I had a avoided the Glee thing — too much of a cliche, gay man has to like a TV show about putting on musical numbers with a gay character. Alas, I started watching it during the flights on my recent overseas trip and have to confess to enjoying it a lot.
Rolling Stone magazine have produced a very amusing character moment for Kurt Hummel, the gay kid (played by actor Chris Colfer).
I am guessing his drink is a Green Dragon rather than a Grasshopper (further possibilities here). Can we suggest what tune the young guy should now launch into? (Would Macho Man work in a falsetto?)
This is also the Saturday chit-chat post.
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Hmm… sometimes you get the “bear”, sometimes the “bear” gets you!
DEM, you’re a bad person but I like you
There’s a bear in there…
</highschool-flashback>
Desi wins the internetz for today. I tips me lid.
Those oiled-up metrosexuals just don’t look threatening.
They look more like horse’s hoofs themselves, rather than menacing or macho.
SatP: That word ‘metrosexual’, I don’t think it means what you think it means …
It means “pansy”.
Any way one wants to twist it, “metrosexual” is the antonym of “masculine”.
That really depends on your definition of “masculine”.
Despis, no matter how much they wish with all their might, white collar boys, or boys who never go into the sun, are never going to attain peak masculinity. Ever.
I suspect that anyone who aspires to attain your brand of “peak masculinity” will miss out on “peak humanity” by quite a substantial margin.
You suspect wrong Despis.
Your implied hypothesis that all men are brutes does you no credit.
So how do you define masculinity and what aspects of it are metrosexuals lacking?
S@7 I had always assumed the antonym of masculine was feminine, but what do I know?
The picture is interesting in that it represents, as Lorenzo used in another sense, a couple of cliches sometimes applied to gays. But I have to say that while these cliches do exist IRL, they are not particularly representative of the vast majority of gay men; and maybe that’s why the term cliche can be reasonably used?
Also, I dunno about ‘peak masculinity’. (Is that a Bear Grills reference for DEM’s benefit?) You sure you don’t just mean ‘perky’? And surely there’s more to masculinity than having a suntan.
Vitamin D is actually a vital nutrient for hypertrophy, so …
My problem is that it is not clear to me that any of the people in the picture are metrosexual. The bears are being hyper-masculine and the twink is extremely preppy.
I’m with Lorenzo. To me, ‘metrosexual’ means a young well-groomed guy who wears expensive smart casual or business clothes, who looks after his hair and nails, who probably wears moisturiser or expensive cologne, and who takes a lot of care with his appearance. He is generally urbane.
A metrosexual is not effeminate but not incredibly masculine either (unlike the extremes represented by the guys in the photo above). None of those men in that photo are metrosexual. It should also be noted that I think a metrosexual may be homosexual, heterosexual or somewhere in between.
I suspect that anyone who aspires to attain your brand of “peak masculinity” will miss out on “peak humanity” by quite a substantial margin.
Well they’ll certainly miss out on a long life.
Why do I suspect that SATP is a traditionalist of the “masculine = saponification deficient” school?
Coz you’ve got the bull by the horns DEM.
I get the feeling I’ve stumbled into a site where lots of other people are living in an environment do deviod of fair dinkum gender roles that they go all day, or longer, without rubbing shoulders with a man doing a man’s job.
That is, all the males one comes into contact with are interchangeable with females. That is, the only difference in replaceing or interchanging a male for a female is one of them wears a skirt to work.
Quite an awakening for me. I had overlooked how emasculated are entire sections of modern western society.
What’s “a man doing a man’s job”? Am I a woman doing a woman’s job? Or am I a woman doing a man’s job?
The guys on the door of the Missoni Hotel up the road in central Edinburgh wear skirts (kilts) to work Steve. There are a couple with rugby thighs who look pretty male to these appreciative female eyes. {waggles eyebrows}
SatP@19 Well, you would be wrong in that. Indeed, the self-confidently masculine nature of the men in my friendship network (which lacks gay men apart from myself except on its outer fringes) is one of its notable features.
I’m married to a scientist who only wore heavy metal t-shirts with holes in them and flannelette shirts when I first met him. Fortunately I have now metrosexualised him to an extent. He still wears crazy t-shirts – my favourite is his Monkey Magic one – but not those ones with holes in them in public any more!
Well I’m totally with Steve on this. The crap they serve on holiday weekends is un.be.leaveable. Been a while since I’ve been able to get a decent gender role with tomato sauce anywhere.
And as for wanting to “rub shoulders with a man doing a man’s job” well hey I know just what you mean! and whatever floats your boat, I say. So be out and proud and say you want to rub those shoulders.
kvd: You’re a bad person but I like you
I do hope that Steve is being facetious.
I’ve got the Blur song in my head now…
Girls who are boys
Who like boys to be girls
Who do boys like they’re girls
Who do girls like they’re boys…
LE@23 when you mentioned your husband’s “heavy metal t-shirts with holes in them” I immediately thought of this song. And there’s even one of your old wedding photos used at 1.40
{sings} “Always should be someone, you really luuuuuurve..!”
KVD, hahahaha! Well he is *my* knight in rusty armour (aw).
For those who don’t immediately have Damon Albarn’s voice in their head after L-Plate Lawyer’s comment, here’s the YouTube clip. Love a bit of Britpop, but of course I do.
My first thought on this picture was “Wow, what a great piece of art”
Gee whillikers people, I didn’t intend to start a contest over who can pretend the hardest to themselves that men who use moisturister are still men, even if they are doing work that can just as easily be done by a woman!
All I was saying was those gym-rat looking pooncey types in that photo don’t look menacing.
More than anything else they look like gay guys ready to board their float at Mardis Gras time.
Menacing they ain’t.
But then again, I’ve been a vocal critic of many XXXX advertisments, on the grounds they aren’t masculine enough.
(It started with that one of 4 fellows in shorts on the front verandah of an inner city queenslander style house, some years ago now)
Not being a TV watcher, I hadn’t heard of “Glee” until a few minutes ago. I skimmed over that bit when I first read the post. (silly me!)
Maybe it’s just me, but that first face on the left looks suspiciously like Rory McCann, the porage oats man (you might have seen him recently in such television series as “Game of Thrones”).
On the man doing a man’s job thing – check out the review of this new book called Raising Boys that Feminists Will Hate – a US author has said that we should raise boys to “dominate creation and to exercise authority over the planet” and that feminists and lesbians have taken over parenting to produce “nice, placid cooperators”. Eeek.
P.S. DEM, it DOES look like McCann!