It's the level of abasement

And here's my next little piece of insight from High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, after my disclaimer below:

Women get it all wrong when they complain about media images of women. Men understand that not everyone has Bardot's breasts, or Jamie Lee Curtis's neck, or Felicity Kendall's bottom, and we don't mind at all. Obviously we'd take Kim Bassinger over Hattie Jacques, just as women would take Keanu Reeves over Bernard Manning, but it's not the body that's important, it's the level of abasement. We worked out very quickly that Bond girls were out of our league, but the realisation that women don't ever look at us the way Ursula Andress looked at Sean Connery, or even the way Doris Day looked at Rock Hudson, was much slower to arrive, for most of us. In my case I'm not at all sure that it ever did.

I'm beginning to get used to the idea that Laura might be the person I spend my life with, I think (or at least, I'm beginning to get used to the idea that I'm so miserable without her that it's not worth thinking about alternatives). But it's much harder to get used to the idea that my little-boy notion of romance, of négligés and candlelit dinners at home and long, smouldering glances, had no basis in reality at all. That's what women out to get all steamed up about; that's why we can't function properly in a relationship. It's not the cellulite or the crow's feet. It's the ... the ... disrespect.

Which begs the question: is it the media portrayal of what level of respect and adoration a guy can expect to get that's the problem (as in, when men are groaning about Mr Darcy for his unrealistic care and gentlemanliness, should women be groaning about Honey Ryder — that's Ursula Andress in Dr. No with Sean Connery — for her unrealistic smouldering glances and respect, if we were going to play battle of the sexes), or just the plain fact that women don't give it?

Respect, after all, is a biblical command for women, not an option that's only for the deserving (Ephesians 5:33). We're to give unconditional respect in marriage in the same way that we might like to receive unconditional love.

All that said, to be fair, the corollary is that men are also commanded to love as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:25), and the "hero" of this book has a fair way to go in his understanding of self-sacrificing love. It takes him the duration of the story to realise that he could actually give his girlfriend a compilation tape of songs that she might like, rather than smothering her with the music he likes because that's what he thinks she's supposed to like — which is sort of the book's point.