IN RESPONSE to Kim du Toit’s essay on manhood, which I linked earlier, I just want to note two things: First, that it’s come back to me already via multiply-forwarded email from all sorts of friends and acquaintances who don’t seem to realize where it originated, suggesting that it’s taking on a life of its own, and second that I actually think the strongest part of his essay was his reflection on how television and advertising reflexively denigrate men — and especially fathers — nowadays (sort of the Berenstain Bears syndrome writ large).

I also want to note that my enthusiasm for cooking increased when I realized that cookware is just another kind of tool. . . .

UPDATE: Mitch Berg has more:

In advertising, the “Fred Flintstone” archetype has taken complete hold; Fred was impulsive, stupid, lost to his self-centered and wrong-headed desires. Wilma was the inevitable voice of wisdom and reason. It’s gotten to the point where kids today accept that as the norm (the fathers on Lizzie McGuire, Boy Meets World, Even Stevens and so many other kids’ shows follow that model.) It wasn’t always that way; compare fathers on TV produced in the fifties and early sixties (Andy Griffith, Robert Young, even Hugh Beaumont – all of whom were on a level field with their TV wives and girlfriends) and TV set in the fifties and early sixties (Tom Bosley’s ridiculous father in Happy Days, or the impotently tormented Dan Lauria in Wonder Years). You’re talking about two drastically different samples of men. Why is that? I think Kim has it right.

Education is, if anything, worse.

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile reader Michael Anderson agrees with me:

I also want to note that my enthusiasm for cooking increased when I realized that cookware is just another kind of tool. . . .

Huge, glittering, extremely sharp knives, billowing open flames, hunks of raw meat, gratuitous beer-and-wine drinking during preparations…what could be more manly?

Yep. If this isn’t manly, I don’t know what is. . . .

Reader Les Meade, meanwhile, sends this:

Your link to the Berenstain Bears syndrome reminded me of something that my son (now 24) commented upon years ago about why he wouldn’t watch the TV show Home Improvement. He said it was because every show was exactly the same; “the Dad is an idiot and screws everything up until Mom puts him back in line.” I think he was only 13 when he pointed this out to me. What boy wants to grow up with such low expectations for his future?

And what happens to the ones who do?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Dan Mallon emails:

What bothers me more is the way men and fathers are depicted in advertisements. They can’t cook, clean, or care for themselves when they’re sick.

In my house, I cook and shop. My wife does most of the cleaning as she doesn’t like how I do it. We both do laundry, both changed diapers and cared for sick kids.

Imagine putting an advertisement on that showed a woman saying, “Can you balance the checkbook, honey? You know I can’t do math.”

They’d be lynched. I wonder, though, if this phenomenon doesn’t go part of the way toward explaining why network TV is losing so many male viewers.

Reader Barbara Skolaut emails:

A reader wrote to you that his then-13-year-old son said he wouldn’t watch Home Improvement because “every show was exactly the same; “the Dad is an idiot and screws everything up until Mom puts him back in line.”

I wouldn’t watch it either, for exactly that reason. And I’m a now-57-year-old woman. I’m sure other women noticed it, too, but loved the concept. I didn’t; I’ve always hated it when women as a group are denigrated (and having grown up in the the 50’s, I can assure you I was on the receiving end of plenty of it) and think if it’s wrong for men to do it to women, the reverse is also true.

The answer to the age-old question “what do women want?” is respect. Well, if we want it, we need to give it. It’s just as wrong to say “all men are [fill in insult of your choice]” as it is to say “all women are [insult du jour].

Yes. I think that advertisers, TV programmers, etc. are way behind the curve on this and don’t realize how angry this makes a lot of men, and many women, and how much it’s costing them.

And how much it’s contributing to what Jeff Jarvis calls the citizens’ media revolution.

MORE: Shell comments: “It isn’t the Battle of the Sexes. It’s a battle of ideologies. Not left vs. right or Dems vs. Pubs, but Socialism vs. Individual Responsibility. And there are women, and men, on both sides of the divide.”

Jonathan Gewirtz emails: “Dude, I’ve got two favorite tools: my Glock and my Cuisinart. And I’ll bet there are women who would make the same statement.”

STILL MORE: Other comments are in the “Extended Entry” area. Hit “More” to read ’em.

A reader who once worked on The Man Show emails:

read your site and others often and have in the last few days come across the above-referenced essay several times. It took me by surprise because du Toit’s idea, the pussification of the American Male, was actually a subject discussed often in my college days. I should mention that I am an alum of the University of the Arts, and at the time this issue of gender and perception was huge question in the minds of all those aspiring artist. I specifically attended a class on gender and sexual identity taught by Camille Paglia and generally the subject was discussed and debated in almost every class I took during my 4 years. I went from college to Los Angeles where I worked on “The Man Show”, a program mentioned by du Toit, as well as many other shows and for many other companies.

What struck me most in this debate, in the essay and the discussion it has inspired is the lack of television choices from the golden age. For in addition to “Father Knows Best” and the “Donna Reed Show” there was “The Life of
Riley” and “The Honey Mooners” and in each of these shows the male role was used to fight a battle of ideologies. These programs at the time were reflecting the new morals and social norms of 1950s America. At that time the mass migrations from the city to the suburbs, the embrace of consumerism, and the possibility of home ownership were the dominant themes and dreams in American culture.

In the case of “Father Knows Best” the family lived in suburbia, mom stayed home, and kids played in the green grass and hygienic, clean air of any town USA. This father and the father of most suburban families was in charge, was wise, steered the family. The Dad in “The Life of Riley” and Ralph Kramden, both city dwelling men who couldn’t seem to get their families out of tiny cramped city apartments were portrayed as self-centered moronic boobs that had to be saved time and time again by their wives. The new man, the family man was always in the right, where as the old norms, the old cities were dead, defunct, and embarrassing, just like the city Dads. These shows, as every other popular cultural entertainment form, were a reflection of the issues of the day. We have the craptacular “Home Improvement” but we also have “Bernie Mac”, “7th Heaven”, “Everwood”, (ahem, “The Man Show” Seasons 1-4) and a host of other programs which seek to show men in the responsible roles that they do and should inhabit. (I was going to mention “Biker Billy Cooks with Fire”, a biker cooking show, as an example of extra manliness, but how many people have access to New Jersey public television?)

So, I guess that I’m only writing to you to point out that this is not a new phenomenon, just the current incarnation of ideological battles, and as much as I agree with the essay, I hoped only to mention our icon of the wise father figure on television and suburban bliss came to be because society chose it. There was another option. We didn’t want it and I can only hope we make the right choice this time around.

Thanks for being so Instapundity —

I promise to always be “Instapundity!” Er, as a role model for America’s men!

MORE: Reader Trudy Schuett emails:

I’m glad to see this subject being discussed in more “mainstream” kinds of places! I’ve been an advocate for men’s issues since 1999, and watching men being humiliated in many ways, quite literally dozens of times each day on TV. When I or any of the men’s groups write or phone the advertisers to complain, thus far it’s been a fairly standard response that this is to be considered a joke. Yet the same advertisers would never in a million years make a woman, or any ethnic group the butt of these same jokes. That would be seen as bordering on hate and socially unacceptable.

Now it seems people are “voting with their remotes,” so perhaps those in traditional media will begin to listen!

Let’s hope.