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Five Criteria for Manliess
The basic premise of my columns are that
Stay-At-Home-Dads should do things that maintain
their masculinity. In past columns, I have offered
examples of manly endeavors, like chopping wood and
playing sports. However, this list is limited by my
imagination. What is a man to do who is more
creative? Instead of creating a finite list, I need
to put down some guidelines so that others may take
the list where no man has gone before.
In order for an activity to be masculating (a
word I just made up that means that it helps to
build up testosterone and reduce emasculation), it
has to meet most, if not all, of the following
criteria. In general, these are things that men do
that women do NOT do.
1) It should make you sweat. Women glow. Men
sweat and have sweat since that first male fish
struggled out of the water. When we sweat, we flush
all those toxins floating around inside our bodies
and creates that smell of manly accomplishment.
When women smell, they quickly and quietly sneak
off to take a shower. When men smell, we take a big
whiff, yell, “Whoo! I am ripe!” and sit
down and have a beer until we dry off.
2) It should be loud. Yelling or grunting or
cheering or cursing has a similar effect to
sweating. It purges tension that, if allowed to
accumulate, causes all sorts of problems.
Obviously, when you play a game like football or
hockey, you are going to holler when you hit
someone or shoot the puck. You also need to scream
when watching a game. Watching a big game when you
have to be quiet (like when the kids are asleep) is
dangerous. Chopping wood is good because you have
to grunt to do it right. Hiking and camping
don’t seem to lend themselves to loudness, so
you have to find a good high cliff and holler to
your echo. If you holler when you are woodworking,
that’s probably a bad sign.
3) It has to accomplish something. No man does
anything for no reason, no matter what his wife
might think. At the end of the day, you need to be
able to look back and say, “This day was not
wasted. I did (BLANK).” Going to sleep with a
sense of accomplishment is important, whether you
cheered your team to victory (or defeat), made
enough firewood for the winter, or raked the lawn..
Maybe you did nothing, but nothing was the planned
activity and you did it very well. Check it
off.
4) It should be something your wife does not
understand. This one came to me while I was
gardening. While I was working, I thought,
“This is a manly chore.” But old women
garden, don’t they? How could this be
encouraging my masculinity if my seventy-year-old
neighbor can do it in her Amigo? Because it was
raining when I was doing it. Please don’t
misunderstand. Gardening in the sunlight is not
emasculating. It just isn’t masculating.
Women, for one reason or another, don’t garden
or golf or hike in the rain (probably because they
have enough sense to come in out of it). If I am
doing something that a woman wouldn’t do, then
it’s probably a manly thing. Or it’s
really too stupid to do in the first place. Or
both.
5) Other. These are some minor conditions that
could make up for not meeting those above: You
might be engaging in a manly activity if: something
breaks, something bleeds, something squishes,
something explodes, something dies, or something
gets very dirty. There must be other criteria, but
in general, if you are doing something that makes
you feel like a man, add it to your list.
©2008, Mark
Phillips
* * *
Women, it's true, make human beings, but
only men can make men. - Margaret Mead
Mark
Phillips is a Stay-At-Home-Dad and freelance
writer. Along with raising his four children, he is
developing a franchise called “The Vacuum IS a
Power Tool.” It is designed to help SAHDs
maintain that which makes us men, instead of hairy
Mom-substitutes. He earned a B.S. in
Communication/Theatre Arts and teaching
certificates in English, public speaking, and
psychology from Eastern Michigan University. After
six years as a high school English teacher and
Director of Dramatic Arts at Powers Catholic High
School in Flint, Michigan, he changed careers and
became a Stay-At-Home-Dad. www.TheVacuumIsAPowerTool.com
or E-Mail
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