Stacia Kane

I’m serious, y’all. Samson’s manliness all existed in his hair, his long, sexy, shiny manly-man hair. (Which, okay. Probably a filthy rat’s nest considering the lack of jojoba conditioners in Biblical times. Play along, okay? And shut your damn doubting piehole.) (Is there seriously a term for mouth more offensive yet humorous than “pie-hole”? Because its use implies that you eat pie on a regular basis. Who eats that much pie?)

Anway, so Samson was all tough and strong because of his hair. The 80′s man, much like Samson, also wanted to show his testosterone-laced strength through his hair. But! He was no longer a construction worker or mechanic, who could tuck his long, luxurious 70′s hair, probably cared for with a balsam shampoo and a creme rinse, into a ponytail when handling dangerous man-work equipment like axes or hydraulic things, and tuck it into the collar of his shirt. No, he needed to look businesslike. Clean-cut. Long hair was out, baby.

So what’s a guy to do? His banker bosses want to see his ears. They want him to have bangs. But inside that suited body beats the heart of a rocker.

And so the mullet was born. Short on the top and sides, long in the back. The perfect mix of business and pleasure.

I had one, once. I was ten. I didn’t know what it was called, but everyone I knew was getting one. So I got one. I hated it. It was puffy and I felt, frankly, like some creepy elementary-school butch lesbian. But that same haircut that made me feel too manly did the same for actual men. They exuded manly, like a scent peeking through the heavier smells of Aramis or Drakkar. (By the way, I still love Aramis.)

Yes, some men went too far. There was a trend in my high school for the guys to have the backs of their mullets permed. I ask you. There is nothing manly about getting a perm, not ever. I remember hearing a bunch of them discussing it one day. And one of them was a hockey player.

There were also the unfortunate souls for whom the short mullet front was a different (usually darker) color than the long back. The two tone-effect didn’t really work in that instance.

But everybody had a mullet. Teachers had them. Every guy in my school had one. My brother had one. Various celebrities. More Random celebrities and sports stars (MacGyver!).Mel Gibson. (Curiously, Lethal Weapon-era photos of the mulleted Mel are exceedingly difficult to find online. Imdb doesn’t have any. Conspiracy? You be the judge!)

Now, though, the mightly mullet has become passe. A mulleted man is the kind of man who drinks Busch beer out of a and wears super-tight stonewashed denim cut-off shorts beneath his faded Molly Hatchett t-shirt.

Sow hile we’re mourning the passing of macho, and hoping for a resurgence, let’s think of this. The mullet allowed men who be a little creative with their hair. Isn’t it a shame they can’t anymore? No moustaches, no muttonchops (yeah, I didn’t get to them), no flowing hair in interesting shapes?

It’s a sad time to be a man, my friends.

Yes indeedy, folks. Burt Reynolds is 71 years old today.

And you know, he still looks pretty good, although I’m focusing on macho 70′s Burt as a fitting end to Macho Week.

So I’m going to blog about mullets and muttonchops, then I’m going to watch Smokey and the Bandit and enjoy this special day.

Technorati tags:

burt reynolds
burt reynolds day
macho

I’m supposed to be blogging about the mullet and muttonchops today. But you know what? I just plain don’t feel like it. I feel to chatty to focus, so here are some random thoughts:

Blah blah blah Anna Nicole Smith blah blah.

No, seriously. I think it is a tragedy. A baby just lost her big brother and her moth and she’s only a few months old, and that is horrible. What I find most interesting is the internet “coverage”. I haven’t yet seen a man comment that this is tragic or sad, or that he hopes Anna Nicole has found peace. Most men seem to be either on the “shrug, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner” or “Hahaha!” sides. I haven’t yet seen a woman who isn’t saddened. A lot of women seemed to feel almost like AN was sort of a patron saint, beautiful and confused and doing her best in the world. I don’t know if I would go that far–there was always something hard about her face that bothered me–but certainly I think she was vilified unecessarily. I think she honestly loved J. Howard Marshall and I think she deserved the money he promised her.
But the sex split over this really fascinates me, although I don’t feel like analyzing it just now. You guys tell me what you think about it instead.

Speaking of fascination, I can no longer keep from telling you all to go read Lola London’s ‘L’Undone’. Start back at Chapter One. I am riveted.

The hubs is going out of town tomorrow so I will be all alone for the weekend. I expect you all to keep me company.

In my internet wanderings I stumbled on a story about a guy whose girlfriend was visiting him. She decided to go get a manicure. he warned her about dirty tools but she had her own for them to use anyway. I thought, wow. What a great “show don’t tell” example of character. The kind of woman who not only owns her own set of manicure tools, but who takes them everywhere with her in case she needs a manicure. Masterful.

Hey, I’ve said this in comments a few times now but it seems important enough that I want to mention it here too do nobody misses it:

I’m certainly not saying, in any way, that “macho” is the only type of man I like. I’m not implying only alphas will do for me, or that brawn is some important than brains, or anything of the sort.

I like clever, witty men. I like geeks with glasses who read comics. I like rich businessmen in crisp business shirts and shiny shoes. Just as much as I like men in scuffed boots with grease under their nails from handling engine parts. I like tall, skinny punk guys. I like shorter, slightly husky guys.

I just plain like men, and these posts are just me examining an archetype that seems to have disappeared. I think it’s sad there’s one less type of man out there, is all, or that a man once so popular has lost his place.

Okay?

So what exactly is macho? What was it, and what did it mean? Most importantly, what does it mean now?

It started as a way to identify a “manly” man. A macho guy was above all, testosterone filled. He could grow luxurious chest and facial hair. (I will be doing a post tomorrow specifically on mullets and mutton chops, so be ready!) He was strong and tough. He maybe got in fights. He pretty much had a constant, woman-pleasing erection.

The macho man lived hard. He drank. Maybe he smoked. He probably had, as we’ve mentioned, a manual labor-type job. He did something where he was outside all day, getting tan. He probably had squint lines around his eyes and tan lines, in fact. Since he was usually shirtless outside, though, he didn’t have a farmer tan…his chest was bronzed. Only below the waist were the tan lines visible.

He hung in out real bars, not discos. He listened to rock or real country music, the kind about drinkin’ and cryin’ and going to jail and hopping trains with their lonesome whistles in the clear, starry night. He felt those lyrics deeply, but he would never discuss such feelings.

He played football on the weekends if he was the active type. If not maybe he worked on his car or watched sports on TV. He did not play soccer or golf. Maybe he fished, but only if the fishing involved copious amounts of beer. Maybe he and his fishing buddies camped out and cooked their catches for dinner, too. Manly cooking, which involved rocks, cast iron, and fire, and did not involve aprons or reducing anything.

The macho man was tender but gruff with his woman. He saw women as something to have fun with, but he respected women as well. And woe betide the man who did not, because the macho man was happy to let his fists do the talking if need be. He wanted a wife. He wanted children. He expected to support them and he did not shirk from the thought or the reality of his reponsibilities.

Somehwere along the line, this concept became bastardized. The macho man, instead of being desirable, became first an overblown caricature (big blow-dried hairdos, tons of gold chains, you know what I’m talking about). It became an excuse for men to behave abominably.

As a result, it became a derisive insult. The macho man, instead of being someone who did his best, became a neanderthal. A man who wouldn’t let his woman live her life, who expected foot massages every night and sex every other night and didn’t care what she wanted. As with so many other good concepts, people took the base but not the subtleties, and “macho” became synonymous for “sexist jerk”.

I think this is a terrible shame. I think men have been turned into wimps. I think the modern man tends to be a little sad, a little needy, more than a little insecure.

And the men who are attemtping machismo are going to the very worst extremes, referring to women as bitches and hos and impregnating them willy-nilly.

All because this man, the macho man, who used to set an example for young men and who used to give young women something real to expect from the men in their lives, has disappeared.

Maybe if we bring him back in fiction…and women start looking for him again…we can bring him back in life?

Tags:

70′s
macho
men

For a quickie, but I’ll be posting more on macho later. (I didn’t have time yesterday, the day flew away from me.)

Plus, honestly, I’ve noticed that when I post every day I seem to get less comments. What’s up with that, guys?

I’ve been playing with the blog more, you’ll notice on the sidebar now I have all sorts of nifty new tracking features. There’s a site called My BlogLog that has some cool widgets and tracking charts and stuff. I guess it’s for networking/blog community building. I just think it’s got some neat info. It’s worth a look if you blog a lot, anyway. Although it may be embarrassing for you all to see just how many times a day I’m actually popping onto your blogs.

And that’s it. More macho later, and after Macho Week is over I have lots of writing-related questions for you and a New Year’s Resolution book to discuss.

Also, do you guys think I should do Thursday Thirteen? It seems like a lot of people are doing it, and it might be a good way to attract readers, but at the same time, I don’t know if anyone would actually read it. It is a meme, after all, and I think most people tend to just skim those. What do you guys think?

My ex-boyfriend Emil and I were talking one day about why the seventies was the last era of the real man. “Truck drivers could still be heroes in the seveties,” he said.

And he was right.

Once that decade ended, we lost interest in men who make a living with their hands–except as villains or dolts, characters of fun or racist obstacles for the real heroes to get through. Occasionally we’ll see some blue-collar guys in a sports movie, dealing with father issues.

But in the 70s…we lusted after those men. Tall, lean men with hairy chests and faces, with cowboy hats and cans of beer in their hands.

That man still has a huge pull for me, growing up a child of the 70s as I did. None of them more than the man above, Burt Reynolds.

When I was eight, Smokey and the Bandit was my abolsute favorite movie (I added Conan the Barbarian not long after.) Bandit was the handsomest, the most exciting, the smartest and coolest man who ever lived. He drove an awesome car, and he drove it well. He didn’t play by anybody’s rules–but he was still a traditional kind of man.

He was the kind of man we saw all over in films in the seventies.

When and why did that change? When did men just being men stop being good enough?

I’m guilty of this, in large part. My heroes–when they aren’t medieval ass-kickers–tend to be businessmen. They’re wealthy, they’re powerful. They wear crisp white shirts and smell expensive.

They’re complex men…but they aren’t as complex as the seveties macho man. Yes, I do think they were complex. They were men facing a changing world, and their changing place in that world, the best way they could.

I wonder if a man like this might be too hard to write in a romance these days. If the compromises a 00′s woman (hate that!) would need to make to be with the 70′s man–or vice versa–might be too much for even the longest and most complex romances.

I wonder if readers would even buy a hero who worked in a factory or drove a truck anymore. The CB warrior is gone. The blue-collar guys living quiet lives don’t attract anyone’s attention anymore.

Even the concept of macho itself is ridiculed now, turned into a neanderthal stereotype only good for laughs.

But for one shining decade, Bandit and his resolute uncoolness, his Merle Haggard albums and his Coors and his cowboy hat and thick moustache, reigned supreme as the epitome of a man. When men didn’t have to wear the right brand of jeans or listen to the right satellite radio station or live in a large, leather-decorated loft to be a hero, to be sexy and interesting.

I miss him.

(Tomorrow: What is macho? I’m doing macho all week.)

I have done it, my friends. I have officially started querying Personal Demons, after numerous stringent edits. If anyone else wants to give it a quick beta read, just in case I missed something or whatever, let me know.

This is the most nerve-wracking thing ever…but I think it’s a good book, a solid and fun and sexy book, and damn it, I can’t possibly be the only one, especially since every edit gets a better reaction from early readers.

So that’s that. I have stepped on the merry-go-round.

Also, if anyone is ever interested, for whatever reason, in buying me a gift, here’s the place to go: Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. Seriously. (Well, not seriously, because none of you would ever be expected to buy me a gift of any kind and if you tried to I would refuse. But it sounded good, huh.) I think any one of these would make me happy. It is now my goal to try them all. At least, all the ones that sound good, which is basically all of them.

It actually ties in a bit with a whole long post I have planned on perfumes, but that will have to wait for later in the week. Why? Because I’m tired, that’s why. I spent most of the day doing some beta reading for my cp and a new friend, doing more edits on PD, working on my synopsis and query for PD, and doing more edits. Also, I woke up dizzy this morning and stayed that way. I thik it’s an inner-ear thing related to last week’s horrible bronchitis and cold.

I also managed to eat a quarter of a peanut butter cake I made yesterday. Delicious. Always better the second day. I don’t know why I even try to eat them the first day (well, okay, yes I do, and it’s not flattering). This was the first one I made without chocolate chips, because the hubs is insane and so is not a fan of chocolate and peanut butter together, while I think it’s the most yummy combo ever. Anyway, left the chocolate out, and the cake is still pretty good.

Only nine days left until Burt Reynolds Day! (The site is still showing last year’s info, but the date doesn’t change. This will tie in with my post(s) on…macho. Be ready.

So this evening, while frying tortillas for dinner (bastardized Mexican. See, I’m allergic to peppers, and I don’t really like spicy food, so fried tortillas are pretty much the only thing that makes my tacos Mexican at all. Otherwise they’re just ground beef cooked with garlic, onion, Worcestershire, and soy [it really is tasty] and served with some cheese. Anyway.) I was frying the tortillas and somehow managed to dip the middle finger of my left hand into the boiling oil.

Now that was fun.

After I finally managed to get my finger out from under the cold tap, and after eating and it still hurt, and after I had some ice cream and it still hurt, I headed for the medicine cabinet. I could have taken some ibuprofin or paracetemol (because we don’t have Advil or Tylenol here), but then I remembered. I still have some Percocet left over from when the Faery was born and I forced my doc to give me plenty. (See, when Princess was born he didn’t give me enough, and I never let him forget it.)

Long story short? I am high as a kite right now, my friends. Not only does my finger not hurt, I seriously don’t think I could feel pain if I tried. I’m awfully thirsty, though.

So I was going to do some real writing work tonight but in the mood I’m in, I don’t think it’s a good idea.

And, they finally announced the release date for the last Harry Potter book! Yay! July 21st! I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, July 21st can not come fast enough. On the other, my husband turns 35 on the 16th of July and I am not looking forward to the weeks of “I’m so old” conversations. Even less am I loking forward to turning 34 on August 11th. No, not looking forward to that one at all. So I want July 21st to happen, then just stay the 21st for several more months. Like Groundhog Day, only…in July, and without Bill Murray. (Although I freaking adore Bill Murray, so he’s certainly welcome to come along.) I can’t wait for the book, though. I’m thinking of trying to convince hubs to take me to Edinburgh. Maybe JK Rowling will show up.

And I had a cigarette two days ago, because he was having one, but it was eh. And I haven’t had any since. So look at me, being all tough and shit.

Oh, and also Molly Ivins died, and apparently she was much admired despite being a plagiarizer. Since she stole not only Florence King’s words, but her whole “loveable curmudgeon” persona, I think she had a lot more to apologize for than she did, but it seems that, much like when Hunter S. Thompson died and I didn’t care, I’m in the minority here as well. (BTW Florence King is one of my all-time favorite authors, so I’ve always had about as much use for Ivins as I have for pens with pink ink.)

The hubs and I were discussing art earlier (which actually has very little to do with Molly the Copycat but bear with me, because I think it’s interesting.) We were discussing art, and what makes art cross the line between interesting and pretentious. There was more to it than that, but that was the gist. And we figured it out:

Pure art exists so the artist can make the viewer or audience or whatever see the world the way the artist does, or look at themselves in a different way, or make them think. Good or bad. It doesn’t intrude, it opens a dialogue.

Pretentious art makes the audience look at the artist. It doesn’t try to do anything but attract attention.

And those are my drug-addled thoughts for the evening.