[1994] in Humor
HUMOR: Real Men's Health
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Thu Apr 3 11:49:44 1997
From: <abennett@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 1997 11:09:54 EST
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 22:57:49 -0800
From: Connie Kleinjans <connie@interserve.com>
From: "Adams, Ernest" <eadams@ea.com>
Men's Health
These days it seems that everyone is starting to be health-conscious.
Women have always been health-conscious, of course, which is why women's
magazines are full of horror stories about things like The Dangers of
Sodium Chloride and What Will Happen To You If You Don't Get Enough
Argon In Your Diet (accompanied, of course, by full-page advertisements
from the National Argon Growers' Association).
But now the national mania is starting to slop over to men, and
magazines like Men's Health are appearing. Of course, these magazines
always show some hugely-muscled guy on the cover, pumping iron or riding
a bicycle. He's never doing a REAL men's health thing like peeing in a
cup or getting the Dreaded Prostate Exam. And he's clearly never been
sick a day in his life. This guy is so healthy that he's actually a
member of the Centers for Disease Control's supersecret Riboflavin
Assault Squad. The magazine editors at least know that if men are going
to look at pictures of guys at all, they better be healthy guys, not
sick guys.
Well, it's time to put some of this nonsense to rest. Ordinary men
simply don't look at health issues the way the magazines want us to
think they do. There is only one rule that governs men's healthcare
decisions, and it is this: Men don't care how they look, as long as it
isn't stupid or vulnerable. This instinct goes back to the homo erectus
days. A man must never look vulnerable during the hunt, or a jaguar will
pounce on him. And a man must never look stupid, or a woman will laugh
at him. Being laughed at a woman is the worst possible thing that can
happen to a man; compared to that, being pounced on by a jaguar is a
walk in the park.
(Note: real men can be homosexual, but if they are they have a different
set of rules.)
With this in mind we can easily understand men's health care.
EYE CARE
Real men don't wear sunglasses. Tom Cruise wore a pair of Vuarnet
sunglasses while being an incompetent pimp in the movie "Risky
Business," and unfortunately this somehow taught a generation of young
men that sunglasses were cool. If you actually look at Vuarnet
sunglasses, however, you will notice that a) they are French; and b)
they use the same heavy black frames that the Marines having been
handing out since the 1950's.
Rap musicians also wear sunglasses, usually indoors at night. The only
possible explanation for this is that they need them because their eyes
are being dilated by a chemical substance.
Neither Tom Cruise nor rap musicians, however, are real men. John Wayne
did not wear sunglasses. Danny Glover does not wear sunglasses. James
Coburn does not wear sunglasses. When they're out in the sun, real men
squint. Clint Eastwood is a champion squinter. Squinting gives a man
crow's feet and causes him to look tough and serious. Real men develop
cataracts from all the ultraviolet radiation. They never mention it
until they drive their car into a ditch.
When a man needs reading glasses, he gets the small rectangular kind
that sit down on the end of his nose. This enables him to fix the
defendant with a steely glare over the top of them, or better yet, to
whip them off and point at him with them, like Ben Stone on "Law and
Order." If a man needs bifocals, he gets the kind with a line across
them. The other kind are for wussies who worry that they might look like
they're getting old.
Real men wear eye protection when they are arc-welding. That's all. They
do not wear eye protection when operating a wood chipper, observing a
solar eclipse, or handling radioactive materials.
EAR CARE
Real men wear ear protection when they are the catapult officer on the
flight deck of an aircraft carrier, or a technician at a rocket launch.
They do not wear ear protection when operating leaf blowers or steel
mills. Real men know that trying to pretend that a leaf blower is as
loud or important as a Naval aircraft would just look stupid.
Real men are slightly deaf, but they don't mention it. See item
regarding cataracts under EYE CARE.
SKIN CARE
Real men don't wear sunblock. The only reason a man is going to rub
greasy crud on his body is if it has the colors of his favorite football
team (this is the sole exception to the "looking stupid" rule). In this
case he may do it in stripes or other interesting patterns, a tradition
that goes back to the ancient Britons rubbing blue dye on themselves
before charging naked into battle against the much better armed and
organized Roman legions. The same phenomenon occurs today when the Jets
play the Steelers.
Men don't lie out in the sun to get tanned, but they don't take special
precautions to avoid getting tanned, either. Caring about getting tanned
or sunburned or malignant melanomas means caring about your appearance,
and real men don't give a shit how they look (except for a very rare,
momentary nostalgia about the days before the beer belly).
A real man who wants to avoid too much sun wears a hat. He doesn't do it
to keep from getting tanned; he does it to keep the sweat from running
down into his eyes, which might cause him to wreck the combine
harvester, and them things cost money. If he's in the southwest, he
wears a cowboy hat; anywhere else he wears a baseball cap.
The phrase "dry skin," which women use all the time, is completely
meaningless to men -- a nonsense sound. Women will soak themselves in
hot, steaming water for an hour, get nice and clean and about as damp as
it's possible to be; then get out, towel off, and rub some greasy goo
over themselves, explaining that it's to prevent them getting "dry
skin." This baffles men. If women want wet skin, why dry off at all?
HAND CARE
Real men don't normally wear gloves. They occasionally wear heavy
leather work gloves if they're walking on the moon or attempting to
uproot a saguaro cactus. However, they don't wear them unless they have
to. Ideally men's hands are large, hard, and callused. They have short,
thick, blunt fingers. At least one of a real man's fingers should have
been broken and set crookedly when Billy Bob ran over it with a forklift
full of transmission parts. An acceptable alternative is to have cut off
the tip of a finger in a band saw.
Real men do not wear those yellow rubber kitchen gloves, which are
obviously meant for women's hands. The only exception is when they are
wearing them to remove the maggot-ridden corpse of a dead rat from under
the floorboards. In this case they will take five minutes to put them
on, pulling and tugging and cursing about how the fingers are too long
and the wrist too narrow.
Batting gloves are a sign of a wussy baseball player. The Babe did not
wear batting gloves.
Real men do not wear gloves when working with: gasoline, bleach,
cleanser, ammonia, paint stripper, embalming fluid, or hydrochloric
acid.
Real men wear one ring: their wedding ring. Their hands have grown since
they were married, and it can no longer be removed.
FOOT CARE
This is one of the most profound differences between men and women. To a
woman, shoes are an article of clothing, and she needs as many pairs as
she does shirts, skirts, slacks, etc. They must be chosen with the same
care and consideration. Attention is not paid to whether they cause pain
or in extreme cases permanent lameness, or whether they will stand more
than five minutes of actual wear.
To a man, a shoe is a device to keep from getting broken glass in his
feet -- and not always even then -- witness Bruce Willis in "Die Hard."
A man would no more buy a shoe that hurts him than he would buy a Camaro
without a four-barrel carburetor.
Real men have athlete's foot.
HAIR CARE
Men don't care what their hair is doing as long as it's out of their
sight. They are not remotely interested in having "healthy" hair (it's
dead, how can it be healthy?). They are also not interested in
highlights, lowlights, shine, bounce, body, color, tint, curls, waves,
or any of that crap that Madison Avenue has been using to rip off women
for generations. Real men wash their hair with shampoo (or bar soap if
they've run out), dry it with a towel, and yank a comb through it so
that it's more or less parallel. That's all.
Men do not use any form of hair coloring for any reason.
Shaving the head is a sign of being in the Marines or being a neo-Nazi
(or both; occasionally it's hard to tell) in white men; in any case, the
motivation is based on appearance and therefore real men do not do it.
In black men it is simply an identification mark to indicate that they
are professional entertainers or athletes or wish they were.
Men do care about balding, however. A fear of balding bothers all men to
some degree, although real men don't talk about it. Complaining about
balding is a character weakness. Real men don't DO anything about it,
either: no Rogaine, no transplants, no weaves or hairpieces. You play
the cards you're dealt, dammit!
Many major man-type guys are bald, like Sean Connery. On the other hand,
numerous wusses have full heads of hair, like Oliver North. Oliver North
claimed to be a Marine, but he actually worked in an office and spent
his days subverting the United States Constitution and giving weapons to
people who had kidnapped American citizens in an effort to bribe them
into releasing their hostages. He also persuaded his secretary to sneak
government documents, stuffed in her bra, out of a building under cover
of darkness. When a real man wants to steal government documents, he
does it himself by walking in in broad daylight, taking them out of the
filing cabinets, staring down the security guard, and walking out.
Bald men remind themselves of all this when their baldness starts to bug
them a little.
HEART CARE
None. If a man admits to having chest pains, he will be taken to a
hospital and be made to wear those flimsy flowered hospital gowns which
don't close up the back. This will cause him to look both stupid and
vulnerable.
LUNG CARE
Real men might smoke cigarettes or they might not; if they do it's
because they took it up when they were young and stupid and still
interested in looking "cool," and got addicted. However, they're more
likely to smoke cigars or a pipe. Smoking IS stupid, but it does not
LOOK stupid, cf. Humphrey Bogart.
Men will wear filtermasks:
ALWAYS when handling the Ebola virus;
SOMETIMES when handling asbestos (if they know an OSHA inspection is
due);
NEVER when sandblasting or spraying diazinon on the crops.
LIVER CARE
Real men drink when they feel like it, and not when they don't, and they
don't need any advice from YOU, goddammit. True real men hold their
liquor, however, and never get drunk because that might cause them to
look, or do or say something, stupid.
BOWEL CARE
Constipation is the natural state of affairs. Man was put on this Earth
to work.
GENITAL CARE
Soap and water. 'Nuff said. It's not a toy.
DRUGS
Real men will take an aspirin when they have accidentally driven a
railroad spike through their kneecaps, or mistakenly jackhammered their
own heads. They will also request general anesthesia when undergoing
major surgery, because they know they will be vulnerable and might look
stupid with a tube in their nose, and they don't want to know about it.
However, real men do not take illicit drugs for entertainment value,
because it could make their attention wander, and pouring 500 cubic
yards of concrete in the wrong place would look REALLY stupid.
EXERCISE
Real men don't lift weights, work out, jog, or any of the rest of that
crap. All that is a sign of an unmanly concern about appearance,
something real men don't feel. Real men get all the exercise they need
hauling 100-pound sacks of rivets from the loading dock down to the shop
floor.
CLEANLINESS
Real men take showers. They don't take baths unless they've pulled a
muscle while hauling sandbags during a flood, or are sharing the tub
with a loved one. A real man bathes not more than once a day (a
possible exception is his wedding day, but only if he has spent the
morning capping an oil well before the ceremony), nor less than once
every three days -- more than that and he starts to smell like beer that
has been allowed to stand in the sun.
Women frequently use soap and other bath products with a "vegetable"
motif: flowers, sandalwood, cucumber skin glop, oatmeal skin glop, etc.
A man should not smell like a vegetable, unless it's a fire-roasted
anaheim chili. Efforts to persuade Palmolive to make a fire-roasted
anaheim chili-scented soap have thus far been fruitless.
Real men don't wear cologne, although they may wear aftershave if it's
subtle. Men who wear too much aftershave are pimps or gigolos, and any
occupation based on exploitation of women is not a manly occupation.
Ideally a man should smell like a combination of leather, whiskey,
kerosine, pipe tobacco, wood smoke, good dark earth (nightcrawlers
optional), and the sweat of an honest day's work. After a camping
vacation a hint of pan-fried fish is also acceptable.
SHAVING
All men hate shaving. Most do it anyway, usually because a woman, or
when young their parents, want them to. A few punt and grow beards and
moustaches. They do this to save time in the morning, but never, ever
because they think they look better that way.
Men like the fact that dragging a knife over their faces seems macho,
which is why men still prefer razors to electric shavers. Most men have
a secret wish that they knew how -- and were brave enough -- to shave
with a straight razor.
A bathroom used exclusively by a man does not contain any electrical
appliances.
PAIN AND DEATH
Men don't actually fear death, because they never think that far ahead.
What men fear is pain. They have no fear of intense but momentary pain,
which is why, when they accidentally saw off an arm down at the lumber
mill, they just put it in an ice chest and drive themselves to the
hospital using their teeth to shift gears. What men fear is long,
drawn-out, anguishing pain from something like cancer or being dumped by
the woman they love. This kind of pain might cause them to cry in
public, which would be devastating. Ed Muskie cried in public during the
1972 Democratic primary, and was immediately eaten by a jaguar.
Real men don't mind working around live high-voltage lines or
nitroglycerine, because they know that whatever happens, it's only going
to involve momentary pain. Men don't fear death as long as it isn't long
and painful. If the Grim Reaper shows up while they've got their feet up
and are kicking back with a brew, that's fine, but they hate the idea of
dying in a hospital bed.
MENTAL HEALTH
This is a tough one, because there isn't actually any way to tell if a
man is mentally ill. If a man is feeling mentally unwell, he isn't
supposed to talk about it. The only thing we know for sure is that the
less a man talks about it, the crazier he probably is.
Men's craziness is different from women's craziness. Men keep their
craziness bottled up until it explodes like Mount Saint Helens,
spreading death and destruction in all directions. Men's craziness
causes horrifying, appalling behavior, like creating Nazism or the
designated hitter rule. Women's craziness is more like Mauna Loa -- it
comes out continuously in burning-hot lava flows. It kills some people
and causes property values to drop, but does not result in actual
genocide.
Men never talk to a psychiatrist, psychologist, or therapist except
under a court order.
If a man is unhappy, he may discuss it with a woman, but only if she is
a close (but nonromantic) friend, and for a maximum of 15 minutes. (This
extreme length of time is reserved for occasions when his entire family
has been killed, and he has wrecked his Porsche and been fired from his
job, all on the same day.)
The only man another man may discuss his emotions with is a bartender.
There are, however, certain indications when a real man is mentally
healthy:
- A mentally healthy real man will tell his boss to shove it where the
sun don't shine when the boss is wrong. The space shuttle Challenger
would never have been launched if any mentally healthy real men had been
around the Cape that day. One of them would told those PR-conscious NASA
administrators to shove it where the sun don't shine, then walked out
onto the pad at T minus ten seconds and jammed a monkey wrench into the
main booster. (Note item above on absence of fear of intense but
momentary pain.)
- A real man loves his children deeply, but is confused and slightly
offended by the fact that they love their mother more than him. It
probably has something to do with the breastfeeding. He will never
express this thought, however.
- A real man is not threatened by women in his workplace, club, etc. A
real man doesn't patronize, abuse, or exploit women. These are signs of
a weak ego. A real man already has an inflated opinion of himself, and
has no need to put down others. He also regards other men who do it as
spineless wusses.
- A real man is, however, somewhat perturbed by women in his locker
room. Men think women's bodies are sculptures of rare and surpassing
beauty, and can spend hours daydreaming about them. Women, on the other
hand, think men's bodies are lumpy, hairy, and funny-looking, and laugh
at them. A man will wrestle an octopus with one hand tied behind his
back and no breathing apparatus, rather than put himself in a situation
where a woman can laugh at him.
- A healthy real man will embrace and kiss his wife or girlfriend in
public, and will not let her wriggle away from him no matter how
embarrassed she is, because he loves her passionately and doesn't give a
God damn who knows it.
