Why lie if you can dump the bitch and find a girlfriend who recognizes that you like to go to bars with your friends and doesn't treat you like a child?
Seriously, shit like this makes me want to recant feminism. It's no good arguing for equal treatment if we as a society treat men this badly. No self-respecting modern feminist would allow herself to be infantilized like this. (Note that I am aware that many women do allow it; I would argue that they are neither feminist nor self-respecting.)
What is up with that, dudes? Do you think it is rad to be treated like an irresponsible, beer-guzzling, untrustworthy sheep by the media?
I am very disappointed with it really.
So many adverts on the TV at the moment make light of the whole 'hurrrrr dad's stupid and mum's the one who always sorts things out' trope. Similarly, young men are portrayed as BANTER LOVING OI OI twats. Let's look at some adverts focused towards men:
- Lynx, beauty products etc. ugly/undesirable guy uses deodorant and suddenly becomes a cocky bastard who women love. If the guy is instead immensely good looking, like on a perfume or hair gel advert, he is portrayed as a flash prick unable to fully open his eyes. A lot of women I know have displayed unfavourable reactions to the men in these
- Tabloid newspapers, the Sun, the Daily Sport, Nuts etc. portray young working class men as idiots unable to read a proper newspaper, interested only in softcore porn on pages 3-10 and football. In the Nuts adverts, called 'WOMEN: Don't expect any help on a Thursdaayyyyy', a man is sitting comfortably with his feet up whilst his wife/girlfriend struggles with a menial household task. That is pretty shit to both men and women honestly.
- Food adverts always advertise 'man food' as being thick/colossal with some stupid cockney geeza in the background. Making men sound kinda stupid. In one advert a guy knows a ballet term at a pub quiz and is ejected from the pub. Oh great, let's show men as uncultured bores. Beer adverts are a lot like the one above, trying to be creative in portraying men as desperate to constantly drink with each other free of society's/better half's gaze.
It's not as big as an issue as I'm making it seem just there but it's kind of annoying. I know girls who I've met and their first attitude towards me is as if I'm some pigheaded moron. Not good. I'm sure it works the other way a lot of the time though.
As for the beer/girlfriend issue: I've always had beaus who are very reasonable. The weird thing seems to be (in my experience) that in couples (mostly friends and not in my case), the girl generally retreats further into the relationship and makes far less effort to see her friends, meaning she often seems to get resentful that her boyfriend wants to go out so often. A couple of my flatmates had girlfriends relatively early into the academic calendar last year, before everyone properly made friends; when they (inevitably) split up, sadly the girls in the relationships had very few friends compared to most of the girls who'd been single most of the year. Whilst the guys were no different to anyone else. In both relationships, they were always extremely upset whenever her boyfriend wanted to go out without her, but it's understandable I suppose when she couldn't do the same thing herself. Whereas most strong relationships I know where they both have a lot of friends it's not an issue.
A lot of long-term relationships though I know seem to go this way, with the girl getting more insular as the guy tries his best to hold on to his entire social life (which is often a selgiraffe thing to do when you have a girlfriend). Insecurity issue with certain women? Natural progression to the family unit? I don't know
Wot u guys think