As I was sitting in the nail salon the other day, waiting for my significant other to get her pedicure/eyebrows done, I was reading an article in the most recent GQ magazine, the one with Matthew Fox on the cover. I found an article about a NYC public school teacher (who, incidentally, happened to teach at my rival high school). This teacher apparently moonlighted as a wrestler, and when he once appeared on WWE Smackdown, it was found that he had been using his sick days to wrestle. He was forced to resign, and out of it he actually was able to make his dream of being a professional wrestler come true, as Vince McMahon saw this potentional media cash cow and hired the man to become known as Matt Striker. Now, I don't watch wrestling anymore, but perhaps someone else may have heard of him. Anyway, his character is a bad guy, the teacher everyone hated in school, and he tries to teach various "lessons" every time he is on tv:
"Today's lesson is a question. What happened to the real man? Where are the Tom Sellecks and the Clint Eastwoods? Instead we have the dainty Jude Law or the diminutive Tom Cruise. Ask yourself, whom would you rather see coming over the horizons to protect you from the enemy: John Wayne, Ronald Reagan or Ross, from 'Friends'?" Now, this was an interesting point he raised. While personally, I don't generally agree with the people he has chosen to idolize, I think he has a point. I mean, here I am, sitting in the nail salon, waiting for my girlfriend. Now, I'm not getting my nails done or anything like that (though I have had a manicure before), but the fact is, ten years ago, would I have just sat there with her had I been in the same position? Granted, it was her birthday, so I was not about to tell her I didn't want to come with her when she wanted me there, but I digress. My point in this matter is simply that I wonder if so much has been made of men needing to be more sensitive and caring, that possibly, this ideology has had too much of an effect. I mean, it seems that the average man has become less concerned with power in the relationship than ever before, and, while this is not necessarily a bad thing, they have also mostly relinquished power to the woman.
For instance, I was reading an
article on espn.com the other day, a follow-up to another
article, about a man having an argument with his wife about whether or not he is allowed to call another woman good-looking in front of her. What began as an interesting topic, and study in man-woman relations, somehow transformed into a man making jokes about how he never wins this or any argument with his wife. From there , he posted comment other men have e-mailed him, which have included a man complaining that he can never leave the toilet seat up (though his wife had a very clever retort when he asked her why the seat belonged down, and she replied, simply, "gravity").
Another man asks "If we're watching 'Dancing With The Stars,' she'll say, 'Isn't Stacy Keibler hot?', just waiting for me to respond with any type of affirmation. Most times I give her the 'Yeah she's pretty…' but the wife will keep on until I agree. THEN, and only THEN, she blasts me!!! I'm newly married, Greeny -- is it always going to be like this?"
Now, seriously. I love my girlfriend. I tell her all the time how attractive she is, etc. I comment on other women in front of her. She's one of my best friends, and those are the types of things I say to my best friends, male or female. If she complains, I simply remind her every time I tell her how attractive she is, she tells me no, she's ugly, or doesn't even thank me. I'm not going to stop thinking or saying other women are attractive just because I'm in a relationship. I'm just not.
I feel like this idea has been compounded in my head recently as well, because a couple of friends visited this weekend, and I noticed that their girlfriends demanded their full attention while they were there, and they seemed powerless to give these women anything but. Now, I understand when you haven't seen your significant other in a month or so you want to spend as much time with them as possible, and that's fine. But in this case, we were just hanging out and waiting for other people to come join us to watch a movie. Us men decided to play a video game, and the women decided that "no, we want to talk," and the men just said "oh okay, well, I can't play." It reminded me of when you're a child and you tell your friend "I can't play because my mom said so." Do men have no power over their own lives anymore? I've actually had a female tell me, about one of my own friends, "you can hang out with
John Doe when I say so, I own
John Doe-time."
Now, I'll be damned if I let a woman say this about me. Like I said before, I love my girlfriend. There's nobody in the world I'd rather spend all my time with. However, she understands that it's my time, and that it's my choice. She does not force me to spend time with her, or nag me when I want to spend time with friends. It's a give-and-take.
Personally, I blame television for this. The fact is, today's man on television is most likely fat, lazy and not so smart, while his wife is attractive, hard working and smart. Polar opposites. And maybe it's because the man is not as attractive as his wife that he must relinquish power in order to stay with her, but the fact remains that most sitcoms today run the format of an "Everbody Loves Raymond" or "King of Queens," where the less attractive man just says stupid things and has to make it up to his wife and admit that he's an idiot, etc. I feel like, in an effort to make women equal, we have emasculated the man, like saying that we can't have a masculine man and a feminine woman coexist. I don't see why that's the case, and I'm not saying all men have to me fully masculine and women feminine. But that's what we are. I'm a man, and I don't think it enables me to anything more than a woman, but I don't apologize for finding women attractive, wanting to spend time with my friends, or anything of the sort. I just think that in this day and age, it's cool to show how whipped you are. Or how much you "cake," as we Wash U. folk say. The fact is, spending time with your significant other is not a bad thing - when you want to spend time with them. It's doing it becuase you have to or they want you to that it get's to be something it's not. A relationship should be about choice, and if you're doing something because you have to, then, well, you're not making the choice.
