The ’90s man is, at minimum, in touch with the emotional needs of his partner. So when Houston Oilers tackle David Williams stuck around to be with his wife after their son was born on the eve of a recent game, he may have figured the team would excuse his absence from the lineup. Fat chance. In a move that sent talk-show callers across the nation lunging for their phones, the Oilers said Williams had plenty of time to be with his family and make the football game in Boston. So they docked him a week’s pay–$125,000. Don’t they watch “Donahue”?
Williams’s foray into fatherhood cost him a pile, but sometimes it pays to have a sensitive side. Pugilistic thespian Mickey Rourke made a bundle last week selling poems in Beverly Hills. A sample stanza: “I Should Have Been Born/A Statue Of Stone,/I’d Have No Pain/‘No Place To Call Home.” Then again, he’d have no 16 grand either, which is how much Rourke cleared on the eight framed, poster-size poems that were snapped up at the show. just imagine how much Sean Penn could rake in by selling pressed wildflowers.
Actors have been subverting traditional sex roles for some time. Dustin Hoffman’s brilliant turn in “Tootsie” taught guys it was OK to wear a dress–as long as they had a manly reason. Now it’ Robin Williams who’ll don the control-tops in the upcoming “Mrs. Doubtfire.” His ’90s-guy motive? To disguise himself as a housekeeper so he can spend time with his three kids, whom his wife won in a custody battle. Don’t try this at home.
Of course, genders bend in both directions. Until recently, the fashion world’s hottest new presence was more familiar with garage bays than runways. Jenny Shimizu, who’s been modeling for Jean-Paul Gaultier, Thierry Mugler and Gianni Versace, is a former auto mechanic, and she’s got the tattoos to prove it, including an eight-inch rendering of a woman straddling a wrench.
Now that’s ’90s.
