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| OUR OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY |
Men: Time to Rebrand Ourselves
Girls just want to have fun? Men can help you with that.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Last week the much-beloved scoundrel Sir Harry Flashman
finally departed, taking with him a certain vision of
unregenerate manliness. Meanwhile a New York
journalist/lesbian released her new bestseller Knock Yourself
Up (free turkey baster with each hardback copy): a guide to
motherhood without men. Some have taken the opportunity to ask,
“Are men past their sell-by date?” The answer, of course, is no: we just
smell that way because we haven’t washed in a while.
But people who are paid to have opinions spent 2007 spraying round
the opinion that men were all washed up, however much soap they
used. If it wasn’t the Y chromosome shrinking, it was the qualification
gap widening or the computer game/lager coefficient looking at pictures
of breasts when it should have been working—and when you told them
to cut it out they’d tut, and mutter to their friends, ‘Isn’t that typical?
So aggressive,’ and then go and buy shoes or talk about sales figures or
something.
In 2008, men need to get their own back. Preferably without having to
exert any actual effort.
Luckily, I have a plan: we men must rebrand ourselves as luxury goods.
Think of a woman’s attitude to the latest handbag. She doesn’t need it;
the one she’s using is only three weeks old and practically identical. But
she tells herself she deserves it, for working so hard. It’s a treat—worth
wasting money on.
Instead of letting women think, “we can get by without men, so we don’
t need them any more”, they must realize, “I can look after myself—but
what a treat to have the luxury of a man on top of all my self-
sufficiency”. Absolutely.
We may not smell like Chanel, and even metrosexual skin’s not as soft
as handbag leather, but there’s one luxury good that men are
practically designed to provide: fun.
Women, in Homer Simpson’s immortal words, invented sleeping on the
couch. Men invent waterbeds, sex toys and reasons to lie in. Girls may
just want to have fun, but no one ever needed to write a song to say
that about men. We already know men just want fun: most of the rest
of the songs are written to complain about it.
When things go right, and we fulfil our calling as a luxury good, men
give women the gift of joining in our fun, that pointless larking around in
the moment that comes so hard to the multi-tasking office Susan. It’s
why, against all the PC assumptions of the sort of journo who writes
Knock Yourself Up, someone like Jeremy Clarkson has a massive
following among young, modern women: he is outrageous on their
behalf, and they love him for it.
The first thing most women demand of a man is that he make them
laugh. These days, they don’t need us to do anything else, so let’s
embrace the task. After all, if they can be the breadwinners and take
care of the kids all by themselves—it’s all the more time under the
covers/inventing deep-fried coke/writing articles for The Lizard for us.
If men want a role for the twenty-first century, it’s going to have to be
as court jester. And what’s wrong with that? Ignore the new men,
forget the old men. Go with your natural instincts. Let’s become a
generation of men who give really great fun.
Girls just want to have fun? Men can help you with that.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Last week the much-beloved scoundrel Sir Harry Flashman
finally departed, taking with him a certain vision of
unregenerate manliness. Meanwhile a New York
journalist/lesbian released her new bestseller Knock Yourself
Up (free turkey baster with each hardback copy): a guide to
motherhood without men. Some have taken the opportunity to ask,
“Are men past their sell-by date?” The answer, of course, is no: we just
smell that way because we haven’t washed in a while.
But people who are paid to have opinions spent 2007 spraying round
the opinion that men were all washed up, however much soap they
used. If it wasn’t the Y chromosome shrinking, it was the qualification
gap widening or the computer game/lager coefficient looking at pictures
of breasts when it should have been working—and when you told them
to cut it out they’d tut, and mutter to their friends, ‘Isn’t that typical?
So aggressive,’ and then go and buy shoes or talk about sales figures or
something.
In 2008, men need to get their own back. Preferably without having to
exert any actual effort.
Luckily, I have a plan: we men must rebrand ourselves as luxury goods.
Think of a woman’s attitude to the latest handbag. She doesn’t need it;
the one she’s using is only three weeks old and practically identical. But
she tells herself she deserves it, for working so hard. It’s a treat—worth
wasting money on.
Instead of letting women think, “we can get by without men, so we don’
t need them any more”, they must realize, “I can look after myself—but
what a treat to have the luxury of a man on top of all my self-
sufficiency”. Absolutely.
We may not smell like Chanel, and even metrosexual skin’s not as soft
as handbag leather, but there’s one luxury good that men are
practically designed to provide: fun.
Women, in Homer Simpson’s immortal words, invented sleeping on the
couch. Men invent waterbeds, sex toys and reasons to lie in. Girls may
just want to have fun, but no one ever needed to write a song to say
that about men. We already know men just want fun: most of the rest
of the songs are written to complain about it.
When things go right, and we fulfil our calling as a luxury good, men
give women the gift of joining in our fun, that pointless larking around in
the moment that comes so hard to the multi-tasking office Susan. It’s
why, against all the PC assumptions of the sort of journo who writes
Knock Yourself Up, someone like Jeremy Clarkson has a massive
following among young, modern women: he is outrageous on their
behalf, and they love him for it.
The first thing most women demand of a man is that he make them
laugh. These days, they don’t need us to do anything else, so let’s
embrace the task. After all, if they can be the breadwinners and take
care of the kids all by themselves—it’s all the more time under the
covers/inventing deep-fried coke/writing articles for The Lizard for us.
If men want a role for the twenty-first century, it’s going to have to be
as court jester. And what’s wrong with that? Ignore the new men,
forget the old men. Go with your natural instincts. Let’s become a
generation of men who give really great fun.
| CONTACT THE LIZARD |
| Marc Sidwell is not joking |
© lizardmagazine.com, 2008
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