I am considering sticking on a pair of prosthetic breasts and applying for a job at Oxford University. The Spectator paying what it does, all of us columnists must have a side-hustle of sorts. Perhaps this could be mine.
The thought is inspired by the emergence into the news of Matt Rattley, a lecturer in biochemistry at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. I know it is unkind to attack people for their looks, so allow me to describe Rattley’s appearance in as neutral a manner as possible.
People like Rattley try their luck among the most tolerant people in the hope that tolerance will be endless
Rattley is clearly a man – or to put it in the language of our time, he is someone who was ‘assigned male at birth’. Which is to say that after the moment of birth one of those cruel NHS nurses who are so stretched for time dangled him upside down, jiggled him about a bit and said: ‘Sod it, Doreen, let’s just put “boy” again.’ This is the process by which most of the Parliamentary Labour party believe boys and girls are created, and who am I to disagree with the party of government?
Fortunately in this case the nurse’s assignment turned out to be correct. For not only does Rattley have the appearance of a big beefy male, he also suffers the male disadvantage of having gone bald. His pate is as devoid of functioning follicles as that of the late, great Sir Patrick Stewart.
Traditionally there are a number of ways for any chap to meet this challenge. One is to grow the hair long on one side and then carefully plaster it over the bald spot. This technique is almost always successful in fooling the wearer – if no one else – into thinking that he has, if anything, too much hair.
A second technique is to accept the hand that genetics has dealt you, shave off any remaining strands and spend your days suggestively explaining to women at parties that male hair loss is the result of too much testosterone. This is how people like Toby Young have dealt with the matter.
However, Rattley has gone for another option. He has grown a huge, long, wispy ginger beard, which in his case goes down almost to his chest. An area that we will come to.
Historically this look has been popularised by people named ‘Gandalf’ or ‘Merlin’. But when combined with a bald head it has the effect of making the wearer look like their head is on upside down.
What makes Rattley more distinctive still is what happens after this. For he also likes to wear bright red lipstick, nail varnish, lacy ladies’ tops and a humongous pair of prosthetic breasts.
As it happens, I was aware of Rattley ahead of the rest of the world, because last year I heard from a female student who had put herself up for interview at Oxford’s historically all-women’s college and was surprised – to say the least – by the person who sprang up on Zoom to interview her.
It seemed obvious to me at the time, as it does to the wider world now, that Rattley is not one of those people who is trying to ‘pass’ as a woman, or one of those in the ‘trans’ community hoping that with a few major cosmetic alterations he might go under the radar and about his business of biochemistry. What Rattley is doing is the opposite of trying to ‘pass’: he is trying to stand out. His dress code is the equivalent of a female lecturer who would like to pass as a man turning up to conduct an Oxbridge interview in a three-piece tweed suit with a giant horse-dildo strapped up front.
Those of us who have tried to hold on to our sanity in this era know what is going on here. There was a time when if a man turned up to work in a pair of big bouncy prosthetic breasts they would be trying to make us laugh. Today they are testing us. They are – for want of a better term – trying to work out how far they can stretch things.
Many men fantasise about big boobs. Among such unfortunates are a sub-group who have what is technically known as an autogynephilic desire to own a pair of such bazookas themselves, at least on special occasions. Earlier this year the American public got a good laugh out of the suggestion that the husband of the former Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem has a thing for huge fake breasts (not his wife’s, one should note). In private Mr Noem is said to find nothing more restful than to put on a pair and chat with other members of the ‘bimbofication’ fetish community.
Yet the key word there is ‘private’. Mr Noem did not seek to attend public events with his prosthetic rack on.
Personally I am not surprised Rattley should have got away with parading his pair at an Oxford college. That is because our places of higher learning have become the places on Earth least likely to have someone say: ‘Excuse me, but I think that might be a matter for the privacy of your own home.’ People like Rattley try their luck among the most tolerant people on Earth in the hope that tolerance will be endless. And in some places it is. But then the rest of the world discovers what is going on and starts to put its foot down. Not for the first time that will often happen when an unsuspecting teenager turns up for a university interview only to discover that their attention is being diverted by the plunging neckline of a balding ginger wizard. The student is effectively being dared to say ‘I find this strange’, get labelled a bigot, and then have various actresses called ‘Emma’ lead a demented public stampede against them.
Now that Rattley has come to the attention of the wider public I assume that even St Hilda’s might ask him to rein it in a bit. But if they don’t then I will head down to the local joke shop, splash out on a nice pair of fake tits and put in my application to teach at Oxford. After all, a man must have an income as well as a hobby.
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