Mantlers and Other Cool Man Words

You have to admit, it’s hilarious that we now have words like 'guyliner', 'manscaping', and 'mantlers' (my favorite!), and all the others that are currently slipping my mind (manxiety-manscara-manopause). I think it’s really cool that there are people who came up with these great names, because these words have made new realities accessible and accepted socially.

It’s actually OK nowadays for guys to wear eyeliner, if it’s guyliner. He doesn’t have to be gay.  What made it a legitimate male product was the use of the term in pop culture and that there is a defined segment of the population who actually wants/needs to buy the product (rockers, musicians, gothics, punks, performers, etc).   Just as it’s OK for men to be marketed and instructed that it’s beneficial to smell good (when it’s done in a manly context, to get chicks), meticulous grooming is no longer just for women and gay guys anymore either, because now we have a legitimate word for strait-guys to know that looking well-groomed does not mean emasculating--it simply means ‘manscaping.’  And even though “mantlers” are the golden award trophy of the Spike TV Men’s Choice Awards, the guys in the promotional TV spot for the upcoming show did look pretty cute wearing them, while still looking masculine.  I can see mantlers catching on too, if enough of a market segment exists to make it profitable (speaking on behalf of marketers and profiteers everywhere).

So, what’s my point?  That men and women can still be equal and opposite, without any actual threat to our sexual identities, and still share a lot of commonalities. Men and women are a lot alike in many ways that we have been largely discouraged by society from ever exploring or discussing. It's always the differences between men and women that marketers and media-makers want to focus on, because, as they love to remind us, "sex sells."  Since male and female bodies look different, defining specific male-female distinctions (i.e., masculinity and femininity) about the people inhabiting those bodies becomes essential to marketers.

I am currently reading Michael Kimmel’s book Guyland: The Perilous World where Boys become Men (2008), and even by page 50 was struck numerous times on how similar the perilous world where boys become men resembles the perilous world that girls are navigating also. With many of the same fears, insecurities, and lack of any real guidance, other than pop culture media, whose primary goal is profits and power, not the adolescent development of our kids.

It is nice when people look good, smell good, and have good grooming.  If we needed manly words to help men embrace these behaviors for themselves, then great!  More power to human kind and linguistic people who invent words that the rest of us can enjoy using. 

I still just get a tickle and a giggle out of hearing the pop culture fabricated “man-words.” Come to think of it, the infamous Hunts “manwich” was an early pop culture manly hybrid word that got invented. What amazes me most is that the list of available man-words seems to be never ending! I imagine St. Tropez, France would surely become Man Tropez, if it were to become well known for hot men gathering there regularly, en masse.

There are so many fun things we can authorize for men now, using manwords.  I think it's cool that we have embraced new language to help bring the men aboard to some of the finer sensitivities that used to be strictly the domain of women.  And that the men seem open to embracing them also.