All right, now that I am awake, no longer grumpy, and have sometime I am going to make my peace with this article. So article, please allow me to finish as I was kind enough to read you to the end without interruption.
Manliest Cities. What an interesting concept. The idea that A) a geographic location has masculinity and B) that the level of it’s masculinity can be measured. I will concede that there are places that may be more geared towards, or advantageous for a man to live in. As an observer of the Tao I know that there is male and female energy to everything. However, how this company went about measuring masculinity is questionable to me.
As some of you may know, I consider myself a sort of aficionado on the subject of being a man. I have studied at length what the history of being a man has been, the perceptions of what is manliness, and the ways that men should indeed behave. Most of the information is genuine and has a lot of depth. Some, however, are produce in ignorant parody as comedy. Most of the modern day perceptions of manliness come from action and western films, commercial advertisements, and a homophobic/castration anxiety driven society dating back to the 1950s (at least as far as I can tell).
Think about how many of our perceptions of manliness were brought to us by movies, commercials, and out homophobic gym teachers (who ironically wear shorts more suited to gay clubs than track and field). They show that we should be some sort of tough, truck driving, bbq eating, American beer swigging, tobacco chewing, muscle bound, stoic to the point of emotionless, dominant neanderthals. Not that a person like this is bad, if they happen to be that way by nature then so be it.
Imagine my lack of surprise when I found out it was a commercial entity deciding the criteria for what is manly. An entity that is the official snack food of NASCAR no less. Not that there is anything wrong with NASCAR, though I consider it the tamest of the racing leagues, but they are part of that group of commercial entities telling us what being a man is all about.
So let us take a closer look at this criteria. Home improvement stores, trucks, motorcycles, and steak houses per capita. As I understand it this year they added in the criteria of manly jobs. Firefighters, Police officers, EMT Personnel, and construction workers. These all seem like very manly things. With the exception of constructions workers though, most of this is very unisex.
I know plenty of women who drive trucks, ride motorcycles, and love steak. I see more women wandering home improvement stores than men these days. I know female Firefighters, Police officers, and EMT Personnel. In fact working in EMS I see more women EMTs and Paramedics than men. Construction is the only job I see where I have seen no women. I am sure they exist, it would be ignorant to think otherwise.
So let me bring this to my point. Our culture has been mislead into understanding what masculinity is really about. We have been lead to believe that being a man is a constant show of rugged machismo and being a loud mouthed braggadocio. It sells products and movie tickets like nobody’s business. No man wants to feel emasculated because he uses the same soap his woman does.
Being a man is a much more complex thing than most of us realize. The sad part is there is really very few people out there exploring its truths. No university has a men’s studies degree. Women’s studies, Native American studies, African American studies all of these exist. So what it really means to be a man has been lost somewhere in the industrial and technological revolution. I think it is time to bring that study back.
The COMBOS® “America’s Manliest Cities” study ranks 50 major metropolitan areas, using manly criteria like the number of home improvement stores, steak houses, pickup trucks and motorcycles per capita.
Top 10:
1. Charlotte, NC
2. Columbus, OH
3. Kansas City, MO
4. Nashville, TN
5. Baltimore, MD
6. Milwaukee, WI
7. Chicago, IL
8. Indianapolis, IN
9. Washington, D.C.
10. Philadelphia, PABottom 10:
41. Las Vegas, NV
42. San Diego, CA
43. San Francisco, CA
44. Tampa, FL
45. Sacramento, CA
46. Buffalo, NY
47. Oakland, CA
48. Los Angeles, CA
49. Miami, FL
50. Portland, ORLook mom I did something manly… or… rather… I live some place manly!
