I am concerned. If you are a man and reading this you should be too. In fact, you may be the very man I am about to scold and rip apart.
I am seeing too many things that insult my - our - manhood. We have been taught and conditioned, since the rise of feminism, to forego our male behaviors - mannerisms that took centuries to perfect, I might add - all to please some impractical and humourless ideal.
Men have not only lost their minds - this took place long ago - but their back bone too. Men are the limp recipe for jell-O. I'm not suggesting we carry a club around like we used to, but seize the belt once in a while for crying out loud. Adjust those pants. Wear them fine stitches proudly, for the love of sugary Jesus. More often than not, I find myself observing men - friends or strangers - and wanting to slap them hard - and I mean scandously hard - off the side of the head. Straighten your back, lift those slouched shoulders and stop holding all those bags like you're some cowardly servant.
To some, these are examples of a good family man. It's not. It's an example of a man who would not know how to use a power saw or baseball bat if it was put in his hands.
Wealthy men today get their hands manicured. They get body waxes. They often present themselves as cookie cutters churned out by a trendy fashion.
All this to attract a girl. Fair enough. Men, however, have no dignity when it comes to courting women. At some point, a man has to stand up and be counted and say "what's this girl worth to me?"
Men are saps. Just look at the movies. Our concept of the man is so refined and watered down it's pathetic. Hard drinking, suave, cigarette smoking crooners are a dead breed. Worse, we have the curious combo of the modern girlie man trying to sometimes act lie Bogart, Cagney, Martin or Sinatra. Heck, even Gene Kelly, with that defined scar, prancing was cooler than the smoked hams we see today. Try and find a defect on a contemporary Hollywood actor. Sexiest man, whomever it may be, alive my ass. I'm still waiting for a wannabe crooner or Rat Pack emulator to walk out on stage with a granola bar and sandals.
Whenever a person bucks the trend, there's a collective hush among the politically correct buffoons. When presented with a man being a man we curl up like a bunch of sensitive pseudo-intellectuals and moralists.
The level of irritability rises exponentially whenever I hear men say weak-kneed things like, "I can't. My wife won't let me" or "I don't make the financial decisions. My wife does" or 'I have to get off the phone now because Nagarella wants me to stare at her." My wife says this and says that. My wife doesn't want, my wife wants. Please.
Once upon a time certain aspects of family life were the strict domain of the man. Roles were clearly defined. Just like an efficient business. Now, men - and it's pretty safe to say they are no longer men - are putzed around on a leash.
I hope my wife and mother are not reading this. No. No, I hope they do. Even I find it hard to escape the rampant womanification of man.
More like annoyed. I have grown tired of people who fail to take a stand. I am also fed up of reading and watching half-witted twits hog all the spotlight with their utterly banal banterings and musings that amount to nothing. Linda McQuaig, a Canadian socialist, is babbling about how the rich are getting richer - gne,gne,gne (Italian for blah,blah,blah) - yet she is so blinded by her anger to recognize that it's far left liberal socialist policies that have led to the economic mess she is so concerned about. She also wrote a book called 'it's about the crude, dude'. After one chapter I had to wash myself it was so pathetic. Yet, these are the heroes to the 'dissidents'. True Canadians are not mindless socialists. They are rugged, enterprising and innovative individualists. 30 years of liberal orthodoxy has proven detrimental to this spirit.
ReplyDeleteIt occurs to me that this 'problem' is directly related to economic reality. Once upon a time men worked, women stayed home with the children. The roles were clearly defined because they could be.
ReplyDeleteNow both parties have to work just to tread water. The lines blurred. It became neccessary to compromise. No more, "Me tarzan, you Jane.
The rich get richer by the work of the majority. They then have the huevos to complain that the family unit is changing. They don't seem to realize that they are the only ones afforded the luxury of a single-income, "traditional" family. Which, incidentally, isn't so historically traditional at all.
I'm as upset as any man that I'm damned if I open a door for a woman, damned if I don't. But the world is changing. I'm not about to get a manicure, but if watching Fried Green Tomatos is going to get me laid easier than stretching my muscles and building a birdhouse, I only have one question: Which video store?