Making and flying a kite is one of those pursuits where everyone's an expert. This would seem to apply to men more than women. Kite building is almost on a par with skinning a rabbit and lighting a fire, as far as I can tell - an indicator of manly prowess which, I'm guessing, has its origins somewhere primal and cave-like. Perhaps it has something to do with the idea that kites were originally used to signal an approaching enemy.
Having never made a kite before, I did some research and, sure enough, my expedition into cyberspace bolstered my fragile gender-driven hypothesis. The girl kites were prettily coloured, easy on the eye and made from a single piece of A4 paper, taking seconds to construct. Admittedly they did seem unconvincing. The male versions were invariably bigger, involved complex knot tying and the cutting of angles. They were multi-step affairs requiring some commitment. In the end I settled on a representative from each camp.
Hubby couldn't help himself and waded into the fray imparting his timely judgment on the smaller female design. "It'll never fly like that," he scoffed. "It'll need a cradle."
The male example was touted as "a 15-minute newspaper kite that really flies". That appealed to me because it instantly inferred that you didn't need a lot of special stuff to make this kite. In the absence of any real children, hubby gallantly offered to trial both designs with his fishing rod. After enlarging somewhat on the original design, he declared Design B the winner, therefore concluding this non-scientific experiment on the relationship between gender and kite design.
