{"id":167535,"date":"2025-11-07T07:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T07:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/167535\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T07:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T07:48:09","slug":"ive-nothing-against-irish-men-i-keep-one-myself-but-i-recommend-irish-women-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/167535\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve nothing against Irish men. I keep one myself. But I recommend Irish women \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

American women are yearning for Irish<\/a> men. Suddenly there are a multitude of TikTok videos of Lana Del Rey songs captioned \u201cI should be in Ireland with my sexy Irish man\u201d. Some women are even filming themselves writing letters to Santa asking for a special Hibernian man friend for Christmas. (Personally, I\u2019d think they\u2019d get more use out of a Dyson Airwrap in the long term.) <\/p>\n

There are social media<\/a> slide shows of very obviously British cottages and Hunter wellies declaring \u201cthis and an Irish husband\u201d as their dream future. <\/p>\n

Irish women reacted exactly the way you think they would, asking their foreign counterparts, \u201cAre you okay hun?\u201d<\/p>\n

One asked, \u201cRight, who\u2019s been lying to the Americans? Have Irish men collectively launched a marketing campaign? Who is doing their reputation management?\u201d To get these kinds of results it must be Tree Paine, Taylor Swift\u2019s PR bulldog. Have they hired Ivan Yates? <\/p>\n

The next question after who is behind this publicity blitz is why?<\/p>\n

Is the Irish Government behind this psychological operation to get men to go off abroad with foreign women as a way of easing the housing crisis in Ireland? Or are they trying to lure more young women from abroad here as a way to diffuse the ticking pension bomb by increasing the tax base?<\/p>\n

We may never know, but I suspect Cecelia Ahern<\/a> might be involved somehow. Her delightful books with charming Irish male protagonists provided the gateway drug, especially PS I Love You, where the movie adaptation sees the hot Irish man played by a Scottish actor. But do the Americans and Australians care? Or do they just want a man with a good jawline giving them compliments in a funny little accent? <\/p>\n

I have nothing against Irish men. I keep one at home. But having grown up around Irish men, they\u2019re too quotidian for me to romanticise. <\/p>\n

\u201cWouldn\u2019t it be great to meet a guy who owned a castle?\u201d one of my University of Miami friends asked when I first moved to Dublin. I ended up with a man from Galway; I had to break it to her gently that there is no moat, but at least now I get to spend my annual leave in the exotic surroundings of Tuam. I haven\u2019t dated all the men in Ireland so I won\u2019t give in to lazy stereotypes about what it\u2019s like to go out with them. They\u2019re grand like. Which is probably the highest verbal praise they would feel comfortable with. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Brianna Parkins: We need to end the trend of matching Christmas pyjamas. It\u2019s wrongOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

If I really had to recommend anything to our American sisters, I would tell them not to bother with the men, and get themselves a good Irish woman instead. I want an Irish wife \u2013 not in the biblical sense, but rather in the administrative one. Irish women are ruthlessly efficient. They are the natural predator of a long to-do list. They are the masters of GSD \u2013 getting shit done. They can run a Fortune 500 company, feed a GAA team unexpectedly popping in for dinner, remember to put the right bins out and retile the bathroom on a slow afternoon. They just crack on with it. <\/p>\n

My dream is for a middle-aged Irish woman to come to my house in a Super Nanny type way and fix my life. She would glance around at the tax forms, unclaimed medication rebates, empty fridge, full washing basket, cushions that need replacing and windows that need cleaning. She would look at me with more pity than judgment before declaring, \u201cRight, you need sorting out.\u201d I want a lady who\u2019ll slap her thighs as she gets off the chair while saying, \u201cNow!\u201d That\u2019s the sound of business. <\/p>\n

Some of my happiest memories are of living with Irish women in houseshares. The toilet seat might have had the odd fake tan mark, but we made cosy homes together lit by Dunnes scented candles. There were dinner parties, warm fires, tasteful interiors and the odd intellectual discussion over whether Julia Roberts\u2019s accent was bad in Michael Collins, or maybe that was how Kitty Kiernan actually talked. \u201cIn fairness no one\u2019s alive to say what she sounded like!\u201d<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m safe from the propaganda started by Connell\u2019s silver chain in Normal People and Cillian Murphy\u2019s cheek bones, maybe my relationship is the result of a reverse Australian soft power psyop. After years of watching Home and Away, my poor fellah was convinced Australian girlfriends would be tanned, \u201cno worries\u201d type ocean nymphs. Instead he got a woman with the dress sense and temperament of Russell Crowe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"American women are yearning for Irish men. Suddenly there are a multitude of TikTok videos of Lana Del…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[49873,25385,18,117,2215,19,17,361,1114,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-167535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-brianna-parkins","9":"tag-cecelia-ahern","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-for-you","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-magazine","16":"tag-social-media","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115507318207711920","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}