I’ve got a plea, please society, Hollywood and extreme feminists, stop taking the man out of manliness!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for equality and with it equal pay, education and rights but when did it become okay to take it to the other extreme and try to turn our men into women?

(I’m going to make a note here and state that there are some men that are very comfortable being feminine and some that are okay with having their counterpart take on the more masculine role. If this describes you please know this doesn’t refer to you. That’s fine. I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about the men that want to cook steaks over a fire with their bare hands or are fine not ever knowing what a tweezers purpose is. The ones that have no natural inclination toward being feminine.)

I watched an ad on Hulu the other day, I think it was for Home Depot, and it was a couple who were painting their bedroom together. This is the inner dialog I had with myself when I saw they had painted their room teal and purple. (Because I always talk to myself when I watch tv alone.)

“I can’t believe he was okay with having a teal and purple bedroom!“

Chiding myself, “Well it’s showing that gender has no set colors and that he’s okay with having his room like a nineteen year old girl’s dorm room. It’s progressive.“

“I would never want to date a man okay with that.“

I would HATE that. I don’t ever want to date someone that would be okay with having a yellow, purple or Princess themed bedroom. It’s a shared room, it should reflect the fact that I share it with a man. My ex was a self-proclaimed douchebag and I remember when we were picking out colors for our room he flat out told me he was only okay with the colors brown and green. No exceptions, even though he was halfway around the world and I was the one doing all the decorating work. Now if I had truly hated those two colors I wouldn’t have gone for it, I let him walk over me for quite a few things, more things than I like to remember, but I would have drawn the line there. I liked the colors myself though and also I knew going into it that I wasn’t going to have some bright, flowery bedroom. I lived with a man, the Old Spice and beer smell whenever you walked in proved that.

I love that part of a man. I love having a man that doesn’t know what I’m talking about when I mention buying a duvet cover. Someone who dreads any event that requires him to wear a tie but does it anyway because I ask. I want an opposite. I want someone who challenges me and introduces me to things that I would never do myself.

I dated a man’s man before and while there were things that caused us to end I will always appreciate his manliness. He took me mudding for the first time. I got mud in areas I didn’t think were possible even fully clothed, and I loved it. I started to appreciate beer and whiskey. Not enough to continue to drink it all the time but it was brought into my life when before it never would have been. And he took me to my first professional sporting event. I was able to experience things, that growing up in a house full of women, I never would have before. My father has survived the last 27 years amazingly and I think two reasons for that were because he has an incredibly manly job and also because we didn’t push our girlishness on him and he in turn, didn’t try to turn us into his substitute sons.

Please understand when I say manly I’m not referring to a man who thinks he owns everything and everyone and abuses that power. That is not a man, that is a coward. I just mean a man that doesn’t feel guilty that he doesn’t own a matching outfit, or a man that knows how to build me a fire and keep me warm if we were ever to get lost in the wilderness. I want a man that’s a bit of a douchebag, only because we won’t always understand or get each other but is man enough to apologize if and when he’s wrong. I don’t want him to always understand me, that’s what my girlfriends are for and it would make things really boring. I also can’t take a man seriously enough to date if his favorite drink is also mine (pretty much any wine) or who spends more time than I do in a tanning bed or at a salon.

I don’t care if they have some interests that are considered ‘girly’ or ‘feminine’ because I have a few interests that might seem more masculine. I just want to keep that healthy balance and I don’t want to shame men into thinking their aren’t enough anymore. I’m taking back my gender, it’s mine and they can’t have it.

So now, for fun, I thought I’d list my favorite fictional manly men. Let me know who you’d add to this list.

5. Paul Bunyan
The man’s pet is a gigantic, blue ox. He is a lumberjack. Do I really need to say more?
4. Eric Taylor a.k.a Coach Taylor
I’ve got a soft spot for men that are amazing fathers and live in a house where their outnumbered by women but still manage to hold a manly job and kick ass at it. The actor, Kyle Chandler, I always thought resembled my father but when he became Coach Taylor it gave me a perspective that I’d never had before.
“Every man at some point in his life is going to lose a battle. He is going to fight and he is going to lose. But what makes him a man is that in the midst of that battle he does not lose himself. This game is not over, this battle is not over.”

3. Danny Castellano
He’s not exactly a camper, as proven by one of the last episodes of this season’s The Mindy Project, but he has opinions and he’s not afraid to share them. He refuses to join in on Mindy’s girlish escapades but it doesn’t make them any less of friends. He’s not a fan of hugs or being touched. He loves his mother but not in a weird still lives with her way but in a will punch you in the face if you say anything remotely disrespectful about her. Add that to him being an OBGYN and you just know he’s a man’s man who also respects women.

“First of all it’s a Springsteen show not a Bruce Springsteen concert. You sound ignorant. Second of all, you don’t show up at a Springsteen show wearing a John Cougar Mellencamp tee shirt unless you want to get punched in the face.”

2. Batman
Was it even possible that Batman wouldn’t make this list? Let’s forget about the being filthy rich thing and think about the fact that he doesn’t have any super powers. Just sweet toys and an amazing body. He speaks in a deeper voice than I ever thought was possible to reach and has a suit that outlines his abs. This last movie where he climbed out of the prison was pure man. Pure manly, man, man.
“I do fear death. I fear dying in here, while my city burns, and there’s no one there to save it.“

1. Ron Swanson
Most of you aren’t shocked by my number one choice. How could it not be Ron Swanson? The man is the man. He has a mustache. He eats steak with every meal. He crafts things out of wood. And this season he started dating a woman with two daughters, again how can I not love a man who surrounds himself with a house full of women? It only made him more manly in my eyes.
“Under my tutelage, you will grow from boys to men. From men into gladiators. And from gladiators into Swansons.“