My thanks to Baker for setting me onto this topic. His comment on one of my threads inspired this one.
Baker: "I know men that I grew up around that right now if their wives left or died would literally not know how to cook their own supper, sew on a button, or even wash their clothes in their own washer and dryer. To me, THAT is a lot more, well, candy assed. There's always been something effeminate about a grown man-child that needs his wife to be his momma, too, lol."
These days most television shows depict the father, and males in general, as useless, stupid, bumbling fools who couldn't tie their own shoes without a woman's help. Sadly, many men these days aren't too far off from that. Many modern men are lost in the kitchen and couldn't feed themselves without the aid of restaurants. Lose a button off their shirt? Buy a new shirt.
Is this what a man is supposed to be?
150 years ago men were highly adept at taking care of themselves. If one were to survive he needed to know a wide range of skills from sewing to cooking to leather working to building his own house. They didn't need someone else to do things for them and they took pride in their self-sufficiency. A man who couldn't do for himself was considered weak and pathetic in the eyes of "real men".
These days many so-called real men have almost no skills at all outside of their occupation. Simple sewing, cooking, home maintenance, and the like are beyond their ability. That's pretty damn sad. I personally take a lot of pride in the fact that I can take care of myself and if there is a skill I lack I take the time and trouble to learn it. Woman's work? There's no such thing. If I need to do something I do it or learn how to do it, and then take pride in the fact that I can do it.
That's a real man. Self-sufficient, skilled, willing to learn new skills, and self-assured enough to proudly display his abilities regardless of whether or not those useless types consider it "woman's work" or not. A real man is comfortable with himself and has an inner strength that surpasses the derision of the useless types (or as Baker put it, candy asses).
A wimp, candy ass, or whatever you wish to call him, lives in fear of what the other wimps will think and say about him while the real man will look them right in the eye without fear and be proud that he is a notch above these useless wimps.