Word: minivans
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...mean to defend the minivan, for it is much maligned. It is not universally maligned, of course. I know of many women in particular who find the minivan the perfect vehicle for its intended purpose, which is the safe and efficient conveyance of half a dozen belligerent, sputtering children from home to soccer game to swim lesson to juvenile-detention center, where most of them belong. The people who malign the minivan--if the gender police will grant me this small observation--are almost exclusively men. And they are at last having their way. Sales of minivans are flat this...
...following scenario is played out daily. Wife and Husband have decided to buy a new family car, their last one having been rendered immobile by the accumulated weight of gum wads, empty juice boxes and broken plastic toys from McDonald's Happy Meals. Do they go with the stolid minivan or the racy sport-ute? They consult consumer guides. They compare prices. They make, if they have the stomach for it, a few desultory visits to a variety of reptilian car salesmen. And they gather promotional brochures...
Wife: The minivan is much cheaper...
More often than not, Husband is winning the argument, if we are to believe the sales figures. Bring together a group of professional men, and the disdain--the unmitigated contempt--for the minivan is palpable. But the minivan is so obviously inoffensive, and so clearly practical, that the contempt must be rooted in something deeper than mere taste. Part of it is the timeless lure of male fantasy. There were days when I myself refused to leave the house without my chaps, my six-gun and my ten-gallon hat. Or rather, my two-gallon hat. I was six years...
...really he's just Mr. Peepers. The American male resists the minivan not because he fears he will be emasculated but because he knows he already has been. And of course he's right. His father fought off panzers in the Ardennes; Mr. Peepers gives money to Greenpeace, to protest nuclear testing. His father almost broke his back pouring molten steel eight hours a day; he does aerobics three times a week, in classes taught by a girl. His father drank boilermakers; he sips a nice double-decaf Frappaccino after a day pushing paper, designing software, filing briefs, nurturing children...