Tom and Gisele: The Last Chapter

Yesterday, as I was catching a few minutes of a couple of panel discussion shows on a conservative news network, I chanced to hear the ladies offering their commentary on the divorce of Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen.

Keep in mind, these are not movement feminists. They are presumably of a rather conservative bent. And yet, their sympathies clearly lay with Gisele. By their lights, Tom Brady blew up his marriage because he failed to obey the imperious command of his Amazonian wife. They did not understand that, being one of if not the greatest of all time, he could not just abandon the game because his wife had issued an ultimatum.

As it happened, she called it an ultimatum-- me or football? As a general rule, and I suspect that all couples counselors agree, it is a very bad idea to launch ultimata-- in the all-or-nothing sense of the term. Effectively, you cannot win.

If a woman’s husband gives in to the threat, she will no longer respect him. And she will resent him. If he does not give in, she will be facing the need to follow through on her threat. 

In principle, Gisele wanted Brady to give up playing football in order to spend more time at home. She wanted to make him a house husband. As the talking female heads kept saying, she has more money than him, and she has done her fair share of childrearing. Thus, he needs to languish around the house, letting his talent go to waste, because some feminist guru invaded and occupied her mind.

We note that these women offered not the least recognition of the importance of a man’s work, for his pride. And they did not understand the notion of loyalty to the team. There is more to life than money. And obviously, given the piles of cash lying in the respective bank accounts, in the hundreds of millions, we may dismiss the notion that Bundchen was exhausted for doing too many dishes and for mopping too many floors. 

So, it was not about sharing tasks equally. And it was even less so since Bundchen had retired from the catwalk. She was no longer working. And we must also remark that once Tom Brady retires from playing football, he will take up his new duties as a sportscaster and announcer. For that he will be paid a bit less than $40,000,000 a year. We assume that his new duties as a sportscaster will require him to be away from home during the season, roughly as he is now.

The more you put the pieces on the board, the less sense it all makes.

But, consider this. Brady has not been playing exceptionally well of late. His Tampa Bay Buccaneers have had a very shaky start. So, Gisele threw Tom’s life into chaos, she disrupted all of his family routines and might very well have made it more difficult to focus on his game. The result: poor performance. Surely, it happens. Is this what feminist empowerment means?

What does make sense is that Gisele, a newly minted feminist culture hero, discovered a need to show the world that she is not just another pretty face and lithe body. One understands that a good feminist can very easily seduce a sufficiently insecure woman by telling her that there is more to her than her face and figure. Beneath that wondrous exterior lies a great mind, waiting to be exposed to the world. And, of course, if Gisele wants to show off her great mind she must become a feminist true believer. If you think what we want you to think you will demonstrate to the world that there is more to you than your body.

As for that other burning question, whether or not Gisele is going now to find a new lover, a new husband, a new whatever. Obviously, we cannot preclude the possibility. With that level of wealth you can probably buy yourself a husband or a wife, or a husband and a wife.