marketing of masculinity

the dick in in a tub of creme fraîche? how is that good?

i think table is the table has already taken that one tbh xp

LOL - the Shelby is named after an incredibly cool Twin Cities anchordude.

Re: BBQ and how to eat it, from Joseph Mitchell:

It didn't take women long to corrupt the beefsteak. They forced the addition of such things as Manhattan cocktails, fruit cups, and fancy salads to the traditional menu of slices of ripened steaks, double lamb chops, kidneys, and beer by the pitcher. They insisted on dance orchestras instead of brassy German bands. The life of the party at a beefsteak used to be the man who let out the most ecstatic grunts, drank the most beer, ate the most steak, and got the most grease on his ears, but women do not esteem a glutton, and at a contemporary beefsteak it is unusual for a man to do away with more than six pounds of meat and thirty glasses of beer. Until around 1920, beefsteak etiquette was rigid. Knives, forks, napkins, and tablecloths never had been permitted; a man was supposed to eat with his hands.

When beefsteaks became bisexual, the etiquette changed. For generations men had worn their second-best suits because of the inevitability of grease spots; tuxedos and women appeared simultaneously. Most beefsteaks degenerated into polite banquets at which open-face sandwiches of grilled steak happened to be the principal dish. However, despite the frills introduced by women, two schools of traditional steak-dinner devotees still flourish. They may conveniently be called the East Side and West Side schools. They disagree over matters of menu and etiquette, and both claim that their beefsteaks are the more classical or old-fashioned.

bisexual beefsteaks, huh

I suppose this wasn't enough to set off your satire-ometer:

at a contemporary beefsteak it is unusual for a man to do away with more than six pounds of meat and thirty glasses of beer.

tbh when the dicks get to swingin' it's hard to distinguish satire from self-parody sometimes

I don't think the entire thing is full-on satire but it certainly doesn't seem like something that wants to be taken seriously; it looks like it's dressing up commentary re: East Side and West Side steak cooking methods in "rawr we were real men then" humor.

Well, it was written in 1939 about the beefsteaks of the 1920s (taken from this page on beefsteaks, but also from Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel. I don't think of it as satire, as much as reporting on the guys who missed the old beefsteaks of yore.

haha okay, that does put something of a different context on it

"remember the days before beefsteak went ac/dc?"

old beefsteaks of yore = beef jerky

"remember the days before all the women made us stop eating pemmican?"

there's a logic going on in that paragraph that basically means that sex with a woman is kind of... gay.

You mean eating with a woman.

He certainly does.

i read that excerpt as satirical. it satirizes both the crudity of manly men in days gone by, and also (in its tone) the nostalgia for a retrospectively exaggerated version of such. quote similar to the contemporary ads mentioned in this thread.

"quite similar..."

most cars come with instruction manuals that tell you how to change the tire

― wtf?!? just randomly started crying! (HI DERE), Thursday, December 10, 2009 12:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i cannot keep up with this thread, but ^^^^^

i am picking tire-changing arbitrarily but not knowing how to do this is on some next-level "I just don't GET math" art of pretend helplessness shit. put the jack under the car, jack it, use the iron to loosen the nuts, pull the wheel off, put the spare on, tighten the nuts, lower the car. this is a skill that should be filed under ADULT CAR USER, not MAN. if you don't drive, or have never gotten a flat, fine. or if you have and the weather was shitty or something. but if you've gotten a flat tire, and had the requisite kit with you, and the weather was nice, and the nuts came off easily (sometimes they don't and that sucks), and you STILL called a tow truck, then you are just a lazy person. the end.

anyway, like elmo said way upthread, most of the skills i'm interested in acquiring these days are horrifyingly feminine, and i always, always wear an apron while cooking.

I've changed more than my fair share of flats in my life, but I can 100% see how people could be intimidated by the process and just not want to bother. Sometimes the instructions are incredibly vague about where to properly place the jack and I can see someone not wanting to take the chance to try to jack it incorrectly and fuck something up or worse!

fukken dr. homo over here

I've changed more than my fair share of flats in my life, but I can 100% see how people could be intimidated by the process and just not want to bother. Sometimes the instructions are incredibly vague about where to properly place the jack and I can see someone not wanting to take the chance to try to jack it incorrectly and fuck something up or worse!

― & other try hard shitfests (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Friday, December 11, 2009 5:38 PM (32 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i don't buy this, tbh. figure it out. if you can write a paper with yr eyes closed or w/e, then you can stare at some instructions and think rationally about how to do something in the actual, physical world. jacking something incorrectly can't really fuck things up THAT much. if it's a weenie jack that comes with the car, then the worst that'll happen is that the car will suddenly drop a few inches when the jack tips over. oh noes.

and hey lamp y dont U go somewhere and stfu

XXpost. You loosen the nuts before you jack it up by the way. Otherwise it might fall off the jack. Ditto for tightening.

Yeah, but remember that someone stranded on the side of a busy expressway with a flat tire while running late for something important is certainly not in the most appropriate frame of mind for clear thinking. I mean, I agree with you in that it is an important (and relatively easy) skill to learn, but at the same time I can completely see why people are intimidated by it!

i have made that mistake before!

xp

Yeah, but remember that someone stranded on the side of a busy expressway with a flat tire while running late for something important is certainly not in the most appropriate frame of mind for clear thinking. I mean, I agree with you in that it is an important (and relatively easy) skill to learn, but at the same time I can completely see why people are intimidated by it!

YEEESS, this is why you should maybe KNOW HOW before it happens to you! As I/we were saying. That's why it's good to know how to do things just because, sometimes.

yeah, i guess, and i am being an internet hardman about something pretty trivial, but still. sometimes this attitude ("willed helplessness" we'll say) pushes my dang buttons. i am in no way in favor of heavily gendered skillsets or w/e, but ffs ppl pounding a nail or painting your walls or installing a driver is NOT DIFFICULT. or, rather, learning how to do that thing is not difficult.

xp

this is a skill that should be filed under ADULT CAR USER, not MAN.

Right, and more or less true across the board. Like for most skills apart from what you do with your own genitalia I don't really see much sense or use in filing them under masculine/feminine. Useful things=useful.

whoa buncha xposts, yea w/ya re: willful helplessness. Lotsa things aren't as scary as they seem.

Just out of curiosity, how did you people who know how to change a tire learn?

I learned by getting a flat out in the middle of nowhere at 11:30 PM in the days before a cell phone. It was a sloppy attempt, but I got it done. Since then its just been refining the process.

my friends dad taught us one time when he was driving us somewhere and blew a tire - it really is p simple

and hey lamp y dont U go somewhere and stfu

do u want 2 fite??????

use the iron to loosen the nuts,

See, I don't even know what either of these things are.

I've never had to change a tire but, for example when something would break or go haywire on my guitar, it's like okay lets get an allen wrench and just...you use your small semblance of wits and it gets done.

Well, yeah. I'm OK with that sort of stuff, too. I change lightbulbs, hang picture frames, etc.

my dad showed me how to change a flat a long time ago. but there has always been some weirdness when i've actually gotten flats, like the time (surprise!) it turned out my spare was flat too

BREAKIN DOWN WALLS HERE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDjbz5TrHJA

that was informative! i did not know

I guess I just wonder sometimes if the people who are all "suck it up" about practical stuff like this had parents who emphasized it. Because mine never really did, and it's not like I would've picked it up elsewhere (never even had to take shop class in junior high, since I was in band). I mean, I don't want to make excuses or anything, but I really do feel out of my element sometimes when it comes to certain fix-it skills, just because my experience is so minuscule.

I totally understand the fear of it, but I mean, I tried my damndest in shop class and got a C. I can hardly crack eggs without getting bits of shell in them. If I can do it anyone can.

jaymc-- I learned because I got a flat. I made it home, pulled out the kit that came withu car read the manual and did it.

Fair enough.

putting the male gaze right there in the commercial, i think. MEN OF STATURE (figuratively but also literally in these ads) see you as an ineffectual boy, boy, in your stupid ryan howard hats. put down the xbox, put on a suit or something and get a cadillac like a grownup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prjjokASEqo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoQXao7Zjpg

welcome to the world of gentlemen gentlemen

dude doesn't know this but the other three are hyundai owners--not gentlemen in the slightest

thats ok cause the old guys are driving a stolen cadillac and theyve just massacred everyone in the diner

during the world War II / Cold War era, the stakes were such that people just HAD to have a certain toughness that isn't necessary today

Haven't made my way through the whole thread yet to see if this is expanded upon, but this is something I've given a lot of thought to. The idea of being rough and rugged and manly made sense when there was utility to it, when it could be used in the service of some opposing force. But, c'mon. Most people (in the US, at least) lead pretty damn cush lives. Every time I see some bro striking a hardman pose walking through, say, Lincoln Park, I can't help but feel really sorry for the dude. Overt machismo strikes me as a generally outmoded and obsolete state of being unless you live in some crime-ridden neighborhood or you're in the military or something.

Oh, and another thing while I'm on the subject, and which may go hand-in-hand with the rootless and senseless masochism of today: where once you may have had a patronizing style of misogyny that infantalized women, today you have a burgeoning sadistic misogyny which objectifies women (see: most porn, which seems to be having an increasingly and frighteningly huge effect on sexual mores across the board these days).

Link is NSFW, but they have full lad mags from the 40s - 70s here:

http://www.vintagegirliemags.com

It's amusing to see how many of them resemble the same thing found in comic books years later

never even had to take shop class in junior high, since I was in band

how did this even make sense