What Are We Gonna Do With All This Trash?: Get Your Masculinity Out Of My Face

June 29, 2007

Get Your Masculinity Out Of My Face

First of all, my apologies for letting Miss Paris Hilton taint the top of our blog for so many days. Unfortunately, you all have now contracted a wide array of rare and incurable STDs.

But back to my main point...

I'm afraid that we have reached the limit of what a male dominated society can bring to us. Every day in this country men are expected to conform to this silly, cartoonish notion of uber-masculinity. It's as though men are in constant pursuit of more manliness, but no matter how much you have, there's is always an elusive other with more of it.

The typical man is supposed to be strong, aggressive, detached from emotions, making fun of sissies and/or 'girly men', and sexin' as many hotties as possible. This antiquated stereotype is consistently reinforced by society: men's magazines, popular music, movies, TV, the military, college fraternities, prison, crime families both Italian and otherwise, commercials for body spray/deodorant (TAG, AXE, BOD, RGX, OLD[Spice]...Hmmm... why do they all have 3-letter names?...probably the initials of the industrial chemicals used in their manufacture), body wash (Maintenance for my Mansuit?! I didn't even know I had one!!), and perhaps the greatest offender of all: the beer commercial (Check out Exhibit A , Exhibit B , and Exhibit C). Even this country's foreign policy reflects (or possibly causes) this amped up machismo (See: constant U.S. warfare and recklessness).

Call me crazy, but maybe I want to run the damn vacuum cleaner, or do the dishes, or chat with my wife, or enjoy my favorite type of apple (Pink Lady) , or walk my 7 lb. dog WITHOUT having to wear a helmet due to the falling giant cans of a disgusting swill of a beer. Long story short, masculinity and feminity shouldn't be so rigidly enforced and they're not so easily defined. It's a continuum, people! Duh! And that's okay. I just want dudes to stop acting like such dicks trying to be 'manly'. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get in touch with my feminine side.

2 comments:

Marie Debris said...: Your topic is pretty interesting . . . I just heard this topic being discussed on the radio today, on HOT 99.5 no less. Most of the female callers were saying that they are turned off by guys who cry. Me? I'm okay with a guy who cries, as long as it's not every day and as long as he doesn't cry more than I do.; 11:38 PM
Scrap Heap Pete said...: It makes sense that women are affected by this notion of manhood just as much as men are. I think women put up with a lot of guys' shit and stay in bad relationships because they think "this is what men are supposed to do." Who knows what effect this is having on the prevalence of sex crimes and domestic violence in this country...; 9:50 AM

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A History Of Trash

Trash, at first, was a pretty cool guy. You know, he’d come over with some beers, and you’d hang out and have a couple of laughs. Maybe Trash brought some weed with him, and you guys tried to sync up Dark Side Of The Moon with The Wizard Of Oz until you remembered you lost your VHS copy of that movie sometime in college and that you fucking hate Pink Floyd. Good times were had, nonetheless.

But then, you don’t know what changed, but Trash started to overstay his welcome. He’d just linger for hours, never taking the hint you wanted him to leave, no matter how many times you yawned obnoxiously or mentioned how early you had to get up tomorrow. Trash just didn’t get it. You were getting older. You didn’t have the time anymore to stay up until 3 a.m. to talk about the Port season of “The Wire” or how much you miss Jawbox. Eventually, you just stopped taking Trash’s phone calls and no longer replied to his group e-mails about sneaking into abandoned mental hospitals.

Last time you saw Trash, he was smoking alone outside a local dive bar, looking down at his decaying and mismatched shoes. You hoped he had been doing well. You hoped he had not been hurt by the disintegration of your friendship. And if he had, you wanted to comfort him. You wanted to tell him that even though people move on with their lives, it doesn’t mean they stop caring. You wanted him to see in your eyes a sincere appreciation for the time you shared, because all the relationships in our lives help make us who we are, and even if you weren’t the best of friends anymore, you wanted him to know that there would always be a piece of Trash in your heart.

But instead, you looked away and crossed the street. You were with your new girlfriend, and you really didn’t want to have to explain Trash to her. She’d never understand.