a _ ——— Fre Eo ina CRO im ame Reine en Renee aa Patrick Mackenzie, OP Contributor A couple of weeks ago, I decided I was too tired to cook after a long Wednesday at school. I stopped at my local pizzeria to have a beer and order a take-out pizza. After ordering, I leafed through a stack of several day- old newspapers. I stopped at The Metro, one of the ubiq- uitous tabloid-like free dailies that litter the Lower Mainland. On the front page, a thuggish looking guy with a waxed chest is posing in front of some kind of exercise devise-possibly a bench press, but I'm not sure- petting a Laso Opso sitting on his lap. The headline Observations of a Culture in Decline read: “The New Male.” Always intrigued by issues relat- ed to the social construction of gender, I decided to give the article a read. Remember the metrosexual, that is, the heterosexual adoption of a gay male aesthetic? Well, apparently that is so 2002. Now there's a new heterosexual male hybrid called the “softcho.” They're still macho, but soft. Get it? According to the article, softchos are guys who work as bouncers at nightclubs on Granville Street, lift weights, take steroids, play rugby, like to fight, but use moisturizer and shave their armpits. Apparently, they're really in touch with their feminine side. Excuse me while I stick my fingers down my throat and vomit! Oh my stars—I haven't had such a visceral response to cultural phenomenon in ages. The softcho? I beg your pardon but give me a macho, doofus, meat- head any day, or least come up with a better moniker. Oh I know: “I'm a pathetic loser who's afraid my girl- friend's gonna dump me because I suspect somewhere deep inside I really am just a middle-of-the-road ass- hole.” Here's my theory: perhaps, suspecting that big dumb guys, especially bouncers, have always been kind of unpopular, these paid thugs, gatekeepers to the oh-so- boring hetero Vancouver nightlife, adopt a more femi- nine—and I mean feminine as opposed to gay—aesthet- ic. I'm just theorizing here, but I think these guys want it both ways: they want to be accepted as cool, fashion- able, and being in touch with their feminine side yet they take jobs where the prerequisite is a predilection for mean spiritedness and exclusion. It is as if by wax- ing their chest hair, using moisturizer and bathing in cologne, that superficial show of fashion sensibility will cancel out their deep desires for violence and control. The rationale seems to be that because they're wearing hand cream, it's okay to punch some feckless guy's lights out. The hand cream will soften the blow; hell, it might even make it disappear. This, of course, is the height of absurdity. It's laugh- able. It's sad. Say what you will about macho men: they're sexist, they're egotistical, they wear their pants too tight around the crotch. However, they know who they are. Furthermore, the macho man is archetypal. Do you think Odysseus was concerned about body hair when he kicked the asses of the suitors macking on his old lady Penelope? Do you think that Dirty Harry Callahan was worrying if his moisturizer would hold up as he blew holes into punks the size of dinner plates with his .44 Magnum? The “softcho,” on the other hand, is an insincere expression formed out of, among other things, a shal- low culture that primarily values appearances. I think we live in an age where a gap has opened up in North American culture whereby exceptionally self-involved and uninteresting people can get a lot of attention. Everyone agrees that ours is a culture obsessed with celebrity; perhaps sensing that they are missing out on the action, big dumb guys are tying to carve out an identity that is simultaneously derivative and obnoxious. Their attempt to reinvent themselves using the template of a metrosexual, minus the homosexual overtones, dis- plays their unoriginality and overt homophobia. But do we expect the bouncers for the worst night- clubs in the city to be intelligent? The only people who could possibly take these goons seriously are themselves. Their obvious hijacking of the metrosexual aesthetic and labeling it “feminine” only makes them bigger clowns than they already are. or toll free 1-866-7-VOYAGE. Travel On An Amazing International Program! Are YOU ready? Discover other countries and other regions of Canada! Learn about social justice and development issues! Live and work with people from other cultures! Canada World Youth has international volunteer programs for youth 17 — 24. Contact CWY at www.canadaworldyouth.org Apply now for programs that start summer 2006! Apply Now! Priority deadline January 15, 2006. See website for programs for older youth, & NetCorps Internships! Editorial Cartoon by JJ Mc Cullough Aw, not ANOTHER election! We just it one!!