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11 
Beautiful on the inside.
Forged at the coal face of colonial adventure, gold-rush comradery, and manual farm labour, New Zealand expects high standards of masculinity from it’s men. Unfortunately, these same standards also apply to it’s women.
Whether it’s down to the rural lifestyle, the lack of any good clothes shops, or simply generations of attempting to crack through the deadpan, stoic veneer of Kiwi blokes, New Zealand women are often, and perhaps sometimes wrongly, perceived as being ‘a bit hard’.
Which can put a lot of pressure on some women, usually foreign, trying to fit in. Especially if their top five hobbies don’t include touch-rugby/netball, competitive drinking, wearing lots of black, changing car tyres, or anything to do with a mountain.
In fact, for most of New Zealand’s early history, there simply were no women. Pioneering single young men arrived here by the boatload, seeking adventure and the opportunity to make a fortune in sheep, whales or wood. But, with ‘wood’ also their only option for company and relaxation, the government began to fret about the country becoming a sort of childless, colonial ‘Lord of the Flies’, with every man turning a bit prison-gay. Rubgy was hastily introduced, and though it was an instant hit, tempering many a repressed physical urge, it wasn’t enough.
And so an advertising campaign was run in Britain, offering free passage and board to New Zealand for young, childless, unmarried and generally unloved women. And though one might speculate about the quality of candidate this campaign appealed to, by the time the boats arrived at her dry shores, it is unlikely any man in New Zealand cared. Except maybe Sam Neil, in The Piano, who never quite got over the disappointment of unwrapping his mail order bride, only to discover Holly Hunter’s gloomy mug staring back at him.
100 years on, New Zealand now proudly lays claim to one of the most egalitarian, level-playing-field societies in the developed world. Some suggest that not only has this lead to a blurring of the social classes, but also a blurring of the sexes. And not in an androgynous, Calvin Klein advert kind-of-way.
The upside to this, is that (and don’t we just love a statistic) New Zealand ranked 5th in the world in the 2008 Gender Gap Report. The downside is that chivalry is dead. Ladies, when was the last time a Kiwi bloke under 40 held a door open for you? And if, on the rare occasion one actually did, didn’t you secretly think “what a wimp”. Or, simply, “sexist”.
(6 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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Your bearded lady picture is so photoshopped!! Look at her hair-style, and her pristine white shirt – she looks like the kind of lady who would have her beard neatly trimmed, not wild like that! That’s an old man beard. Must do better.
Hmmm. Sounds like I should move to NZ sooner rather than later ! I’ve always liked women as you describe them. Always bummed at the overabundance of “feminine” women here in The Deep South that like to pretend that they don’t fart, eat or walk much less break a sweat. What a nice change active natural women will be. So … I’ll trade ya!
“Rubgy was hastily introduced, and though it was an instant hit, tempering many a repressed physical urge, it wasn’t enough”
And this must be why rugby looks so homoerotic from a non-fan perspective.
Certainly explains why the uniforms have been getting tighter. How ‘wind-resistant’ does 112kg man need to be?
We got the vote a hundred years ago sfw? We have to tolerate another hundred years of bullshit for mowing the lawn? If metrosexual kiwi guy wasn’t such a lazy asshole, I wouldn’t have to mow my lawn. Sad, perhaps, but true. I never ever wanted to mow lawns. I never ever wanted a pony either. Quite where that leaves us, I don’t have a bloody clue. UK anyone?
A lot of Kiwi women seem to go for that ‘attractive, but hard’ look, epitomised by Sara Tetro (NZ’s Next Top Model) or Sascha McNeil (3 News).
Dark, cropped hair. Black, or muted toned, clothing. Angular, almost muscular. Fierce in the boardroom, but not shy of mowing the lawn either.
It’s a look that says “I’ve made it in the world of business, but I haven’t forgotten my student radio roots”.
Sadly that ‘look’ is anything BUT attractive…
“offering free passage and board to New Zealand for young, childless, unmarried and generally unloved women. And though one might speculate about the quality of candidate this campaign appealed to”
I never thought of this as an explanation for the horridness and non-femininity of ‘Keyway chucks’. But it makes sense.
I’ve long advocated aliviating the nursing and primary teacher shortages by importing young women from Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech republic. Just to inject some needed femininity into NZ society.
With this competition raising the bar the women of NZ will have no choice but to change their ways.
You may wish to rethink the importation; while they’re pretty to look at, unless you’re Graeme Hart, you won’t be able to afford her. Eastern European women work for ‘pin money’, not to cover the mortgage – thats what men are for!
Such a theory might also explain why NZ gave women the vote first in the world: because of the difficulty of telling the sexes apart at the ballot box. This would avoid having to devise a gender test through some embarrasing inspection method.
As a pragmatic solution — of a type always beloved of Kiwis — it worked wonders, and now the rest of the world upholds it as suffrage of the first order. A double bonus.
**This would avoid having to devise a gender test through some embarrasing inspection method**
“Now, cough..”