If you'll allow me a moment...
Ordinarily when I post on my blog, my topics are light and fun (at least, I think they're fun). I post about television shows and wisdom I'd like to pass on to my future husband and Hobbity things. I don't feel that I'm a very serious person, and I like that my blog tends to reflect my random quirkiness.
However, there has been something on my mind lately about which I feel I must give my opinion. I've been noticing lots of Facebook posts and Buzzfeed things and whatnot about the new movie Magic Mike XXL (although I suppose it's really not all that new). I haven't seen it, but I saw the first one. And the first one was what it was. It was a movie about male strippers. The plot was terrible, but I can't think of a single person in that theater who was there because they expected a good plot. Since the release of the sequel, I've noticed a lot of people commenting on how the men in that movie aren't real, that a real man does this or wears this or thinks this. Most of these posts (in fact, I'd have to say 99.9% of them, came from women). And to those women I'd like to say, who are you to say what a real man is?
Now, none of these posts have been any more specific in their categorizing than the word real. Not attractive. Not sexy. Just real. A real man hunts (or fishes or farms or whatever). A real man drinks beer (or whiskey or scotch or smokes cigars). A real man doesn't have a perfect body. A real man is rugged and smells like the outdoors and is just real, not fake. Because any man who doesn't fit any of those things...is what? Not a real man? A fake man? Not a man at all?
So a man who doesn't drink because there is a history of alcoholism in his family isn't a man? A man who has worked hard to be able to qualify for the Boston Marathon and has a very small percentage of body fat isn't a man? A man who has a 150 IQ and works in a lab searching for a cure for cancer but has softer hands than I do isn't a man? A man who writes poetry or symphonies or paints fantastic works of art on a canvas isn't a man? The actors who played the strippers--forget them, they're not real men. (Sorry, Sofia Vergara and Jenna Dewan-Tatum).
Okay, so let's see where I'm at. I can already hear people saying, "That isn't what I meant!" Well, I'm sorry, but that's what you said. Now, if you'd said that people like the characters Channing Tatum and Joe Manganiello played were not a realistic picture of what a man is, then I would agree with you. Obviously. Even those actors do not have the body and lifestyle that most men you'll come into contact have. They're the 1%.
Now, if what you meant to say was that, in your opinion, those men aren't sexy; that in fact, sexy or attractive men do all of the things on your list, well, then that's what you should have said as well. Then I'd probably start agreeing with you! Calloused hands, beards, long hair (I've got a fetish, sorry). Wears old dirty boots and not designer labels. Smells like mountains and dirt and leather and maleness. I'm a red-blooded woman, I get what you're saying. And the fact that we also just described Cullen Bohannon is not lost on me, either. I'm sorry, but cowboys are sexy as hell. BUT!!! Ladies, when we are making these lists, this is just like those pictures we see online of the warped female with Angelina Jolie's lips and Scar-Jo's hair and Heidi Klum's legs. We are reducing men to objects, and isn't that what we've been working so hard at not having done to us????
I consider myself a feminist (other than the whole bra-burning thing). I've been catcalled. I've been hit on by creepy people of varying ages. I absolutely agree that women (in the most part) do not get the respect from the male population they deserve. But we have been living with this idea of what a "real woman" is and does since the dawn of civilization. A real woman cooks, cleans, has children, takes care of others, is self-sacrificing. After fighting like hell to make our way up the corporate ladders and into places we weren't previously allowed, it seems we haven't quite learned something from all of that. We're pulling the old double standard here--what's okay for me to do is not okay for someone else to do to me. So no, I don't think we should label men if we truly don't want to be labelled. I don't think we should reduce them to a set of characteristics that determines their manhood anymore than they should do the same to us. If we don't want to hear "you run/throw like a girl," then we should also be equally appalled by "man up/grow a pair." Maybe this means I'm not a feminist. Maybe I'm more of a humanist, or an equality-ist.
And now I want to address two entities indivdually:
--Ladies, if we want to continue seeing progress come our way, we have to listen to the words of a very wise man (that doesn't sound right, but go with me here): Be the change you want to see in the world. I don't think anyone, feminist or not, can argue with Gandhi. If we don't want to be objectified, then we need to stop objectifying others.
--And now, my Dear Future Husband: I made a list up there of what a sexy man looks like, but I want you to know something. When I choose to marry you (which either makes you the luckiest man on earth or the absolute craziest man on earth to willingly pledge yourself to this riddle that even a Hobbit couldn't solve), it will be because I find you sexy in every way--your mind, your heart, your spirit, and yes, your body. Because we all know definitions and ideas can change. And you'll be my new definition of sexy if you promise I can be yours.
~Stay Gold!
However, there has been something on my mind lately about which I feel I must give my opinion. I've been noticing lots of Facebook posts and Buzzfeed things and whatnot about the new movie Magic Mike XXL (although I suppose it's really not all that new). I haven't seen it, but I saw the first one. And the first one was what it was. It was a movie about male strippers. The plot was terrible, but I can't think of a single person in that theater who was there because they expected a good plot. Since the release of the sequel, I've noticed a lot of people commenting on how the men in that movie aren't real, that a real man does this or wears this or thinks this. Most of these posts (in fact, I'd have to say 99.9% of them, came from women). And to those women I'd like to say, who are you to say what a real man is?
Now, none of these posts have been any more specific in their categorizing than the word real. Not attractive. Not sexy. Just real. A real man hunts (or fishes or farms or whatever). A real man drinks beer (or whiskey or scotch or smokes cigars). A real man doesn't have a perfect body. A real man is rugged and smells like the outdoors and is just real, not fake. Because any man who doesn't fit any of those things...is what? Not a real man? A fake man? Not a man at all?
So a man who doesn't drink because there is a history of alcoholism in his family isn't a man? A man who has worked hard to be able to qualify for the Boston Marathon and has a very small percentage of body fat isn't a man? A man who has a 150 IQ and works in a lab searching for a cure for cancer but has softer hands than I do isn't a man? A man who writes poetry or symphonies or paints fantastic works of art on a canvas isn't a man? The actors who played the strippers--forget them, they're not real men. (Sorry, Sofia Vergara and Jenna Dewan-Tatum).
Okay, so let's see where I'm at. I can already hear people saying, "That isn't what I meant!" Well, I'm sorry, but that's what you said. Now, if you'd said that people like the characters Channing Tatum and Joe Manganiello played were not a realistic picture of what a man is, then I would agree with you. Obviously. Even those actors do not have the body and lifestyle that most men you'll come into contact have. They're the 1%.
Now, if what you meant to say was that, in your opinion, those men aren't sexy; that in fact, sexy or attractive men do all of the things on your list, well, then that's what you should have said as well. Then I'd probably start agreeing with you! Calloused hands, beards, long hair (I've got a fetish, sorry). Wears old dirty boots and not designer labels. Smells like mountains and dirt and leather and maleness. I'm a red-blooded woman, I get what you're saying. And the fact that we also just described Cullen Bohannon is not lost on me, either. I'm sorry, but cowboys are sexy as hell. BUT!!! Ladies, when we are making these lists, this is just like those pictures we see online of the warped female with Angelina Jolie's lips and Scar-Jo's hair and Heidi Klum's legs. We are reducing men to objects, and isn't that what we've been working so hard at not having done to us????
I consider myself a feminist (other than the whole bra-burning thing). I've been catcalled. I've been hit on by creepy people of varying ages. I absolutely agree that women (in the most part) do not get the respect from the male population they deserve. But we have been living with this idea of what a "real woman" is and does since the dawn of civilization. A real woman cooks, cleans, has children, takes care of others, is self-sacrificing. After fighting like hell to make our way up the corporate ladders and into places we weren't previously allowed, it seems we haven't quite learned something from all of that. We're pulling the old double standard here--what's okay for me to do is not okay for someone else to do to me. So no, I don't think we should label men if we truly don't want to be labelled. I don't think we should reduce them to a set of characteristics that determines their manhood anymore than they should do the same to us. If we don't want to hear "you run/throw like a girl," then we should also be equally appalled by "man up/grow a pair." Maybe this means I'm not a feminist. Maybe I'm more of a humanist, or an equality-ist.
And now I want to address two entities indivdually:
--Ladies, if we want to continue seeing progress come our way, we have to listen to the words of a very wise man (that doesn't sound right, but go with me here): Be the change you want to see in the world. I don't think anyone, feminist or not, can argue with Gandhi. If we don't want to be objectified, then we need to stop objectifying others.
--And now, my Dear Future Husband: I made a list up there of what a sexy man looks like, but I want you to know something. When I choose to marry you (which either makes you the luckiest man on earth or the absolute craziest man on earth to willingly pledge yourself to this riddle that even a Hobbit couldn't solve), it will be because I find you sexy in every way--your mind, your heart, your spirit, and yes, your body. Because we all know definitions and ideas can change. And you'll be my new definition of sexy if you promise I can be yours.
~Stay Gold!
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