THEREFORE I AM: I need to brush up on manliness

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March 9, 2009

By David Spates / davespates@tds.net The Crossville Chronicle Mon Mar 09, 2009, 03:14 PM CDT

Are you man enough? C’mon, take it like a man. Are you a man or a mouse? Man up! Be a man. He’s a man’s man. You da man! Stick it to the man. Oh man. Stand by your man. All men are created equal.

We might need to rethink that last one. Apparently all men are not created equal — constitutionally perhaps, but not where it counts. Now before you get carried away, I’m talking about manliness as it relates to what we all agree is the most crucial criterion — the perception of a multinational corporation that sells junk food. Who better to gauge manliness than the maker of Skittles?

Mars Snackfood and its offshoot company, Combos, recently commissioned a study by Sperling’s BestPlaces to rank our country’s manliest cities. (It’s all part of a promotional sweepstakes, so I promise I won’t take this seriously if you don’t — unless, of course, I win a prize, and then I’ll tell you that the manliness ranking is completely legitimate and a fine way for a company to spend money in an economy that’s swirling counterclockwise down the toilet.)

So guess which town came in with the manliest men of all? It’s none other than our big brother down the street, Nashville. Who’d’ve thought? Music City, USA is the manliest of all the cities. Nashville’s nice and all, but manly? Really?

Obviously you’re wondering how the folks at Sperling’s came to that conclusion. I thought surely it had something to do with the strip joints and adult “bookstores” you see from the interstate, but that’s just the tip of the testosterone-filled iceberg. The rankings used criteria such as the number of major league sports teams, popularity of tools and hardware, frequency of monster truck rallies, NASCAR fan base, number of bowling alleys, popularity of hunting and fishing, and concentration of barbecue restaurants. Y-chromosomes were deducted for things like home furnishing stores, high minivan sales and subscription rates to beauty magazines.

All of this got me thinking about what it means to be “a man.” I use quotation marks there because, at least in this context, a man needs more than just the external equipment to be considered “a man.” Liberace was a man, but I don’t think anyone would say he was “a man.” See the difference? Just imagine me using those annoying “air-quotes” when I write “a man.”

Judging by Sperling’s criteria, I’m not much of “a man.” Oh, sure, I’m a man in the unquoted sense, but I don’t like NASCAR, I’ve never fired a gun that didn’t have the letters BB preceding it, I’d rather have my eyes chewed out by weevils than attend a monster truck rally, and familial obligations all but demand that I drive a minivan. I’m also a stay-at-home dad who’s studying to be a teacher. Surely I don’t get manliness points for that.

But maybe there’s hope for me yet. I enjoy some pro sports, I can effectively use hardware when necessary, I once bowled a 190, I make better ribs than most barbecue restaurants, and I firmly assert that the best thing about an IKEA store is the Swedish meatballs. I suppose I fall somewhere in the middle of the manliness grading curve. Hey, cut me some slack. I say anything more than the Big B’s of manhood — bikinis, beer and burgers — counts as bonus points.

While we certainly could debate the validity of Sperling’s manliness criteria, I must insist on at least one more. To be considered “a man” one must be able to carry on a progressive, lucid, three-minute conversation with another “man” using nothing more than quotes from “Caddyshack.” If you can pull that off, I don’t care if you live in Charlotte (No. 2), Memphis (No. 11), San Francisco (No. 48) or New York (No. 50) — you are “a man” in my book.

So I got that going for me, which is nice.

David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@tds.net.

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