Inanity of Polygamy and Shoes

My wife is making me watch “Big Love” which is a HBO series about a fictional polygamist family living in Utah. The family is portrayed as one man with three wives – each of whom is progressively younger and hotter than the one preceding it in “the line-up” as it were.

Now, it should be clear that the husband (played by Bill Paxton) is only legally married to one of the wives – the first one (played by Jeanne Tripplehorn); the others are referred to as “sister wives” (played by Chloë Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin). They live in three sequential homes on a bucolic little suburban street. The backyards of the three homes are opened up to the others for the family to share.

Regardless of your views on polygamy, you have to admit that this is a complex and fascinating family arrangement. Makes for interesting entertainment since it puts on display some pretty remarkably complex social situations.

Many women think their husband fantasizes about polygamy – and television shows like “Big Love” tend to glamorize the topic a bit. The reality is this: married men do not think like this at all. When we think about multiple partners, it’s sort of like this:

• We’re not married to them,
• They live in different sorority houses,
• They never make us watch “Big Love”,
• They are tax-deductible.

I likewise doubt that married women have any such desire for multiple husbands. In my experience, the fantasy most common to women involves one or more of the following:

• Shoes,
• Shopping for shoes,
• Shoes that are tax-deductible.

Ok, I will readily admit that I have no earthly idea what married women fantasy about, but I am fairly certain it doesn’t involve multiple husbands unless the fantasy has something to do with home renovations.

My guess is the “married woman fantasy” features someone like Daniel Craig or the Old Spice guy and, whichever one it is, a couple of features are preeminent: they’re hung like a mastodon and they love shopping for shoes.

But I’d think multiple husbands would be an inanity to most women because it’s only a step or two removed from having more children. While men often have some utility – like opening jars, walking the dog, maintaining cars and lawns – they whine like teenage girls when they don’t get their way and have sexual desires that would make Caligula recoil in horror.

Perhaps worse than that is the concept of sharing a husband with one or more women – especially if the “other women” are younger, hotter, or have way more shoes. Women are far too competitive with each other to successfully share one man, or suffer any deficit in footwear relative to another woman under the same roof. Bad things will happen – and probably to the man.

It’s probably one of the reasons I’ve never brought up the topic of polygamy with my wife. Not only is our house just big enough for our home’s present homage to Imelda Marcos, but I’m reluctant to spend the rest of my life as a gelding.

Tagged as: inanity, polygamy, shoes