TC Luoma - 12 Manliness Guidelines

TC Is a funny guy, and while I'm not sure I'm down with his ideas here (in fact, his Beckham bashing is a little less than mature), he is entertaining to read. Oh yeah, if you are easily offended, please don't read this article.

ATOMIC DOG
12 Manliness Guidelines
by TC

Manliness is a funny thing. It's hard to define.

I mean TV and the movies and the commercials — oh, the commercials — have done mucked it up. They done made it a caricature of itself.

They made it so manliness is defined by how much beer you drink and how big your pick-up truck is and whether there's enough mud on it and how many feathers and varieties of fur are on the grill, presumably from 4-wheeling through ecologically sensitive areas and pulverizing some endangered species.

That pseudo-manliness shit, made hard and lumpy by too much popular-culture Metamucil, is hard to filter out. It's hard to keep it from influencing my man meter.

Still, I seem to have an innate sense of what actions are manly and which aren't. I even have a sense of what clothes are manly and what aren't.

But the intellectual part of me says what the hell, how do clothes or fashion or affectations define manliness? They don't, not really. Manliness is defined by actions and quiet confidence and loyalty and nobility and chivalry and a whole bunch of other good words that end in the letter y.

But I've seen things. I've not only seen things, but I've heard some things, Joey; things that make my manliness radar ping — and not just one ping, Vasily, multiple pings. Sounds like an enraged meth freak beating on the hood of a Prius with a fireplace poker.

Maybe there's a special part of our brain, nurtured by pure, high-grade Testosterone, that makes these judgments for us, and arguing about them is like analyzing, or worse, arguing about, why Miss April's sweet ass makes us temporarily forget that our wives, children, parents, or even sweet ol' Nana and Papa ever existed.

Early last year, I wrote about "The Richardson Society," a group of Marines that meet regularly to experience the finer things in life. I wrote how part of their discussion had been about this manliness thing, and they enjoyed debating such things as whether it was manly to wear a sports jersey with some athlete's name and number on the back.

(One of them recently wrote an article about this very topic, but I chose not to read it, lest it influence my list.)

Unlike me, they didn't question that part of the brain that made those decisions. Whether something was manly or not was largely a black or white issue.

Inspired by them, I've chosen to quit intellectualizing the issue and just go with my gut. With that in mind, here's some shit that just doesn't fly on my manliness scale:

1. Wearing a Sports Jersey

The Richardson Society deemed it was okay to wear a sports jersey until you got to high school. I concur. After that, it's got to go to Goodwill.

Idolizing another man merely for his athletic abilities is distasteful in itself, but wearing his name on your back? What's the point? It's not a magic talisman that will grant you the skills of the athlete, nor will it get you any girls, unless you find a nerdy one who's wearing the same jersey.

There is an exception, though. Some clothing items feature the name of a sports franchise or a sports star, but it's used in an ironic sense. If that's the case, feel free to wear it.

Oh wait a minute, I just thought of a second exception. Hot girls can wear anything — including sports jerseys — and get away with it.

2. Wearing a Sports Jersey with Beckham's name on it

Unless you live in Europe (and don't know any better), you shouldn't wear a Beckham jersey if you're older than, say, 6.

Letting a boy older than 6 wear one may affect the young man's sexual development. If you're an adult and you wear one, you can probably get a job guarding a harem.

3. Eating an Ice Cream Cone

Can you imagine Clint Eastwood licking an ice cream cone? No. The thought of it makes you queasy, doesn't it?

Maybe if it had the outline of a vagina made out of sprinkles and a little cherry gummy-bear candy clit, but a plain ice cream cone? No way.

4. Drinking Wine

I'm going to tell you a real-life secret that's more tightly guarded than anything in The Da Vinci Code:

Nobody really likes wine. Really. Oh it's fine to get drunk with, but only people with some whacked out gene that encodes for a faulty receptor protein appreciate wine, along with similar "varietals" like vinegar, cat piss, radiator fluid, or broth made from a fat sweaty girl's panties.

Besides, it's hard to be manly when you pick up that glass with your dainty fingers, swirl it around, take a sip, and get an expression that makes you look like you're getting fellated by a Vietnamese girl with removable teeth.

And I tell you, beer ain't all that much better. It's the polar opposite of wine, but not in a good way. I'll prove it to you: beer commercials. Any self-respecting man would look at any beer commercial, get sick to his stomach at the kind of guy represented therein, and swear off the evil brew forever.

Men drink whiskey, gin, vodka, bourbon, Scotch, or nothing at all, literally. I mean not even water. Okay, okay, water and protein drinks too, but that's it.

5. Texting

Go ahead and text, new-media boy, but unless you're 15 and the star of the delightful comic strip, Zits, you must occasionally converse the old-fashioned way: through speech, otherwise known as the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words.

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Tags: masculinity, rules, manliness, culture, Atomic Dog, 12 Manliness Guidelines, TC Luoma, T-Nation