A few days ago, this issue of Popular Mechanics appeared on our dining room table. The big subtitle for this issue: "100 Skills Every Man Should Know." I don't know why I opened it. I knew what would be there: a list consisting of 50 things I don't know how to do, 25 things I'm afraid to do, and probably 20 things I would rather hire someone to do. I figured I could do five of the things on the list. After all, I do have a penis.I could do more of the things on their list than I thought I could. It turns out that real men should be able to tape drywall, set up a ladder, build a fire in the woods, iron a shirt, operate some basic power tools, change a diaper, drive a stick shift, tie a necktie, hitch up a trailer, parallel park, change a tire, fix a toilet-tank flapper, shovel (I don't see how anyone could screw this up), mix concrete, prune bushes and small trees, ride a bike (again, this is a challenge?), jump start a car, and fold the American flag. These are all things that I can do reasonably well.
But just about everything else on this list is meant to make me feel like an effeminate sissy, but I think the list has some pretty harsh demands. You'd have to be Paul Fucking Bunyan to be able to do everything on this list. Most of it is the typical heteronormative outdoorsy crap that I was expecting: split firewood, fell a tree, throw a spiral pass with a football, shoot a gun straight, cast a fishing line, replacing several different car parts, etc. But some of it is just goofy. Number 48 is "Conquer an off-road obstacle." Is this really a big issue for every man in the country? My Ford Escort can barely make it over a speed bump let alone the craggy peak that they show this Expedition crossing. Number 59 is "Home-brew beer." That's right penis-packers! Every man should know how to brew his own goddamn beer. It's not like it takes over a month and requires hard-to-find ingredients. In number 64, they expect you to "run rapids in a canoe." Fuck that. Just... fuck that. Number 73 is "skipper a boat." First of all, how often does one use the word "skipper" as a verb. Second, doesn't skippering a boat first require HAVING a boat. Guess real men are rolling in the greenbacks.
My personal favorite is number 66: "Escape a sinking car." It's not that this is not an important thing to know, but this seems to be a difficult thing to test. The idea of waiting for the water to fill the interior of the car until the pressure is equalized enough for you to open the door is not a particularly difficult concept. However, not panicking, not pissing your pants, and not having your lungs fill with water as you're screaming like a little girl aren't really covered in the magazine. When you're cozy on dry land, it's easy to say you'd keep your cool, but when your ass is sinking into a river, we'll see how collected you stay.
I'm not surprised that I don't measure up to any standard of masculinity. I don't have a hard-on for sports. I don't like to hunt. I refuse to touch a fish unless it's batter-dipped and deep fried. I don't know shit about cars beyond jumping the battery and checking the fluids and tire pressure. Even the nerdy realms of masculinity are foreign to me. I don't really play violent video games. I don't know jack about computers. And even though Wikipedia, cartoons, and Batmite have taught me more about the Marvel and DC universes than anyone should know, I don't read comic books. Granted, Star Trek fans are mostly male, but that's not really something to brag about. I didn't see "Know the Difference Between Romulans and Cardassians" on the skills list.
The sports apathy is always the big one. I came across this quote from David Sedaris recently:
"I had no interest in football or basketball but had learned it was best to pretend otherwise. If a boy didn't care for barbecued chicken or potato chips, people would accept it as a matter of personal taste, saying, 'Oh well, I guess it takes all kinds.' You could turn up your nose at the president or Coke or even God, but there were names for boys who didn't like sports. When the subject came up, I found it best to ask which team my questioner preferred. Then I'd say, 'Really? Me too!'"
Of course, David Sedaris is proudly and flamingly gay, so he doesn't really help my cause.
I had a long conversation with one of my professors last year about "Queer Theory" because I thought it sounded rather offensive. It seemed like it involved searching for gay stereotypes in the strangest of places. After quite a bit of our usual difficult banter (the professor and I both thought the other was an asshole), I finally got the idea that a "queering of the moment" was simply a point where a character did something that wasn't "heteronormative." Meaning, when someone does something that doesn't fit into the socially-accepted gender roles, it's a queering of the moment. I didn't like this at all. It means that most of the moments in my life have been queered, and that's not the kind of information that's going to help me score points with women.
This list of 100 manly skills effectively epitomises what is generally accepted to be the "manly" man, and the magazine's position is that EVERY man should know how to do these things. The implication, of course, is that if you can't do these things, you're not a real man. I never understood this posturing macho shit. If you genuinely like to hunt, fish, watch sports, or whatever, that's great! But if you need a goddamn list to tell you if you're being manly enough, well then you've got some insecurity issues.
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The Man Test: Not graded on a curve.
2 comments:
The Man Test: Not graded on a curve.
Lol, but untrue. It's curved when any woman actually decide to date a man. It's not like we're given copies of that list as a way to check off whether he passes the test and is datable or not. It may not seem like it, but we're pretty forgiving about some of the stuff on that list. After all, if you just bumble about muttering "I'll take care of it honey," and then after 45 minutes of banging on stuff say, "Let's call somebody in to fix it," we're pretty much OK with that.
Just as long as we don't have to do it, we really don't give a shit how you get things solved.
Women are never the problem when it comes to this man-test. Women could care less. We men are the ones who are ridiculously insecure about it. I seldom meet women who care about my lack of sports knowledge. Guys will give you grief though. Men are the only ones concerned about what it's like to be a REAL MAN. It's like the ladies say, "You guys care more about the size of it than we do." It's true in that respect, and it's true with all the other macho activities as well.
On the flip side, there are a lot of women who are obsessed with their feminine image, and most guys could care less.
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