Playboy magazine and the trend-spotting Roper Organization announced recently the results of a new survey on male attitudes and behavior-with the rather unsurprising news that men are entering into a kinder, gentler, more cooperative mode as they emerge, somewhat battered, from two consecutive
”feminist decades.”
A Playboy-hosted ”power breakfast” audience-more than half female-included marketers, advertisers and journalists. They listened, politely at first, at the Hotel Inter-Continental as Roper vice president Thomas Miller regaled them with statistics and graphs.
Men of the `90s will focus on leisure activities, helping at home and concentrating more on relationships, Miller predicted. Eventually, he said, they might even get a little respect.
Moreover, a majority of the 1,000 men surveyed reported that they consider themselves romantic, Miller noted. Suddenly, muted bursts of disrespectful coughing peppered the room.
When a bar chart appeared showing that 51 percent of the Roper respondents claimed to have experienced a romantic day or evening within the past month, the skepticism level rose almost palpably.
”They must have been counting football games with the wife in front of the tube,” a woman at one table snarled. ”Hmmmph,” whispered her companion. ”My husband doesn`t count that as romance. He thinks it`s sex.”