Guns, tools and scars

This past weekend, Austin had the Texas Testosterone Festival.

And I don't know whether it was the festival itself, or the headline in today's sports section proclaiming it as an event for "real men" or maybe just a sense of shifting ground, but I have to speak out.

Let's look at some of their featured events:

A live Q&A with a UFC fighter. A fantasy football mock draft. Video game tournaments. Poker tournaments. And, of course, a bikini contest.

True, this is all guy-oriented stuff. But let's not confuse that with being "manly."

Video games and fantasy football are not manly. Now, I haven't played video games since Time Pilot was in its heyday, but I've been a fantasy football player since 1994. Still, I wouldn't dare to assert that fantasy football is gonna put me in the same league with the Marlboro Man or anything. In fact, I admit it is rather geeky, although also fun.

If you want to call something "manly" it needs to be something that you could picture a real man doing, rather than an overcaffeinated teenager. Something that'll give you scars if you screw it up. Something that involves tools or explosions or sweat.

Let's review:

Playing football is manly. Digging a ditch is manly. Chainsaws are manly. Racing motorcycles is manly. Hunting grizzly bear is manly (though, let me stress, you don't have to kill things to be manly. Shooting beer cans is manly, too.)

Spending hours comparing NFL player statistics, guzzling Mountain Dew while pretending to shoot aliens on a computer screen, pretending to be James Bond while you sit on your butt and play cards for hours a time, watching in awe as a UFC fighter talks smack, thinking that you are so cool that you can rate women who are many, many more times attractive than you are … well, these are guy things, sure. And, progressively more creepy, I admit.

But let's not start thinking these things are "manly."

It's a changing world, I know. But let's at least let Clint Eastwood die before we start dishonoring his memory.

Comments

[Sandy]

I think there's a corollary of ultimate manliness to include, and that is: "Doing something not considered manly, but refusing to give a flip about the possible ridicule from other men about said activity."

Eastwood's character in Heartbreak Ridge comes to mind -- the old Marine Sergeant who read women's magazines in his spare time.