Is That Milk In Your Pants?

Do you get embarrassed for people the way I do?

Like, a few weeks ago, my son (who is 22, for context) had a friend of his over to our house and the two of them wanted to take a walk in the woods behind us. Our back gate is in real disrepair, so I have it wrapped up pretty good with bungee cords, etc, so that the dogs don't get out. As a result, the young men had to jump the fence to avoid the inconvenience of undoing it all. 

I happened to look out there and saw my son, on the other side, with his fists on his hips, waiting for his friend who looked not unlike a drunken sea-mammal trying to escape the shallows... He was wobbling atop the fence and I could hear faint groans of pain through the closed window as, presumably, the pointy metal dug into his gut. My son sort of looked around and scratched the back of his ear, obviously reluctant to offer help, which might have embarrassed his friend for the less-than-Olympic performance. Finally, the young chap lolled sideways and thudded onto his back into the dessicating leaves and loam on the other side. 

It was then that my son offered a hand, pulling him up and swiping leaves off of his back. 

I was embarrassed for the kid. 

Currently, I am embarrassed for men for being so oafish. Or, rather, so enslaved by machismo. 

I keep getting ads for jeans on my social media. It's time for new clothes, so I have been looking around, so, no surprise. But, it seems the new trend is "stretchy jeans." I know these have been around for awhile, but I mean really stretchy jeans. 

In a frequently occurring ad, the opening is a guy producing a gallon of milk from within the front of his pants. Point made? It seems the whole premise of the ad is that there is ample room in these jeans for one's manly bits. This ad (and virtually every ad) emphasizes the copious room there is for "the boys" and how there is "no more getting your ____ crushed by your jeans." 

Well, of course that's a problem for you, Captain Virility! And of course you, you studly, Disney Gaston of a fellow -- of course you need jeans that can fit a whole gallon of milk in the front. 

Oy. 

What a bunch of insipient gorillas men are. Picture the casual conversation; a bunch of friends standing around at happy hour; one dude running a finger around the rim of his beer mug and leaning sideways against the bar: "Yeah, these jeans are just cut better. I need room in the front, if you know what I'm saying..." (Cartoon hearts pop like bubbles around the heads of the ladies. [In his mind.])

The only intelligent person in this whole ridiculous picture is the marketing genious who came up with the idea: Bring 'em on board with adolescent vanity. Make it a given that they are so well- endowed that room in their jeans is a big concern. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it was a woman. 

It just leaves me...embarrassed for my own sex. 

The Kind of Man I Want To Be

I know. It's a cheesy title. But it is necessary. We're not allowed to have opinions about others anymore. That's labeled as "judgmental." So, I'm not allowed to say what I believe is "proper manly behavior," because that implies things that we are no longer allowed to believe, like, for instance, that there is a difference between men and women or that, in fact, there is a such thing as "man" and "woman" at all. 

But I have a sense of what it means, for me, to be "a man." I'm not saying you need to be like this or that anyone else needs to care what I think. If you define being a man as standing in a field with a with a propeller beanie on your head and hitting 600 baked potatoes a day off of a tee, have at it. For me, though, there is a combo of stuff that I have seen and respected in men who have influenced me over the years and those things have guided me to where I am today, whether the Interweb groupthinkers like it or not. 

Crying

"Big boys don't cry," some used to say. "Sure they do," people of good sense responded. "Well, they don't cry in front of others," some said. "Well, it all depends," people of good sense responded. 

While my dad was a fan of the John Wayne brand of machismo, he was also a composer. I watched him unashamedly break into tears while listening to Ravel. I saw him wipe tears away during powerful emotional scenes in movies. When my grandfather (his dad) died, I can still see the image of him standing in the twilight-dark kitchen, looking out the window, drinking a glass of milk. His face looked wet. He didn't hide it, but he didn't bawl in front of his son. He didn't sensitivity-signal. 

That's the kind of man I want to be. 

Courage

Back to The Duke: He's been credited as having said that courage is not about not being afraid; it's about getting "into the saddle" even when you are scared out of your mind. Sometimes it's about putting youself last. 

My wife and I have been watching a pretty good show called Longmire. Walt Longmire is a real "throwback" kind of sheriff in Wyoming; cowboy hat, the works. In a recent episode, he decided to go on foot, up a mountain, alone, after a snowcat vehicle full of armed convicts who were holding an FBI agent hostage. When he was told he was crazy for doing this, he said, "If I was a hostage, I'd want to know someone was coming after me." 

That's the kind of man I want to be. 

Chivalry

I treat women with deference; I treat them differently than I treat men, in some ways. I respect them, even though I go out of my way to hold doors for them. (I know that seems impossible, since all of the suspicions point to the fact that this is just cog in the wheel of an insidious plan to keep women feeling as if they need men, but bear with me.) Sure, I hold doors for dudes, but, I might throw the door open wide behind me so they can easily catch it and then say "thanks man" on the way through, but I'd never do that to a lady. I'd stand there and let her go through. 

Why? Not because I don't think she can hold the door, but because I don't think she should have to. What did she do to deserve this? Women, for me, have always represented an ideal that we power-hungry, chest-beating men would do better to imitate. Women have a strength of spirit we only wish we had and that we historically have pretended to have by shooting others by and making labyrinthine rule-systems. Women are the source of life, literally, and they are no less than the bedrock of civilization. 

Least I can do is let them go first through the door. That's the kind of man I want to be. 

"Head of the Household"

I don't want to boss my family around, but I want them to feel like they want to turn to me when things get hard. I want my boys and my wife to see me as a source of courage and strength; of rationality and reliability; of safety. I want to be the captain to whose ship all of the sailors want to be assigned, not the one who is just known for running a tight ship. 

Bringer of Balance

I want to be confident enough in my manliness to be able, occasionally, seek comfort from my wife when things overwhelm me. I have learned to ignore stupid machismo markers like "the man should always drive" and to, instead, focus on doing the things behind the scenes that keep my family happy and healthy --  to expect or desire exactly no credit for being a dad and a husband. As I once heard a mother say on a call in show, I want my children to "take me for granted." My thanks is their respect and healthy develpment, not attention for broadcast-actions of empty toughness. I don't want to spike the ball in the endzone, as if what I did was a big deal; I want to casually toss it to the ref as if I never broke a sweat. 

That's the kind of man I want to be.