Tea masculinity and illness

Have blathered on enough about the great milk-in-tea debate, so I’d like to move quickly away from that one. A friend recently told me he drank tea because he grew up with a lot of women, and although men didn’t drink it in his family, he didn’t care. He liked the way it tasted, so there. Funny. I hadn’t noticed what an anti-masculine bias tea had, but I guess it’s really there. I don’t know any British people who have this hang-up, but that’s unquestionably a cultural thing.

The other one that’s funny, and I get this one a lot in Germany, is that people assume you’re ill when you’re drinking tea. I can’t believe how many times people have offered me coffee as I arrive for an appointment and when I politely decline and show them my thermos of tea, they ask, “Oh, are you sick?” Clearly some drink tea only when they feel under the weather.

I don’t see why I need to fight against these two views of tea. Can’t even call them misconceptions if it’s really the case that in some circles only women and the infirmed brew up. It’s merely funny. And when I’m faced with it, as I was again today, I have to laugh. Yes I have both gender and hypochondriacal issues…so? They taste lovely.