My wife helped me learn (delicatedly phrased, don’t you think?) long ago that giving her lingerie as a gift is a bad idea. Much better for her to buy it for herself as a present to me, since I’m the one thrilled with it. But there’s more to it than that, says Heidi Julavits in the March issue of Esquire.
In a gift of lingerie, a woman “sees a direct critique of the cotton Jockeys she so prefers, she sees a castigation of her interpretation of femininity, she sees the subtle implication that she is not giving it up enough.” Other fun stuff in her feature, too. “Women like a man who can make a mean pie crust.” My sons are onto that one.