The San Francisco based writer says men aren’t men anymore

What has happened to the All-American Man? You know, the tough, hard-hitting, straight-shooting hero, the family breadwinner? He protected his Little Woman, fought the enemy, drank hard liquor and never cried. Remember him?

He was tall with bulging pectoral muscles and a mighty attitude. When he went out into the business world he dressed in a gray flannel suit, a starched white shirt with a proper four-in-hand knotted tie and a clean handkerchief in the lapel pocket. He wore garters to hold up his socks and his shoes were polished every morning. He shaved with a straight-edge and never cut his chin (much).

“He was tall with bulging pectoral muscles and a mighty attitude”

During the week, he went bowling with his buddies and when the weather was nice, he grabbed his rifle took the dog into the woods and shot things (just like the English). He gutted his kill himself (man’s work) his wife fricasseed it (women’s work) and the taxidermist stuffed what was left and hung it above the fireplace.

Once a guy reached maturity no one saw his chest or his knees in public. Sometimes when he forgot to turn off the light, his wife got a glimpse of a hairy thigh or a furry nipple, but she was far too worried about the perfume she was wearing and the provocative qualities of the nightie she hoped he would tear to pieces to notice her significant other’s nether parts.

When I was a little girl, I never saw my father dressed in anything that exposed any part of his body but his face and hands. He was the man of the house and he covered up the hairy bits. That was The American Way.

These days, I cannot walk out of my house without being accosted by uncut hair, misshapen calves and bulging ankles (socks are out). American men want to stay boys. “I am sick to death of looking at men’s hairy shins,” says Glenn Havlan, a father who likes being an adult. “I see men pick up their kids from school who look more like children than their children. They think cargo shorts and a baseball cap is cool.”

Havlan blames TV shows like Everybody Loves Raymond that perpetuate the image of the helpless male and the bitchy wife who clucks her tongue and rolls her eyes at her guy’s infantile behavior. “All those guys think of is golf and their dick,” said Havlan. “Programmes like that make the American male think he is exempt from adult concerns.”

American women don’t help the situation. They love to mother their guys. They may be liberated, but they still do the grocery shopping on the way home from the office, vacuum the floor and do the dishes. The truth is, these days, some men cannot even dress themselves. The website Style Pilot reports that the wives of two thirds of the men they surveyed select their guy’s clothes and more than half actually help them button up and get zipped. Of course, men are still very good at undressing their gals. Getting yourself back together and hiding the evidence is definitely a girl thing.

What is worse, when men try to do housework, they are so inept that their overworked female partners have to do the job all over again. No wonder we think they are stupid. Author Kay Hymowitz says that these days young men shun former masculine responsibilities and prefer to stay home with their parents. They while away the hours watching TV, dressing like school boys with goatees and expanding their middles on Mother’s apple pie (it is an American thing). Her conclusion? American men just don’t know what they are supposed to be anymore.

And that is why I love Brighton. Everyone there knows exactly what they are supposed to be. The men who hanker after women open doors for them, pay for their drinks and bed them as often as possible (women like that, by the way). The men who prefer men dress in colourful shirts, stock up on free condoms and pick up guys in gay bars, and the men who want to be women wear designer gowns and sing karaoke. Any male who wants to be a boy is sent off to public school where he eventually figures out that the only way to feel human is to get the hell out of there and grow up. No doubt about it. In Brighton, you can tell what’s what and who’s who. In America, it’s a crapshoot.

“What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death. – Dave Barry

“You can only be young once. But you can always be immature. – Dave Barry

At the ball game

I sat next to a gorgeous woman in skin tight leggings and a revealing blouse at my child’s baseball game. She pointed to a child with long curls and a catchers’ mask: “That’s my son,” she said. I smiled. “You must be a proud mother,” I said.
“I am his father,” she said. “And which one is your youngster?
I pointed to my buff little daughter her biceps gleaming as she swung the bat. “He looks really tough,” said my neighbour. “He is a she,” I said. “Her name is Daphne.”
“What a co-incidence,” said the person next to me. “That is my name too! I was Dan before the operation.”

Dresscode: casual
When I was young, a dress code meant a jacket and tie, now it means shoes and a shirt.

See more of Lynn Ruth Miller on Brighton Lights at www.thelatest.tv