I had a pretty exciting time the other week, I spent several pleasant hours on a Sunday afternoon swinging my chopper in the garden. Yup I was chopping logs with a great big axe! Whenever I visit may parents in rural Shropshire, I usually get roped into some kind of manual task. Sure I moan about it, but the truth is I secretly love it… It’s macho, hairy-chested kinda work, man’s work. I mean really, what’s more manly than chopping down a tree, or breaking stuff up for firewood? It’s great in so many ways. For starters, you get to use tools… If you know anything about guys, you’ll know we love tools… It makes no difference whether we know what they’re for, or if we’re proficient in their use, we just love them… especially big, destructive tools, like axes and sledge hammers. You see these tools require no talent, and neither does chopping or smashing stuff. If I was asked to build something (a table for example) I’d be stumped, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I could construct a useful table…. Ask me to smash one up for firewood though, and I’m your man… I’ll smash and saw things into kindling, till the cows come home. I even enjoy dressing for the part, battered jeans, an old t-shirt, and workmen’s gloves… so much more fun than boring old suit!
Anyway partway through sawing through a gnarled old tree trunk, I got to thinking…. Do the ladies prefer the more macho kinda guy? What the hell is macho these days anyway? Now I must admit that I’m not what most people would consider macho. For starters I’m rather partial to a pink shirt, I’ve also been known to spend a small fortune on hair do, and my last purchase from Boots was ex-foliating scrub and some moisturiser! Frankly I’m an embarrassment to the Y Chromosome, if it was the 1930s I’d probably be branded a homosexual, and locked up on the grounds of public decency!
In my defense, and that of men in general, we do live in confusing times. For most of the 90’s we were supposed to become ‘New Men’… That was where the party was at, we were meant to open up, and share our feelings, we were meant to cry, eat quiche, join Greenpeace, and admire Germaine Greer. And where did all this new man, new age hocus-pocus get us? Bloody nowhere that’s where! I mean what kind of woman wants some soppy wretch of man, who cries when explaining how the plight of the Giant Panda touches his very soul? No woman at all wants that! I swear to god that the whole ‘new man’ era was an elaborate hoax, played by women, to show how easily influenced us guys really are…. and let’s face it we’ll agree with pretty much anything you tell us agree with, if we think we’re gonna get laid…. the huge joke about the new man era is that, once we started acting like new men, you wouldn’t shag us if the world depended on it. Christ a new man couldn’t get laid in brothel! Yep, you girls royally messed us up with the new man lark.
After we realised this new man thing was one big con, we rebelled…. we became the Loaded generation, new lads! We had FHM and Loaded showing us that we could do all the things we enjoy, football, drinking, being lairy, and still get laid! It was great, we all started speaking in mockney accents, and strutting around the place like we were Liam Gallagher. We got drunk, we messed about, and bizarrely you girls (well some of you at least) liked us much better for it… out went quiche, mineral water, and hemp slacks. In came kebabs, lager and Ted Baker shirts. Looking back on it they were good times… England did well in Euro ’96, Tony Blair was getting elected, Oasis were at their peak, Micheal Owen still had pace, Man Utd won the European Cup… these were great day’s be young and male in the UK. Everything seemed achievable and girls seemed to like us being irresponsible, loud, brash and laddish.
The trouble is, that by the time you finish university, get a job and start having to take life bit more seriously… you can’t really keep strutting around like you’re a footballer or a rock star, it dawns on you that your chances of becoming either have long since drowned in a sea of Carling, vomit and stale curry! Plus, it actually turns out that there really is more to life, than drunk one-night stands and football. This can be quite a hard realisation to deal with! You’ve spent the past few years rebelling against all that’s soppy and new man-ish, yet you find yourself strangely drawn to a Roquet and Watercress salad, and quiet stroll round the British Museum. Hell’s bells even FHM is telling you to moisturise! What does it all mean?! I’ll tell you what it means… There’s generation of twenty-something guys out there, with some kind of split personality disorder…. Hopelessly torn between a relaxing bath and trip to the garden center, or an afternoon on the lash and a trip to Stringfellow’s!
It gets worse too, most of us are stuck doing office jobs… yeah it’s warm and it pays the bills but it’s hardly sexy or macho is it. And macho does seem to be where it’s at these days. Look at Hollywood, all the girls fancy Russell Crow in Gladiator or Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. I mean how can I compete with 007? “well my dear, I had a life and death struggle with a particularly deadly powerpoint presentation today” just isn’t gonna wash is it? Honestly I really don’t think girls realise how traumatic it is to be a male in the 21st century! We’re struggling to choose between a goat’s cheese wrap or a burger, and you’re busily replacing us with rampant rabbits!
Seriously though I do think there’s something to be said for being a bit more manly, and despite my moisturiser I reckon I have my moments. I even took up boxing, mainly as a safer alternative to smoking, but girls honestly do seem to think I’m a bit cooler for it (even though I’m totally rubbish). At the end of the day though, I reckon confidence is way more important… If there’s a more attractive quality than confidence I’m yet to find it. Hell that’s probably why most of us guys are on here, older women are more confident, more self assured, they don’t need us, and that’s a very sexy thing! So if we’re ever gonna have any kind of chance with any of them, we’d sure as hell better be confident too… I mean we are men after all. So what if our bathrooms contain more cosmetics than Doris Day’s Boudoir, and the most macho thing you’ve done all week is get on a bendy bus without paying…. we’ve got to keep our end up, or we’ll be totally replaced by Dildo’s and Daniel Craig posters!! And that is surely a fate worse than death!!
By Dan the Man
