Sometimes I feel like guys can't win. I know so many women who blew off really great guys because they were "too nice" only to take up with a so-called bad-boy who wouldn't know what to do if mommy and daddy stopped paying their bills. I married the "nice guy," [and he never cries on anyone's shoulder thankyouverymuch] who is twice the man of all those metrosexual she-men who think it somehow makes sense to flat-iron their hair while treating every woman they know like crap. Hip-hop isn't the only thing ruining men in this country. Step away from the tanning booth!

I'll speak for women here – I don't want a man who cries unless they are intense pain (think leg broken with bones sticking out) or someone very close to them dies (their child, mother, etc.). I and plenty of woman like me want real men like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Sensitivity and caring should not be overshadowed by having the testicular fortitude to kick someone's ass when they need it. I fear for this country as true masculinity dies.

Pacification and Domestication through Emasculation/Castration. Like steers and geldings.

Piyush Jindal. Now there's a real man.

They have a word for men like Brody Jenner around these parts. It's not a word I'd ever utter, but the locals would be able to pick him out a mile away.

I'm a man! I'm 40!

I speak for all woman (okay, not all women (okay, only me)) when I say – You are so right! Women don't want a protector, but they do want someone who will want to protect them! Are there many men left who's handshake is as good as any written contract? I do not need competition for the mirror! to paraphase SQT – Step away from the hair gel and man-ke-up.

Joel McHale ripped on this show on The Soup for a couple weeks in a row. All I can say is… yikes.

There's a new flick coming out, "I Love You, Man" which appears to be in this genre. This is just another angle to try to get laid, IMHO. Women love to nurture, and if you seem to be in pain, their nature is to want to heal. Witness the scene in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy and his galpal are alone in the captain's cabin of the tramp steamer…

The softer and easier life becomes, the more alike the two sexes become. When the crap hits the fan, men will be men and women will be women, and there is nothing between them when it comes to toughness and courage. They just show it in different ways. In WWII, women made up the vast majority of our work force and did every job that had been done previously by men. This is just showbiz.

"And that's why I don't read the newspapers! It's garbage!"

It's very hard… er, make that "difficult" to be an old fashioned, fishing, hunting, shooting, drinking, swearing, pickup-truck-driving, motorcycle-riding, Christian retrosexual these days. We're responsible for ALL of society's ills and we're the only group left that it's OK to be prejudiced against. Double up on all of that if you happen to be a musician constantly surrounded by raging leftards. Yet, somehow, I still don't feel the need for a support group.

The ascension of Brody Jenner and male wussification isn't really damaging to the values of the young girls, it's misleading the guys who see the girls fawning over it. The guys think they need to get with the fashion and get metro or they'll miss out. What the guys don't know is that if they act like men, work hard, exercise, be confident, be leaders, control their emotions, be a little cocky, and make fun of heartthrob trends from MTV, the girls will be much more strongly attracted to them.

Millions of years of evolution is way more powerful than pop culture trends.

OK…

Step one of being a 'Real Man' (with apologies to Todd Rundgren) is having a real center of gravity, a bearing from which to radiate your confidence. When immature it comes across as brash behavior- but when you grow up it becomes steely resolve. When you have that, then you don't give a rat's rear end what lightweights and losers think…

I'll speak for me. I don't mind if a man cries…..at the birth of his child, or if his mother/father/wife/child is killed, or if he's just suffered a severed artery. But if he cries at a bad hair day, I don't want to know him.

I like men who are kind, decent, forthright, chivalrous and above all honorable. I like Paladins, Spartans, Crusaders, and parfit gentil knights. Men who are decent, not horndogs. But these kinds of men would be laughed and sneered at by MTV and the NYT.

Please God, bring back the masculine male. And send all the melodramatic, Euro skinny, Y-chromosome femans to a Dude's Ranch with a pocket knife, Carhartt boots, and one match. Don't let them leave until their hands have calluses.

I have two or three life long buds (30 plus yrs). We CAN talk about anything but don't. I like that kind of friend.

Also, I can call them anytime if I need to rumble with someone. Never happened but it is nice to know they are there.

As for women today, I feel for them. They are told so many conflicting things about who they should be. Hey, my advice, just be who you are.

Desparate times call for desparate measures. Ever since MTV showed the first video, it was obselete. Every time it introduced something new, it only further pushed its obselescene due to the immediate ripple effect of its ideas into the mainstream. You cannot patent a TV show. What is viewed is viewed, absorbed, digested, and regurgitated back into the market as something new.

So today it's "Bromance"
Tomorrow it will be "Muddy Buddies": the show where to two buddies have fun in a mud pit. Light petting may ensue.
Later: "Manwich".

Then, the meteor strikes and Armegeddon ensues.

"Manwitch" could be a male version of 'Charmed'. Surprised the CW hasn't come up with it.

I think you might be interpreting, "Hey, make a valid point sometime" as "You hurt my feelings." Just a guess.

Oh, I wasn't casting aspersions on you or any of the commentators (well, maybe Lola). I was thinking of Gary Graham's whiny pieces, actually.

best all around movie about a "real man" is THE QUIET MAN..

Yes I can and yes I have. Would you like to toss one at me?

Agreed. If the "man" spends longer primping and fixing his hair than I do, I'm not interested. (sharing bathroom time would get nasty rather quickly) A guy should be competent if he possibly can. Arrogant pretty boys are a dime a dozen. Competent men are hot.

I used to get made at all the wussification BS, but now I embrace it. While all the parents of the world raise soft sensitive kids, they will be crippled as adults in the real world and will end up working for my son, who is being raised to be completely opposite of the "everyone is a winner" kids.

"These days there's dudes getting facials
manicured, waxed and Botoxed.
With deep spray-on tans and creamy lotiony hands
You can't grip a tackle box.
Yeah, with all of these men lining up to get neutered
It's hip now to be feminized.
I don't highlight my hair, I still got a pair
Yeah Honey, I'm still a guy.
Oh my eyebrow's ain't plucked.
There's a gun in my truck.
Oh Thank God, I'm still a guy."

–Brad Paisley

That song pretty much sums it up.

Jenner's blush and eyeliner cause him to lose that competition. My wife wears less makeup than Jenner.

Retrosexual. I've never heard that term before, but I like it.

I would think Bruce Jenner would kick Brody's butt. And he should. Truly. No kidding. This just makes me wanna barf. Sorry this chick doesn't like guys like this. At all.

Brody Jenner is the type of man young women are being told is the ideal: soft, sensitive, vulnerable, not able to take a punch or be there when life gets tough. This isn’t to say women need men or can’t take care of themselves – hell, I need my wife and like it that way. But in the roles between men and women, I believe a woman wants to be with a man whose word is good and can be counted on when life takes a dump in their world.

I don’t think women want men who come home crying after a long days work and say, “Hold me, I feel so vulnerable, my boss was mean today.” But this is what shows like “Bromance” are doing to men while at the same time altering how young women see them.
————————————————-

Well said. You're right!

I think that the frat-boy thing is probably right when it comes to this show, but I'm not certain that frat-boy is different, very, from the metro-sexual. And being a jerk isn't manly.

The sexiest, most hyper-male person I ever saw was an Airman working in the baby-nursery at Clark AB. Granted, hormones are an issue and a rather alarming window into the weirdness of evolution and there ought to be rules against having six foot four, movie star "dark and handsome" former football players in military uniforms showing new mothers how to hold infants. (During my fourth pregnancy I feel in love with Steve from Blues Clues, but *that* required repeated exposure. Hormones should not be under-estimated.)

In any case, neither a frat-boy nor a metro-sexual would stick his hands in baby stuff. For the frat-boy, being crude or rude does not equate to masculine. For the metrosexual, being refined doesn't do it either.

blucas, you are trying so hard to throw rocks on this site that you don't very often make sense. You said: "He's emotionally stunted, fratboyish, a jerk to women". The poster would agree with this. Somehow this leads you to conclude that he isn't a "sensitive" guy and a metrosexual. Then you point out that the show is meant to be partly satirical, as though that negates anything that the poster said. Then you go on to personally insult the poster's appearance. But I guess that form of hate is okay, because conservatives are all bad people and so deserve it.

Take a step back from your black/white and left/right analysis of everything and think: do you kind of agree with what he is saying about how this guy Brody is a bad role-model for men? That's all he is saying.

Hey Joseph, you very manly man-obsessed manly-man, how well are you able to take a punch? Please share the details of the last time you were on the receiving end of a punch and how well you fared afterward. Has it ever occurred to you that avoiding being punched entirely is no less masculine than failing to protect yourself from harm? Yeah, see, I didn't think so.

Man, conservatives are so hate-filled.

Very good point. Self-possession. Self-assurance. Independent self-respect.
Having this condition is its own reward.

Also it will attract friends and lovers who are psychologically healthy.

Funny thing though, very insecure egomaniacs with more status than you will resent you like hell
for having more self-possession than they have (despite your having less status, money, power, etc),
and they will punish you for it (at least try to do so).

[This has happened to me twice, causing significant career set-backs.
You can't win with these jerks. But that's another story isn't it?]

Don’t get me wrong, I love my buddies but I don’t want to date them.

Go ahead. It's not gay if you beat them up afterwards.

Having come of age in the 1970's when all this nonsense started, it was somewhat difficult as a man to know if you were supposed to be the new Woody Allen/Alan Alda model or the old John Wayne/Humphrey Bogart model. Women were defaulting to the Woody Alda model by preference. The confusion was HUGE as a male wanting to relate to opposite sex. My brain spun like a top trying to figure out the whole thing. Tough era to be man. Things have gotten clearer with age. Also with the advice of King Arthur and Sir Gawain.

It takes a certain level of maturity for a woman to realize that trying to change a guy is futile and wrong. It wasn't until I met my husband that I realized that it wasn't up to him to change, but that it was up to me to meet him half-way. The best relationships, IMHO, are the ones in which each person can drop all the pretenses and just be themselves. I'm with my husband because he doesn't try to change me– the least I can do is return the favor.

"I long for the days when being a man had to do with things like, my word is good, insult my wife and you get a busted nose"
That's probably the most stupid thing ive read all week. Apparently a woman's dignity is worth more than a man's physical safety. This is the kind of attitude that has gotten American men garbage like Biden's Violence Against Women Act. Obviously, this is one contributor not worth my time. I will now go and read something by one of the civilized, intelligent conservatives on this site – doing so will prevent me from assuming all GOP members are slack jawed troglodytes.

Made sense to me.

And I think she's right. Frat-boy is likely a better descriptor than Metro. And yes, "conservative" criticism is directed at each.

No need to get all emotionally involved over it.

Sadly, they are watching the same speeches you are but fail to listen to content and focus mainly on style……and to tie it back to the article….so goes the way of our society.

LOL.

Last time I took a punch I got a "point" because the rules were no contact to the face.

Yeah, I know I'm not Joseph and I'm not a guy. The interesting thing is that even for this entirely wussy female, once warmed up, sparring, there's an element of heightened adrenaline that comes into play. It's just FUN.

My daughter has two official amateur boxing matches in her book. She lost both, and yeah, she's not Joseph or a guy, either, but the culture I observed on our very short foray into amateur boxing was that respect was gained by *taking* a hit. Better to avoid that, and you win by hitting the *other* guy (or gal) but respect was from taking the hits, from stepping into the ring knowing what was going to happen.

Definitely a polite society thing.

When there's no such thing as "fighting words" the result is idiots thinking they can verbally assault and batter people, like retired astronauts, and not get punched in the face.

But the Obama's style isn't that good! In my public speaking class at my liberal arts college, I learned a thing or too. We didn't have teleprompters, but I still think the lessons apply. Obama stumbles over his words, fairly frequently. He gestures, which is good, but between gestures, he clasps his hands, which is annoying. It's far better to leave the hands at the side of the body, or at the side of the podium, but relaxed. If you have a white-knuckle grip on the podium, you risk looking like a firebrand preacher. I don't think anyone here with a brain in their head will disagree when I say that off the prompter, Obama sucks out loud.

Jindal, on the other hand, didn't use a podium at all. That projects closeness with the audience. He only stumbled once that I noticed. I didn't notice gesturing, but he retained my attention with his language. Rush apparently thought he sounded like he was talking to first graders, but it sounded to me more like a kind, wise guru explaining simple ideas to dolts who don't get it. I say this guy needs to be on camera much more than he is now.

Now that is funny! And true!

I could be into a guy. He's sexy, fun, smart, humorous. But the second that real life hits and (through his actions) I realize he's more scared than I am or he can't be strong enough for me to lean on-I AM OUT! It's magical. Suddenly, he's not that sexy. Suddenly he's not that much fun. Suddenly he's no longer smart or humorous. Suddenly I can't wait to get away from him. WOMEN DO NEED MEN. Sorry feminists. We need them to balance us out. The minute that the table turns and his side of the table is lighter than yours, eveyone just tips over. I don't want a Brody Jenner-as cute as he is-I want a real man. Perfect example: Most girls have had a pregnancy scare. This is when his true manhood comes out. Is he strong and ready to help you through whatever comes or does he cringe and ask you "what are you going to do?" Clint Eastwood wouldn't have done that! Maybe guys should wear a "What would Clint Eastwood do?" bracelet.

Sheesh! Why doesn't Brody come out of the closet, for crissakes? If he stays in his closet any longer, he'll swish himself to death with his feather boa.

Not that that's a bad thing, mind you.

Just look at the fake tan Lindsay's sporting in that photo. Metrosexual, heal thyself!

Brody Jenner is kind of a spoiled tool. He's emotionally stunted, fratboyish, a jerk to women. He's actually not a sensitive wussy metrosexual at all.

The concept of that "Bromance" show isn't that it's touchy-feely or metro, it's all tongue-in-cheek, half-joke. It's decidedly fratboy. Fratboy culture loves clowning around with fake-gay innuendo.

Not that that's much better, it's just something different. If you want to make it about CRISIS IN MASCULINITY, this one's more about the whole stunted man-child thing than being affeminant.

Seriously though, it's not just me right? Look at that picture of Joseph Lindsay, then look at that picture of Brody Jenner, and tell me who's more butch.

>>>" I don’t think women want men who come home crying after a long days work and say, “Hold me, I feel so vulnerable, my boss was mean today.” But this is what shows like “Bromance” are doing to men while at the same time altering how young women see them."

I long ago stopped taking my cues from women on who I should be or how I should behave because frankly women don't really know themselves what's up or down when it comes to men, and I'm done being twisted into a pretzel. I'm old school, end of story.

Women will always choose men like Robert Mitchum, Charles Bronson, James Coburn (saw him in Fistful of Dynamite last night – loved it) and Steve McQueen over limpish boy-men like Johnny Depp, Toby Maguire and Leonardo Dicaprio (eyeroll). Hmmm… I am hard pressed to think of a current movie actor that does not cross his legs like a girl. Maybe Jason Statham. Tommy Lee Jones? Old school. Oh yeah… yum: Russell Crowe (minus any strange pony tails).

Now go get that steak off the grill. Real men eat their steak rare.

To me it's getting weird when, for a business call, I'm talking to a guy on the phone and he says how it's cool now for him and his friends to get facials – nobody thinks anything about it. ??? As my dad is a WWII veteran and my brother is a fitness trainer, I had a hard time not falling over laughing my head off.

Black Gold is another great "reality show" with real men.

Good for you. There aren't that many alfa males out there. But despite all the metrosexual hype it's all very simple and primal in a sense. Most women look and act independent but they still need men to love them, protect them and make them a deer meatloaf dinner now and then.

Good for you and your daughter. I have a black belt and I can certainly hold my own since I've been sparring regularly for about 17 years. But I can't lie, I like to know that the guy I'm with can hold his own too. My husband was a wrestler back in the day and he can grapple with the best of them.

About 10 years ago I was at a corp. retreat. You could choose how you wanted to spend down time by selecting either a golf or spa day. I was taken by surprise to see a few men (in a very macho industry) lining up for their facials and mani/pedis. I did not think they were gay or have homophobic thoughts about them (as the person below me suggested), but I did find it peculiar for a man to be going for "a day of beauty". I never looked at those men the same way and may (right or wrong) made some jokes at their expense. I see a man with buffed or (god forbid) clear polished nails and I cannot stop my mind from shouting "what a freaking girl!" Some differences in the sexes is NOT a bad thing. Women, no chest, facial or underarm hair or sitting with your crotch open to the world (I am sure some men will object to that… ok all). Men, no nail/facial polish or crossing your legs like a woman. Is it too much to ask?

My favorite example of the glorification of girly-men is LOST. I love LOST, okay? But the fact that Jack, whom the producers have come out and said is basically the main main character (the show was originally supposed to be about him, not an ensemble), can't go for more than 1/3 of an episode without crying is just….I hate Jack. Always have. He's a crybaby faithless control freak. A lib, in other words.

Jaci, I was came back here to point out the very same thing! " He's a crybaby faithless control freak. A lib, in other words. " Could not have said it better myself. Give me Sayed any day. LOL

[...] 25, 2009 · No Comments Isn’t It Bromantic…: When you watch “Gran Torino” and Clint Eastwood gives that look with one eyebrow raised as he [...]