each semester at community college. Continue reading