Category: Editorials

Last week I managed to find time to watch the movie Hitch, which is arguably what I like to call a post-metrosexual men’s movie. In case you did not know it guys, the whole metrosexual thing is a bit played out and we can all go back to being unshaven, unclean, and definitely macho bastards we truly are…. or can we?

The metrosexual fad showed men, that they are as vulnerable to advertising as women are. Magazines like Cosmo who promote women’s good looks do have male counterparts, namely Playboy, but also what I call the trash metrosexual mags like Stuff and Maxim who promote hot women on their covers while making men think about themselves as consumers of fashion inside. Guys, those mags are bad news, you may think Jennifer Love Hewitt is hot, but that’s just a trick to get you thinking about buying more Ax deodorant instead of regular Old Spice or Right Guard.

It’s sad but there is not one store that I can walk into today and buy a man’s safety razor. All there is are disposable twin, triple, quadruple blade disposables that yes, look like something my girlfriend would use on her legs! So even if I did want to consume stuff, all the stores and magazines are not selling men, manly cool stuff, they are selling junk!

Anyway this brings me back to the film Hitch, in which Will Smith shows pathetic men how to be more confident and communicate with women. The film is interesting, not because it is a romantic comedy, but because it actually tries to aim at a male audience. Let’s face it, even with Will Smith in the lead part, the movie does not exactly fit the woman’s romantic comedy playbook. It does not have some stiff looking rich guy as the lead, there’s no big star like Julia Roberts in it, and instead we have Eva Mendez, which is so damm hot, that I’ll even watch a Will Smith movie after I, Robot!

Although Hitch is not a great movie, it is enjoyable and you do get the right advice about getting a woman, and by getting I mean, getting into a meaningful relationship kind of thing, not the other thing.

The secrets to being sucessful with a woman, like The Woman! U Want, like the one you know, not Pamela Anderson are pretty obvious:

One, you listen, and then you listen, and then you listen. That’s it. You don’t interupt, you don’t ask stupid questions, or make stupid comments. When you meet a woman you genuinely are interested in, you really have to make an effort to get to know her. If she truly is interested in you, she will let you know, and if you are too busy talking you might not get the hint.

Be yourself. No not the totally I got wasted last night guy, but the best yourself you can be. Be charming, be interesting, be creative, be great to be around with.

Last but not least have fun, dating is meant to be entertaining, especially for your date! Don’t forget this, even if you find you absolutely are not right for each other or totally disagree on politics, that’s no reason to ruin a good night out. Usually on the first dates, it’s all about her having fun, but if you don’t enjoy yourself at all, than that is not only bad manners, but sometimes women find that personally insulting.

I’m just going to come out and say it. If your deodorant or anti-perspirant comes in a little black can/bottle, you are buying the wrong stuff. Men don’t have to smell like perfume to attract women. This is utter nonsense. Men are suppose to stink, it is their foul odor that creates the right environment for fermones to be created, which do in fact attract women. And if you know what fermones are, you should know that fermones do not have a very clean origin.

Stop listening to those supposed men’s magazines who are brainwashing you into buying all sorts of junk you don’t even need. Maxim wants you to buy Tag, Axe, and dozens of other products from their sponsers. That’s called advertising! It does not mean you have to buy into it.

If you still want to smell good, then actually go to the perfume counter and buy yourself a bottle of designer cologne. It will cost you, but at least people will know you spent real money on yourself instead of trying to pass yourself off as a playboy because you bought the deodorant that some magazine told you was cool.

For the rest of us guys who don’t care about offending as much, there’s Right Guard, Old Spice, and of course Brut. They are a lot cheaper and it’s what we grew up with. If you really do sweat a lot, then it’s called Mitchum, wear it if you need it!

I use to love getting my female counterparts pissed off at me, by asking them this simple question: If women can do everything a man can, how come everything is Man-Made? It is of course a joke, but it does point out the gender bias in our society. No one ever comes out and saids, that such and such is Woman-Made, not even children, we kind of just take many of women’s contributions as either unimportant or simply downplay them. This is why the blogging world is so interesting.

In the early 90’s the Internet was a male dominated sphere, some might even say it was a white-male dominated world, but let’s just leave it as male-dominated for now. The biggest activity that was not really a legitimate use of the Internet, was smut. In the western world, the market for smut is men. They buy it the most and its prescence on the Internet was immediate and cutting edge. As the Internet went commercial, the adult industry used more and more technology and made the Internet there most important platform since the VHS tape.

Then a funny thing happened on the Internet, women started using health oriented sites more and more. In fact their usage climbed higher and higher until at last the most often used service on the Internet was no longer adult oriented, it was health information, and the market for this service was female oriented.

Now flash forward to 2005 and blogging is the new medium which is growing by leaps and bounds, and while the blogging world is not completely dominated by either gender, at least I think so, it is perhaps one of the best ways for women to express themselves.

But why are women and blogs revolutionary or even important you ask? Well, the western world also has its little histories that people tend to forget. Ever wonder what a parlor room is? It is a room that is set aside for lounging, for discussing the topics of the day. Many houses in colonial times had them, and this is where women talked about such things as the political questions facing the colonies before they became the United States of America. Eventually after the U.S. became a country, many of these rooms were no longer included in new houses, perhaps the men did not want their women discussing politics without them, but one often wonders about such architectural history. Essentially, women have been repressed from communicating their thoughts and even if you somehow doubt that this still goes on in today’s modern/postmodern world, the blog as a platform for women’s expression is priceless. A blog can be anonymous, it can be downright silly, or downright radical, and of course serious, so it is the modern day digital parlor room that many houses don’t have.

Women bloggers, from my own perspective, are in fact very good at blogging. They have interesting views and their blogs are not just about the latest Playstation or XBox game either.

For a long time I have been quoted as saying that the male species is in danger of extinction, simply because I see so many men today stagnant. Women are the better gender; they continue to evolve without us, or as some feminists might say in spite of us men.