Man, oh, man

Generally, I'm not big on the whole "act like a man" vibe because anything less than acting natural to me is more work than I think strangers are worth.

From time to time, I'll rock the pink shirt, pink bunny slippers and I listen to Barbara Streisand not because I want anything at all to do with man ass but because she has some serious pipes and anyone who can overcome that nose definitely has a few insights I'd like to hear.

Soooooooo, I've never been an advocate of the whole "macho" thing as it is interpreted by the Americans. For Latinos, Machismo is another story entirely because I've always believed it was not about poserdom but more of an excuse to engage in drunken singing, domestic abuse, picking on something smaller than you and all sorts of fun activities that need some kind of justification that doesn't rely on logic.

But the actions of men don't exist in a vacuum (unless we're talking about something entirely more disgusting). Women are bound to have opinions . . . They always do.

Recently, I was impressed with a post by a local nurse and blogger regarding her training and a few observations about squandered manhood.

In one instance, I had to stand across from this ridiculously hot guy, who was notoriously gay, and hold his hands while we just stared at each other.

He cried, and all I could think was, "What a waste."

That's harsh but it's real.

What's more, another local blogger rightfully points out the many ways in which we aren't preparing kids for life in the real world. Death's Door brilliantly observes so many ways that schools fail the teach children important things:

To me this is just another example of the pussification of America.

This all boils down to basically one question: What does it mean to be a man in this society? Fight Club was an excellent examination of this subject barring the laughable premise that white guys can fight. Both the book and the movie attempted to define the role of men in post-modern America, but the lead character was horribly cast with Brad Pitt - who signifies nothing more than the fact that the white man's burden now involves maintaining washboard abs and carrying around a ridiculous amount of brown kids in order to bang one of the hottest broads on the planet.

I've always thought that a great deal of manhood lies in overcoming fear and I'm proud to know that I no longer share the fear of every white guy in this country that the darkies are coming to steal my cheese. Still, I realize that women overcome their fears (cooking, cleaning and laziness during sex) as well. So, I won't presume to know what manhood really means yet but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with not caring about ghey posts like this one . . .