House of Eratosthenes

I really would love to know one day why it is that so many men these days are so concerned about their “style”. Why on Earth does a man need to worry about being stylish??

I stumbled across the Style Guide that apparently Men’s Health magazine has. Gee, I never realized that being stylishly trendy contributed to one’s health! Stupid little me.

One of the first things I saw was an article showing guys how to pick the “right cut” of jeans, an article which has likewise run in chick magazines like Cosmo and Glamour countless times. And now, men can debate the merits of relaxed fit vs. straight leg, boot cut vs. athletic cut. The article even had a section on skinny jeans, a.k.a. GIRL PANTS. The fact that men would even contemplate buying a pair of pants called “skinny jeans” is in and of itself alarming.

My thoughts:

1. First, consider what takes place when we are built. Millions of sperm, which are male, swim toward a singular egg, which is female. Once one of them gets “in,” the others are banished to oblivion. Factors which determine that one sperm will get “in” include: The receptive “mood” of the egg; the sense of direction (such as it is) of the sperm; and persistence of the sperm. All these things correlate to the mating ritual in which we participate, once we grow to maturity, which strongly hints that they’re planted in our subconscious realms during this fertilization process somehow and stay there, hibernating.

2. Now however this hibernating is done, it’s well-established by now that men are programmed to participate in a coupling ritual in such a way that they can overcome a supply-and-demand handicap. In other words, they are programmed to find ways to defeat the competition, and prevail in some kind of chase, to become The One.

3. What a lady/egg “prefers” in her man/sperm, is perhaps one of the deepest, darkest secrets in all of human interaction. It varies from one woman to the next. Kinda. Kinda not. Unhealthy, diseased women make a point of advertising these preferences before they’ve reached the point of maturity where they truly appreciate men. They make a point of rejecting men who do male things — growing hair ladies can’t grow, opening pickle jars ladies can’t open, eating meat, watching sports, buying tools, etc. (I’ve made a point to keep a beard growing on my face at all seasons of the year ever since I figured this out, some fifteen years ago.)

4. Unhealthy, diseased men pursue the “Hoover Vac” approach, which means to find a way to suck in multiple eggs at once, in an attempt to achieve the effect of swimming toward several eggs simultaneously without working that hard. There is, perhaps, some success to be had in this, since unhealthy, diseased women historically do a poor job of forming individual opinions about what they want, and gravitate toward the whims of the crowd. Listening to such women prattle on about what they like in a man, is not unlike listening to a Miss America contestant drone on about World Peace. “Confidant, but not cocky…” no thoughts of her own to offer, as an individual, whatsoever.

5. Because this is a competitive endeavor, it is necessarily a superlative one. You want to be a babe magnet, I want to be a babe magnet, we both can’t be the superior babe-magnet. So you wax your chest, I wear skinny jeans; when I wear skinny jeans, you put liner on your eyelashes; when you do that, I put on lipstick — look, obviously, this is all hypothetical. I wouldn’t do that. The point is the one-upmanship. We’re trying to use the Hoover Vac approach to sidestep the effort of competition…and failing miserably at it.

So that’s my idea on how immature, weak-willed, weak-minded young males are susceptible to this.

What really drives it?

Masculinity is on the short list of things we’re trying to eradicate as the world spins all wobbly on its axis. We have, as an overly-mature society that has ripened past its optimal harvesting point, an innate hostility to it because it is responsible for getting us the things we now have, that we value to the point of taking them for granted. We must therefore dispose of it. You can read more about that here.

Hope that contributes to the discussion. What to do about it? This is where my wellspring of opinionated thought runs dry. I’m not sure there’s anything that can be done. Peevishness toward things that have given us benefit, seems to be an inextricable part of human nature. It is, I think, the feasting upon the apple that drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden. It seems to be in our genetic makeup to acquire wonderful blessings, but not to keep them.

And so masculinity has drawn something of a shitstorm of hostility down upon itself, which no one can coherently explain. Not without facing some dark truths about the human species, and its inherent fallibility.

Thing I Know #130. The noble savage gives us life. Then we outlaw his very existence. We call this process “civilization.” I don’t know why.

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Men Worrying About “Style”Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

Men Worrying About “Style”
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008