How to Buy a Gold G-String in Ashburton
November 15th 2003



Halfway to the checkout in Farmers I realise I’m in trouble. Queuing ahead of me are two parents from school: they smile and we exchange pleasantries, their children greeting me with the shy half-smile of recognition reserved for teachers in the street. Behind me in the queue is a neighbour. A friend greets me across the aisle. It seems everybody I know is in this store at this moment. My cheeks begin to burn with embarrassment, my eyes flicker mistrustfully, a prickle of guilt and shame sweeps over me. A beacon for shop security staff, I grip the cause of my anxiety tightly in my left hand. I am about to purchase a gold g-string – man-size.

I have found myself involved recently in discussions about boys’ education, and the behaviour and achievement of males. Discussing gender roles with the twelve year olds in my class I am struck by their widely held view that girls can do anything but boys are permitted only a narrower range of behaviour, most of which falls in the ‘bloke’ category.

It’s accepted, for example, that while girls may play rugby, drive quad bikes and excel at computer games boys must not show an interest in netball or dance. My description of young Italian men strolling hand in hand through the sidewalk cafes of Rome was greeted with general revulsion. Boys, it seems, play rugby and soccer, but don’t pick up their clothes or dry dishes. Boys talk about Holdens but not their feelings. Boys look at pictures in magazines but don’t read the accompanying stories.

And boys, I predict, do not buy g-strings – even gold ones.

In the queue at Farmers my progress towards the checkout is accompanied by a gathering crowd of acquaintances. I screw the gold g-string more tightly into the now-sweating palm of my hand. How can I get away with this?

It dawns on me there are two ways to buy a gold g-string. One is to treat it like the emperor’s new clothes - simply pretend it’s not there and hope like hell nobody notices. Fat chance. This is Ashburton, remember. Why, oh why did I not make this purchase in Christchurch?

The second way is to brazen it out. As I reach the counter I hold the g-string aloft and proclaim to the shop assistant, a woman of a certain age, that I’d like to purchase this g-string please, and did she think it was large enough.

She doesn’t miss a beat. ‘Oh, you’re the fifth young man in here this morning wanting one of those. You must be in the show. I’m a member, you know, have been for twenty-five years. I’ll be watching to see how you young fellows shape up.’ She measures me with a small proprietorial twinkle.

A wave of relief sweeps over me. Here is both an ally and an alibi. I turn to my fellow shoppers with a nonchalance worthy of Mr Bean: gold g-string, perfectly normal.

The ‘show’is Just The Boyz, Ashburton Operatic’s all-male revue, which opened last night. As an entertainment the show is spectacular, if last night’s audience is any judge. As a study in male behaviour it would leave my students gasping, and would probably challenge the views most of us hold about acceptable behaviour for boys – even big ones. There’s the g-string, for a start. Add to that the dancing and singing, the make-up, the sequins. Oh, and the balloons.

The really interesting thing, as I point out to my teenage daughters, who struggle with the sight of dad shaving his legs, is what happens when you give twelve ordinary men permission to behave outside the square.

I mean, for myself I accept I’m a dodgy example of kiwi masculinity, given my well-publicised shortcomings with machines and team sports. But my fellow cast members are power houses of testosterone. These are men who regularly plough up the back forty before breakfast, operate a barbecue with one hand while steering a jet boat with the other and turn up at rehearsals with cases of Canterbury Draught.

Take Bryan, for example. Here’s a guy built like the rugby league prop he once was, who sports tattoos in places that rarely see daylight, with a missing tooth that gives him both a rakish demeanour and a fetching lisp.

Chris and John are pure Methven - rugged individuals both. Tony and Steve sport the beginnings of well-crafted beer bellies. Simon has a profile worthy of a Speights ad. Heath drives a Mk4 Cortina with perilous brakes and, I suspect, harbours an ambition to hang a pair of fluffy dice from the rear view mirror.

I’ve seen these guys splinter a dressing room door with a crowbar one minute and delicately apply eye-shadow the next. I’ve heard them discuss the finer points of leg-shaving while debating the fortunes of the All Blacks in tonight’s semi-final. We’ve stumbled through dance steps together, tripping over each other to complete moves a six year old girl in her first tutu would sneer at.

We’d all agree the theatre is an unlikely place for male bonding, but that’s exactly what Just The Boyz is about: a group of guys behaving differently – or behaving badly, depending on your point of view.

We hear a lot these days about men becoming second rate citizens and needing to find an answer to feminism. As I see it, just The Boyz is the perfect answer. Women may rule the world but, for this week at least, men rule the stage.