Glee, Manliness, & Crying

            Is it manly to be a Glee fan? Is it manly to pick on paraplegics during lunch period?
            Why is it so hard to say "yes" to the first and so easy to say "no" to the second? 


            What do I mean by "manliness"? To reduce myself to generalization, Maddox's The Alphabet of Manliness probably serves as a good example. 


            The book is hyperbole--what sort of human being would reduce themselves in the manners prescribed? But what is not hyperbole is the significant numbers of young and old men who check into Barnes and Noble or Borders to transfer to George Ouzounian $11 or more of their hard earned cash (Amazon).
            Maddox is a good writer, non-barring. Yet, he takes ownership of a particular form of rhetoric; and his is the rhetoric that men only wish they themselves could use. Hatred/defamation of women is manly. Performing grotesque sexual acts of asinine nature is manly.
            Let me give those not in the know a tip. If "manliness" is the only thing floating around in your mind 24 hours a day, you aren't much of a man at all. Sure, Maddox's book is funny. But at the end of the day, if your idea of manliness is evaluating various suicide methods in terms of masculinity, you have something wrong with you. If your idea of fun is teasing a fellow brother because he watches Glee, my proposition is that you aren't much of a man at all.
            We hear this concept being thrown around. "Be a man," "Be manly," "Real men don't cry," Even if you're not religious, you can probably attest to the fact that Jesus was a spiritual leader of his time. Even Jesus cried. Athletes cry. Athletes cry when they win and when they lose. And sometimes, although you may find this hard to believe, the eyes of real men become watery after watching Michael Moore in "Sicko" stand with a microphone on top of a boat headed to Guantanamo (illustrating how even the detainees are provided with government health care) or after watching Carl and Ellie go through married-life together in "Up." 


            And what does it say about us when we as a society are hesitant to accept any sort of crying in politics? Crying is weak. If you cry, your popularity will go down. To illustrate: Hillary Clinton during the New Hampshire primaries. 


            I'm sorry, but aren't tears the biological equivalent of sweat and urine? And somehow, somehow, those two are "manly," and tears are not. We've set values--we've said, you over there, if you pee in the bushes, you're a man, and if you sweat like a monster, you're a man. But you there! You in the corner of the movie theater watching the penultimate scene in Ratatouille where Anton Ego has his palate revelation! You're not allowed to cry! And you're not allowed to cry because you're male! You're not allowed to cry because doing so will make you less manly. 


            My proposition: real men are REAL. By that I mean we don't put on some sort of mask to hide what we're feeling. Real men, as callous as this is going to sound, shouldn't care. We shouldn't care what other people think. If a particular moment in a film is particularly touching, then g-d_ _ _ _it, I'm going to cry. "Manliness" shouldn't matter. What should matter is the amount of emotion you choose to show and what that says about you as a human being. 


            Is it manly to get drunk to come home to a girlfriend and tell her you want her to "give" it up? Or is it manly to spend 40 minutes watching Glee with a girl you like? 


            I'll choose the latter every time.