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The Female Tatler constructs men's beauty and fashionability as dangerous and problematic. Male beauty and fashionability appear threatening because they imply effeminacy and foppery and because of their potential to seduce women into unfortunate matches with rakish or impecunious suitors (as, over a century later, the handsome and insolvent George Wickham seduces Lydia Bennett in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice). Both Mrs. Crackenthorpe and the Society of Ladies encourage men to dress modestly and entreat women to disregard the physical appearance of men when choosing husbands and associates.

Portrait of a Gentleman. C. 1726/1740. Andrew W. Mellon Collection.56

Likewise, the Female Tatler urges women against choosing husbands based on their appearance. An officer in search of a wife recommends himself to the Society of Ladies, in part, on the basis of his aspect and physique. He writes, "I am not quite six foot, well-shaped, clean limbed and a good rakish air, and, without vanity, have the best teeth and soundest body in the whole army. My complexion's good, and though I take a cheerful bottle sometimes, I have not the least sign of it in my face" (no. 82). In her retort two issues later, Emilia does not appear to be impressed with the officer's appearance, given his paltry income. She declares:

Emilia's statement that the Ladies would prefer a husband without a full wig and "shining metal" to adorn him echoes the Female Tatler's consistent censuring of men's effeminacy. Just as men must take responsibility for women's fixation on beauty at the expense of intellect (see Women's Beauty), women must, the Female Tatler points out, take credit for the widespread foppery among men. "Some women," Mrs. Crackenthorpe exclaims, "have the power to coin fops and fools out of the greatest statesmen and politicians" (no. 9). She focuses not on political figures, but on shop owners and workers, who "are positively the greatest fops in the kingdom." They deck themselves in expensive clothes, "have their toilets, and their fine night-gowns, their chocolate in the morning, and their green-tea two hours after, turkey polts for their dinner, and then perfumes, washes and clean linen equip 'em for the parade." If women would refuse to "countenance" these men, Mrs. Crackenthorpe insists, they would "leave off their conceited niceties and keep within the sphere of industry, for sure, no composition can be more ridiculous than a creature made up of beau and business" (no. 11).

Shawn Lisa Maurer's recent study Proposing Men: Dialectics of Gender and Class in the Eighteenth-Century English Periodical provides one explanation for the anxiety surrounding foppery during the eighteenth century. She argues that distinct masculine and feminine gender roles and identities were solidifying during this period and that effeminate men threatened this strict division. She also points out that eighteenth-century women often found fops "eminently appealing," a fact supported by the Female Tatler's chastising of women's indulgence of foppery in men. By attempting to show women that their attraction to the fop stemmed "largely from ignorance," Maurer argues, periodical literature functioned to educate women about proper femininity, as distinct from masculinity. ⁵⁸ The Female Tatler and other periodical literature of this period also arguably scorned foppery because of the perceived need for strong, "manly" men to fight England's wars (see Historical Context for a short discussion of these wars). See also Rictor Norton's related site, Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England.

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