Real men go grocery shopping

A Jesse Watters Fox News segment flashed across my timeline recently, and I took it very personally. In the segment, Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff were at the grocery store. “What kind of husband goes grocery shopping with his wife?” Watters asked, smugly.

The answer: every kind of husband. I go grocery shopping with my wife sometimes. I also go grocery shopping without my wife. Also, my wife goes grocery shopping without me.

We need to buy food. Most of the time, we buy food at the grocery store. If one or both of us is out on errands, or even doing something fun, and we need groceries, we’ll stop on the way home. Some cursed days, I find myself going to two or three grocery stores. My wife has a way of springing the multi-store trap on me. I don’t necessarily like it, but I accept it. Because it is grocery shopping. Not every store has everything we need, so it feels like I’m always at the grocery store. In fact, I’m at the grocery store right now. Probably.

Unlike, apparently, Jesse Watters, most men have been in grocery stores in recent days. Every time I go into the grocery store, there are men doing the shopping. Sometimes they’re with their wives. Sometimes they’re not. Do the couples shopping together look particularly happy? Most of the time, no. Because the grocery store isn’t always fun. But it is necessary, and real husbands do what’s necessary.

Grocery shopping is not a partisan activity, or a gendered one. Maybe it was in 1955, but it hasn’t been that way in a very long time. My late father was the most Republican man I’ve ever known. He was a Nixon Republican, a Reagan Republican, a Republican for both Bushes, and I assume that the last president he voted for before he passed away in 2019 was Donald Trump. He would have been all-in on Trump in 2025, I can tell you that much. And he loved going to the grocery store.

My father had some friends. Not a lot. But if you went to the grocery store with him, he knew everyone, especially the guys behind the meat counter. It didn’t matter if it was Safeway, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Costco or any other kind of store that sold groceries. They all liked Bernie in there. Dad was perfectly happy doing the shopping by himself, or with my late mother, who hated going to the grocery store and always complained about it.

So, to answer Jesse Watters, what kind of husband goes grocery shopping with his wife? Either a good one, or one who actually enjoys grocery shopping, or both. Or neither. Sometimes, it’s just something you do.

In the last month alone, I’ve been to H.E.B. a half-dozen times, Costco a half-dozen times, Trader Joe’s at least twice, Whole Foods three or four times, and Natural Grocers, the latter because my wife wanted me to buy some dried elderberries and rose hips so she could make some sort of natural cold-healing syrup potion. I was already out on errands. What was I going to say, no? Also, I would have missed out on the opportunity to ask an old hippie, “Excuse me, would you happen to have any dried elderberries in stock?” It was a unique opportunity, and I’m always seeking unique opportunities in life.

Many of those trips, I went grocery shopping with my wife. Sometimes we’d bicker. Other times, we would rip through the grocery store with purpose, each of us doing mini-errands within the errand, all working toward one goal: having food in the house. Often, she would text me from within the store, “WHERE ARE YOU?” The answer was almost always: eating cheese samples.

Not everyone goes to the grocery store. Usually, they are rich people. Donald Trump has probably not been to the grocery store since 1980, if ever. And there are people who have groceries delivered these days, or do “curbside pickup,” just so those of us who still do our own grocery shopping have more aisle traffic to deal with inside the stores themselves. But even then — except for the rich people — they’re still selecting the items online, even if they’re making other people do the physical labor.

Regardless, many men, including many Fox News viewers, go to the grocery store with their wives, and do so without shame. So what’s the point of a segment like Watters ran? Is he trying to strong-arm grouchy guys into demanding trad-wife behavior from women who have no interest in being trad-wives? Or is he just still trying to score cheap political points by picking on the very definition of a completely defeated political opponent?

There are many reasons to make fun of and criticize Doug Emhoff, though at this point in the metanarrative he matters about as much as, say, Marilyn Quayle. The fact that he and Kamala Harris go grocery shopping together isn’t one of those reasons. Real husbands go grocery shopping with their wives. My marriage is a partnership, which is why my wife is about to head out to the hardware store with me. She doesn’t trust me to buy the right stuff, nor should she. And I’m sure she always loves it when I hold up a piece of random hardware and say, “Wanna screw?”  If I were a betting man, which I used to be before I gave up gambling, I’d lay good odds that we’ll stop by the grocery store on the way home.