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Manly Preferences
Which is the more manly preference: 1) the practical, 2) whatever one feels like, and to heck with anybody’s opinion of it, or 3) the opposite of whatever women like?
For example, soaps. A female friend once observed that I was the only guy she knew who buys scented hand soap. Undoubtedly, many guys would say it is unmanly to care about scents. But obviously they do care. Otherwise, they would sometimes get the scented and sometimes the unscented because they don’t pay attention to the labels. The way I figure it, if a soap that smells like coconut or lemon costs no more than soap than smells like lye, then it is practical to buy the soap that smells better. I can understand as a man not wanting to smell like flowers. But fretting about scents while pretending to not care doesn’t strike me as very manly.
Is it manly to dress in whatever is comfortable and suits one’s own personality? Or is it manly to dress according to what society expects of him? Suits, for example, were invented by Northerners who need multiple layers to stay warm. Is it manly to cook in the Southern summer sun? If cargo pants with many pockets are useful but not stylish, which is more practical and/or manly: utility or conformity?
Is it more manly to love a dangerous activity because of its dangers or despite its dangers? Does a man enjoy being daring? Or is he merely willing to be daring? In such scenarios, what’s the difference between a man’s man and an idiot?
Beards? Mustaches? Clean-shaven? Is this decision purely subjective?
Feel free to propose your own crossroads.
Published in Culture, General
“Sugar beet” could make a nice term of endearment. ;-) And I love that funky ’70s electric guitar in the background! That would have been around the time I actually watched “Sesame Street”.
Regarding scented grooming products for men.
I advised my sons to forget cologne, and use cheap after-shave. When you use the cheap stuff, it doesn’t matter what it smells like because the scent will fade away after an hour, and that is the same as unscented at half the price.
The reason you don’t want a scent is because you don’t want to smell better than the woman, and you don’t want your own scented stuff to interfere with your own sense of smell when the woman is around.
If only!
I occasionally still that song stuck in my head, and I haven’t actually heard it since I was a wee one. Such is the power of a good earworm.