HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2007-09-27, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2007. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
Good first impressions
Okay. Listen up, all you hunky, hulking
guys out there. I’ve got good news and
I’ve got bad news.
The good news is: metrosexualism is dead.
To which I can only add: Amen, Thanks be to
Allah, and could you use an extra pallbearer
for that coffin?
Metrosexualism, like disco and those tiny,
shiny push scooters, was a fad that bloomed
and disappeared before I had a chance to even
think about signing on.
Just as well. I’m really not equipped.
You’re familiar with metrosexualism, yes?
It describes men who spend inordinate
amounts of time (and money) preening and
primping their image and lifestyle.
You don’t have to be gay to be a
metrosexual, nor do you have to be straight.
Fact is, sexuality is kind of immaterial to
metrosexuals. They’re in love with themselves
rather than any particular gender.
David Beckham is the poster boy for
metrosexuals. Prince would make the cut, as
would Tom Wolfe, Beau Brummel and Niles
Crane of Frasier.
I don’t think metrosexualism was mankind’s
finest hour and I’m delighted that it’s defunct.
Now for the bad news: it’s been replaced.
By studliness.
And I mean serious studliness.
Testosterone-drenched, beetle-browed,
lineback-shouldered, monosyllabic caveman-
type studliness.
And it all started with James Bond.
For years, the chore of playing 007 fell
improbably on the slim and sylphlike
shoulders of Pierce Brosnan. Does he look like
a guy who could snap a goon’s neck with one
hand while sipping a martini (shaken, not
stirred) with the other?
He does not. Pierce Brosnan looks like a guy
who might audit for H&R Block, or run a
Vancouver hair salon.
Daniel Craig on the other hand….
Craig is the ‘new’ James Bond and he’s as
far away from Pierce Brosnan as two body
types can get. The Craig Bond is no elegant,
effete-looking male model type. He’s
muscular and knobby with a working guy’s
mug under a no-nonsense short-back-and-
sides haircut.
The distance between Brosnan/Bond and
Craig/Bond was established memorably in the
movie Casino Royale a couple of years ago.
When a bartender asks Craig/Bond whether he
prefers his martini shaken or stirred, he
deadpans the guy and growls, “Do I look like
I give a damn?”
If you really want to see what’s hot and
happening in the male image department, turn
on your TV and watch an episode of Holmes
on Homes. It’s the TV home improvement
program that stars Mike Holmes, a beefy,
brush-cut fireplug of a man who dresses in bib
overalls with a Stanley Kowalski undershirt
peeking out from behind the bib. He’s got a
tattoo on one bulging bicep and a leather tool
belt slung around his waist, festooned with
screwdrivers, pliers, hammers, a tape measure
and other tools of the hard-nosed handyman’s
trade.
When he’s not actually ripping out shoddily
constructed ceilings, floors, staircases and
other assorted house features barehanded,
Mike’s fond of scowling darkly into the TV
camera, his ham-hock arms folded across his
barrel chest.
Mike Holmes does not look like the kind of
guy whose Harley you’d want to cut off.
Mike Holmes looks like the kind of guy who
could take Beckam, Brummel and Brosnan
and karate chop them into neatly stacked
kindling.
Which is fine, I guess. It’s nice to see old-
fashioned masculinity rearing its low-browed
head once more but…must the pendulum
swing so far? Good riddance to the poltroons
and popinjays that personified
metrosexualism, but must we regress all the
way back to Neo-Neanderthal?
There’s a guy by the name of Ethan Marak
who maintains a blog on the web dedicated to
manly matters. This is a recent excerpt:
“Well, enough is enough. Men are tired of
catering to women, tired of being PCed until
they don‘t know which way is up, tired of
bending over backward and getting kicked in
the ‘nads by a spiked heel. It is time for… the
reemergence of the beer-drinking, chick-
shagging male stereotype – an old-fashioned
man’s man. It’s time to run into the streets,
belting out the Burger King manthem, “I
am man, hear me roar,” while chowing down
on that Texas Double Whopper. It’s time
we regain our independence from women,
snatch back our pants and step into them
ourselves.”
Oh dear.
Sounds a little too much like closing time at
Moe’s Tavern to me.
Suddenly, Pierce Brosnan is looking good.
Arthur
Black
This election has few laughs
He walks into the room, shoulders
slumped, feet shuffling. Long, hair
brushes his collar, tattoos line his
arms. Eyebrow, lip and nose are pierced. A
skull graces the shirt he wears, while his jeans
hang slackly from his hips.
Before he says a word, you have him
pegged; at best he’s a slackard, at worst a
troublemaker.
Then he extends his hand and smiles. It is a
smile that brightens the room and in his eyes
you see the first signs of intelligence. When he
talks, you hear an articulate young man,
clearly well-educated. By the end of your time
with him he has won you over with a
charismatic personality and sense of humour
not evident in the first impression he
conveyed. He is truly a diamond in the rough.
And you are reminded once again that it
takes time before you can ever honestly judge
another individual.
Unfortunately, knowing so doesn’t
necessarily make it an easy rule to follow. A
study has shown that 90 per cent of our view of
a person is based on the first impression we
have before they speak. It is from their
appearance and their body language that we
form an initial opinion, which without any
opportunity to change through conversation,
may hold forever.
So while this isn’t perhaps the way it should
be, it’s best to consider when hoping to make
an impression, that the first one is the only one
that might matter.
The same can be said of our communities.
At the end of August a committee from
Stirling visited Blyth on a First Impressions
Community Exchange. They toured
throughout town forming opinions on
everything from the aesthetic to recreation to
commercial. Blyth scored high points on
virtually everything.
The perception they had before coming to
town was of a community that took pride in its
Canadian theatre, that there would be unique
shops and that the village would be historical.
Their five-minute impression, literally the
first impression, was that Blyth is “very neat,
clean and well-maintained.” The entrances are
beautiful, the signage up to date. They loved
the overall look and flow of the town and felt
the gardens and landscaping were very
impressive.
While the remainder of the visit proved
equally full of accolades, residents have to be
extremely pleased that there was so many
positives noted in the initial appraisal. In
minutes one can determine that this might be a
nice place in which to stop for a time, or begin
a new life.
Living in a community, driving its streets,
looking out the same windows at the same
scenes day after day, we don’t always see
things the way they deserve to be seen.
Sometimes a concerted effort is required to
take a fresh look. Sometimes it takes a
stranger’s eyes to help us see our community
as if for the first time.
One thing’s certain; this village is no
diamond in the rough, all icy dazzle and cold
sparkle. It is instead a variety of gems. Like the
understated beauty of a deep blue sapphire, it
shines with historic richness and pride. Like a
pristine opal, it is treasured and cared for. It’s
cultured like the pearl, while its attributes are
as varied as quartz.
Blyth residents should be very proud of
themselves and their jewel. The village
exceeded the committee’s expectations. You
can’t ask for a better first impression than that.
Other Views Are you ready for the menaissance?
Someone tried to inject a spot of humour
into the staid Ontario Oct. 10 election
the other day and was threatened with a
punch in the nose. This may be another reason
humor has almost disappeared from provincial
politics.
A representative of the conservative-leaning
Canadian Taxpayers Federation dressed as
Pinocchio, whose nose grows longer every
time he tells a lie, said he was pushed and
threatened by Liberals when he tried to follow
Premier Dalton McGuinty.
Liberals naturally are not enthralled when a
critic even humorously reminds their leader of
his broken promises and occasionally thrusts
himself into his pictures, but it is hardly
enough reason to threaten violence.
The only other hint of levity since the
campaign started months ago was when
McGuinty promised a new statutory holiday
every February and Progressive Conservative
leader John Tory mused wryly “the next thing
you know he’s going to declare a second
Christmas.”
Humour can be valuable in taking some of
the boredom out of politics, making the public
more interested and politicians look human
and winning support, but it is becoming
scarce.
McGuinty had some left in the last election
in 2003, when he quipped Conservative
premier Ernie Eves was “blaming me for
everything these days and soon he’s going to
announce I’m the cause of premature
baldness.”
Eves retorted McGuinty “has got what it
takes to take what you’ve got,” referring to the
Liberals’ propensity for taxing.
New Democrat leader Howard Hampton
held up a slice of Swiss cheese and claimed
the policies of Eves and McGuinty also were
full of holes.
There was more humour, notwithstanding
politics under the aggressive Conservative
premier Mike Harris had become more
confrontational; in the 1999 election, when
McGuinty said Pizza Pizza had a better system
for delivering pizza than Harris had for
delivering medicare.
Harris called the term Liberal leader an
oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp, postal service
and military intelligence.
McGuinty scoffed Harris’s idea of long-term
planning was booking a tee-off time for golf.
Harris sometimes neglected governing to play.
Harris said the Liberals are the Caramilk bar
of politics, because they have a soft, squishy
centre and what it contains is a mystery.
McGuinty countered Harris was so
confrontational the only partners he wanted
were sparring partners.
Harris jeered the TV program 60 Minutes
planned to invite McGuinty to discuss his
platform, but wondered how he would fill the
remaining 59 minutes.
McGuinty was relaxed enough to joke about
himself, saying his advisers worried he might
not look physically strong on TV and his
mother tried to comfort him, saying there was
nothing wrong with his shoulders, but his head
was too big.
Politicians have become worried that what
they intend as a joke will not be seen by others
as funny and almost anything they say may be
seen by someone as offensive.
One reason is in 1999 Hampton mentioned
McGuinty’s resemblance to actor Tony
Perkins, who played murderer Norman Bates
in the movie Psycho.
Hampton said the Liberals went along with
many Harris policies, but were pretending to
have been against them and trying to turn
Norman Bates into hero John Wayne.
McGuinty did not object, saying he fancied
himself more as Gary Cooper, the lone sheriff
fighting outlaws in High Noon, but others
including the Canadian Mental Health
Association protested Hampton trivialized
concern for the mentally ill and he had to
apologize.
In other examples McGuinty said in 2003
Eves was like a used car salesman, refusing to
let customers look under the hood and
salesmen protested he accused them of
dishonesty.
A Conservative strategist also put out a
message McGuinty was an evil, reptilian
kitten-eater from another planet, which was so
outlandish no-one could believe it and it could
have been meant only as a joke.
But Liberals and much of the news media
took it as deadly serious and lambasted the
Conservatives and demanded apologies – no
wonder politicians are wary of joking.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
You see things that are and say “Why?”
But I dream of things that never were and
say “Why not?”
– Writer George Bernard Shaw
(1856-1950)
Final Thought