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Whatever Ashley Cole’s missing, it’s not Cheryl's legs

 

When we men split up with a partner, it’s the heart-wrenching stuff that lingers

Frank Skinner I saw a picture of national-treasure-in-waiting Cheryl Cole in the papers this week, looking very attractive and rather saucily attired. There’s nothing unusual about that, of course, but I did also notice that a particular phrase has begun to appear alongside pictures of Mrs Cole just lately, especially if she’s in glamorous mode.

 

I always keep an eye out for newspaper leitmotifs but this one has crept up on me. It has slight variations but the general gist goes something like “here’s Cheryl Cole, showing Ashley what he’s missing”. I’ve also seen it attached to recent alluring pictures of Kate Winslet and Jennifer Aniston, with “Ashley”, of course, replaced by the names of their respective exes. I know one shouldn’t take showbiz reporting too seriously but there’s a lot of pernicious and reductive assumptions attached to this “what he’s missing” theme, so it’s worth a bit of close analysis.

 

The most obvious assumption is, I suppose, that what one misses about an ex-partner is their flat stomach or long legs. This is almost never true. The three relationships mentioned above were surely well into the stage where the what-once-seemed fathomless depths of physical attraction had been plumbed, charted and no longer concealed any exciting mysteries. The narcotic-like draw of raw physical attraction can hold together the flimsiest of partnerships but only for about 12 months or so.

 

By that time you’ve tried all the sweets in the sweetshop and it’s time to get your confectionery elsewhere. Unless, of course, you realise you’ve come to enjoy the sweetshop for itself — the worn oak counter, the dusty but hypnotic chandelier, the quirky clientele. You’re not quite sure what it is, but you just don’t want to go anywhere else. This feels like home — familiar, safe even, but also profound and inexpressible. This is what you miss if you miss anything about an ex-partner. Any longing for previous physical delights tends to be more about a fear of the new, or the amount of often fruitless effort it takes to acquire the new: a running away from rather than to.

 

Of course, the whole “what he’s missing” trope assumes that the former partner misses anything at all. He may be looking at those photos with a sense of blessed release. I say “he” because I have yet to come across an example of a male celebrity who is said to be showing his ex “what she’s missing”. This omission suggests, of course, that the concept is partly based on the tired old theory that men are chiefly concerned with the physical element of relationships.

 

Those who adhere to this view would say that the very fact that Ashley and Cheryl are no longer together is their Exhibit A. He wanted more sweets than she had in stock. But Ashley can get sweets all over the place. For him, it’s a buyer’s market. There can be new, untried sweets every night. One can never conclusively see into the mind of one’s fellow man but I’d wager, based on my own experience, that if Ashley misses anything about Cheryl, it won’t be sweets. It will be the way she wrinkled her nose when she got cross, the distinctive rhythm of her breathing as it lulled him back to sleep, and that time she cried at Shrek and tried to pretend it was hay fever — the hard- to-explain knot-in-the-stomach memories that transcend the sexual and stubbornly cling to your consciousness, partly because you can’t really explain them to anyone else.

 

People understand flat stomachs and long legs but this lingering, heart-wrenching stuff is in a foreign language and the only other native speaker isn’t around any more. When a once-solid relationship ends, it takes a long time to shut down all those parts that were “we” rather than “I”. They linger. “It’s a beautiful day. We could go . . .” and then you remember we can’t go anywhere because there is no “we” anymore. That’s what you miss. But it’s hard to put that in a photograph.

 

This “what he’s missing” thing is supposed to make wronged and abandoned women seem strong and independent. It’s a more sanitised version of a drunken girl with mascara on her cheeks, screaming Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive at a late-night karaoke. In fact, it makes women seem superficial, manipulative and backward-looking. It suggests that their self-worth is somehow defined by what their ex-partner thinks. It reinterprets post-split weight loss so it’s not a sign of grief, but rather a sort of spiteful rebirth — a revenge-driven process that punishes the rejecter by taunting him with now-forbidden fruit. It suggests that if anyone misses anything about this woman, it could only be her flat stomach and long legs.

 

Of course, it’s reassuring to reduce Kate Winslet, Jennifer Aniston and Cheryl Cole to their physical attributes. We like to think that people who look that good couldn’t have much going on inside. Such abundance would be unfair. Thus the “what he’s missing” angle keeps them in their place and tells us that, yes, they’re beautiful but even their wondrous beauty was not enough. “He” had that beauty but he walked away. And if he misses anything it could only be that beauty because what else could there possibly be to miss?

 

 

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